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Eddy Says
Eddy Says: Phoenix from the flames
By Eddy Temple-Morris | Published on Monday 19 October 2009
Poor old breaks. It went from the back room, into the main room, and, these things being cyclical, is now back in the back room at best, no room at worst. I don’t want to look backwards and discuss ‘why?’, I want to look at the horizon, positively and think ‘what next?’.
So, like I say, it’s just wheels turning. Breaks will enjoy some kind of renaissance in the future, no doubt – albeit probably a modified, evolved version – and I for one am looking forward to seeing what transpires. Granted, the basslines have already been purloined by the brilliant (and sometimes not-so-brilliant) wave of late-noughties bassline-house producers, so that’s partly come to pass. But I’m sure there’s something brewing far and beyond that.
Meanwhile, I sense something very interesting happening right now, largely due to a wave of really talented producers who are twiddling their thumbs and trying to find something to occupy the void left by the loss of their genre.
The more progressive producers (The Rogue Element / Plumps / Hyper etc) have gravitated to a sexier, more progressive sound, while the ones who were always wider than the breaks genre itself (Freqnasty / Deekline / Freeland / Krafty / Dub Pistols etc) have put their heads down and carried on doing their admirable thing.
But others are looking positively ahead, and rather than being downtrodden, disenfanchised and bitter that others have taken their ball and run off with it to a much better game, they are getting on with making something new, and special, and unique.
This new movement doesn’t even have a name yet, but I can feel it swelling. The way I describe it is ‘steroidal dubstep’. I’m listening to and playing a lot of it at the moment, for the simple reason that I like it more than ‘traditional’ dubstep. I’m sure many of the trad lot will feel venomous towards what they see as a counterfeit version of their genre, but the more open minded ones, like Nero, Reso and even Plastician, are embracing it, I notice.
The origin of this sound can be traced, I reckon, back to Reso, though you could also draw a dotted line back to the original spark to the tinderbox, which would surely have to be Darin Freq Nasty. But right now I’m thinking, specifically, of artists like Skism, Pixelfist, Vent and the like… there’s more, and there will be a lot more, judging by reactions I’m getting from dancefloors around London to this turbo version of the Sarf-London sound.
The last two gigs I played, both in Kent, were very interesting. Pixel Fist and Skism went down noticeably better on the dancefloor than any of the big players. I should probably say ‘playaz’ there.
We all know what the press are like here, ‘build it up, take it down’, so we will see dubstep feel the sting of that inevitable back-lash, but not before there’s a split, creatively speaking, a fragmentation, and an evolution, which is always healthy. The really talented ones, like Skream, who is wider than the genre itself, are already blurring the boundaries with old skool drum n bass.
I can see a more liquid style evolving – like what they used to call ‘intelligent dnb’, then on the opposite end of the spectrum – past Joker’s minimalism and past the more trad producers that are already falling into the trap of recycling the same bassline on all their remixes. The new style is steroidal, big, fat, and plumpcious. It’s technical, with production values that come from years of grafting on a hot Mac (or PC *spits*), which stands in stark contrast to some trad ‘producers’ that sonically smack of a ten year old borrowing his dad’s computer and working with his tongue out sideways. And more importantly than all of that, it’s danceable.
I’m not Nostradamus, I’m just having a bit of a laugh and thinking out loud here, but I’d love to know what you think, so hit me up on Facebook and Twitter. Is this nu-brand, with go-faster stripes and furry dice on the dubstep mirth-mobile, the next evolution of breaks? Who knows? I’m just on the sidelines, watching, listening and loving what I hear.
eddy X
Eddy Says from this edition of the CMU Remix Update.
