Wednesday, January 12, 2011

A Sentimental Note on Dubstep

I miss old dubstep; the real, good stuff that made me walk and walk and walk and get lost in my own head in the best possible way. Lost, not in my own deep thoughts, but solely on the sounds, the layering, the counts, the components of liquid melted bass that together made my insides warm up like a shot of Scotch. Sonically, the sounds were deep and nurturing, and had this matriarchal feel to them, perhaps in part due to Mary Anne Hobbs' influence on the sub-genre during this period (sidenote- as sad as it was for her to leave her late night BBC 1 radio show, I am of the opinion it was a wise move on her part. She had essentially raised the Bristol scene to a near pinnacle, and could anticipate that the future of dubstep was now out of her control and thrown free to the masses. She got out at a time that would diffuse her association with a genre that was heading in a wobbly direction with increasingly less attention to sound fluidity as it reached the mainstream).

Of course, there have still been great albums that have left me smiling to myself while walking down the street, but it isn't quite the same as that initial feeling I had when I first entered the world of dubstep. I'm not saying I want to be in the pure, simple state I was in before the genre, I merely want the fun of listening to it for the first time all over again.

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