Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Dubstep Rulez!


Had sort of an epiphany this weekend with the dubstep party in Brussels. Plasticman, Kode9 and Skream! came to skank the place and I was overly impressed. Fuck no, I was overwhelmed! Nice too that the organisation had understood that a good dubstep evening takes place in almost complete darkness. The lights were accordingly sparse (though I would have appreciated a strobe for added pleasure) and the atmosphere thus created even reinforced the trembling and pounding bass sounds, that nearly unscrewed the bolts of the boat the party took place on.

I was a tad surprised - but of course also overjoyed - that a pretty large crowd in Belgium understands that dubstep is the music of the future. I was also impressed by the sheer diversity of the sounds dubstep has managed to create in its rather short history (ok, rather short: it's been going on for more than five years now). Plasticman (aka The Plastician) was so brutal that I almost connected dubstep to electronic body music. He even managed to blow up the subwoofer 37 minutes into the party. That being said, Kode9 and Skream! obviously were the dj's of the evening. Kode9 was more orientated towards dub and hiphop, Skream! went more in an electronic direction. That divide only shows that there is still pretty much space for new directions and developments in the style. Now let's hope the rest of the world, too, catches on to this exciting music.

1 comment:

Mathias Vermeulen said...

It is pretty big in album - already bigger than grime ever was. In Belgium there are even quite some decent producers, check breakz.be in the dubstep forum.