Sach O considers this payback for The Hives.
Between Korn’s Skrillex-assisted bid for relevance and Pitchfork broadcasting James Blake’s claim that girls aren’t into Brostep, this hasn’t been a great week for hard electronic music, at least on paper. Numbers don’t lie however: when DeadMau5 and Excision have a 4 day residency at the biggest non-arena venue in town, it gets increasingly hard to ignore that this stuff is getting massively popular with the youth. Personally, while I may not enjoy most Brostep when sober, I can at least feel a bit of schadenfreude every time a music critic realizes his grasp of pop culture is on the wane. I had to suffer through a decade of your precious, Brooklyn born, warmed up post-punk and now it’s payback time, bitches.
But the question remains: is there any good hard Dubstep being made in 2011? As far as I can tell, not much, as most quality UK producers have run screaming towards House in an attempt to distinguish themselves from the unkempt masses leaving a bunch of rank amateurs to sully the genre with masturbatory mid-range. Up and coming duo Stinkahbell are an exception to that rule; their scene anthem Something in your eyes released on Hatcha’s Sin City records is the rare record that’s managed to unite the original massive with the UKF crowd through a haunting combination of processed vocals, toy pianos and of course, a huge wobbly bass line. The result, oddly enough, reminds me of a populist flip on the ideas Darkstar were exploring at the start of their career before North: how to wring genuine emotion out of an increasingly digital world. Then again, maybe I’m over-thinking it, listen to that bass!
Grimey, their collaboration with Supreme is even better, processing a Ragga Twins vocal within an inch of its life until the early 90s British emcees sound like Funkadelic’s Sir Nose. Once again, the emphasis is squarely on the crowd-amping low end but whereas less tactful producers might overload things with bombast, heavy-metal riffing or fighting robot sounds, Grimey’s detuned drone captures the original dread vibe missing from the scene…all without relying on 90s House cliches. So have at it kids, enjoy your Borgores and 12th Planets; as long as I have tunes like this I’ll be more than happy to let y’all do your glowsticked out megaraves. Or your proper, staid, emotionally touching James Blake concert tours for that matter. Because the only thing worse than fratboys are smug, self-satisfied, art school wankers.
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