I’ve been meaning to do another dubstep post for, well, ages, (it’s been 14 months since the first of what was at the time going to be many Dubstep Digests) but I was a bit hesitant because I’ve always been a little hazy on how the genre as a whole felt toward the idea of blogs putting its music out there. Still am really, so apologies in advance if all the audio from this post gets pulled in the near future. It was lovely while it lasted.

But yes, dubstep has really been on a fairly stratospheric trajectory ever since that first Dubstep Digest (not that I want to take credit or anything… *cough* tastemaker *cough*). These days it’s increasingly hard to find a major release that hasn’t been given the dubstep treatment (Rusko especially feels kinda like the Crookers of 2009, but, you know, better), and there’s probably some argument that the gleefully off-kilter beats of grime and dubstep have paved the way for the current rush on off-time dance music (see, for example, soca, kuduru, UK funky, et al.) Quite remarkable for a genre that, on the face of it, sounds almost ridiculously niche. But I think half the reason dubstep has become so successful over these past 2 years lies in its innate flexibility. I can think of few other electronic genres that straddle so easily the divide between club music and music for the home, fewer still that can do it in the same release, and almost none that can do it within a single song.

To my mind, the major reason for this is that dubstep feels like a genre beholden to nothing else. It’s doing its own thing and couldn’t really give a shit what the other genres thought of it. After the electro/blog explosion of 2006, everything that came afterwards felt increasingly derivative of that initial moment. Even genres that ostensibly had nothing to do with 80s revivalism (i.e. fidget) were still talked about in the same breath as ‘electro’ because for a while that seemed to be the only way of discussing house music. The producers were often the same, Ableton-fuelled DJs would genre swap without blinking and blogs would cover it all indiscriminately, so in the end it was just easier to tie it all together. But then you listened to dubstep and there was none of that. The beats were different, the presets unrecognisable, the emphasis on bass refreshing. And while it has obvious forebears in drum’n'bass, jungle, two-step and grime, dubstep still arrived fully formed enough to feel independent of them.

Of course, this isn’t to suggest that dubstep is a genre filled with wall to wall crossover hits. A cursory overview of the tracks put out by Skream, Rusko, Chase & Status, Reso and the like, reveals a pretty consistent fidelity to massive drops, thumping bass pulses and jagged edge synth lines. They are, in short, fucking banging. But there’s a nimbleness to the genre, a breadth of influences and styles that means dubstep still feels exciting and expansive, especially in a place like Australia where it so firmly inhabits the fringes of acceptable dance music.

Speaking of which: music! Finally…

The first proper dubstep gig I attended was headlined by UK scene wunderkind Joker. Not that I knew that at the time, but suffice to say it was a fairly auspicious way to kick things off. Joker is one of those really annoying 20 year olds that has already achieved so much in his chosen field that the mediocre wanderings of your own life start to seem a little empty. Hell, I’m just impressed that I’m not falling over in the street as much as I was a few years back. Joker though, he started making tunes at 14, was DJing regularly a year later, was dubstep’s great hope by 18 and has spent the last year churning out a run of truly unimpeachable tracks, each one quirkier, funkier and better than the last. As much as I enjoy dubstep as a whole, listening to Joker can really make all the other producers out there seem a little flatfooted.

The miracle of Joker’s tunes are that while they work wonders on the dancefloor, they also reward careful and repeated listening at home. This is as much music as it is dance music. A case in point is one of his more recent releases ‘Digidesign’, a track that I became so obsessed with last week that I listened to it 20 times in one 24 hour period. Who am I kidding, I’m listening to it right now. For the fourth time today. It’s starting to become a little worrisome actually. But there is something endlessly fascinating about the way all the different elements of ‘Digidesign’ hang together – the sparseness of the beats, the pseudo-jazziness of the keys, the heaviness of the bass, the crunchiness of the synths. Listening to it makes me feel like the coolest motherfucker in the universe. But I’m actually having to restrain myself from spooling out another 200 words of high wankery here, so let’s just say it’s intriguing and amazing and probably the best piece of electronic music I’ve heard all year and that should just about do it.

Joker – Digidesign [HIGHLY RECOMMENDED]

But this has all been quite enough waxing lyrical for one post, so I’ll speed things up for the next two tracks, although both of them still come with the highest recommendation. ‘Stuck in the System’ is a string laden excursion into massively broken beats and heavy roll, and further proof of Joker’s base (its a pun!) musicality. Meanwhile ‘Psychedelic Runway’ shows (funnily enough) a more psych-influenced end of the Joker spectrum. It’s full of his trademark ultra-granulated synths, which are so heavily filtered and drenched in texture here that they almost seem in danger of evaporating altogether.

Joker – Stuck in the System

Joker – Psychedelic Runway

All in all, let’s just say the man is making some truly bitching electronic music right now, and if you’re in any way intrigued by the idea of dubstep but don’t know where to start, then Joker may well be the producer for you.

Well, that could have saved us a thousand odd words.

-luke