Okay, okay, so I failed to reach the
Hijack 'dubstep fiesta' thing last night. Pretty annoyed about it really, cos since I discovered that there was a local scene for this sound I've been making an effort to attend all major events but this time it just wasn't happening due to my 'other commitment'. A word of advice for all you youngsters out there: if you wanna have a successful marriage you need to know when you're crossing a certain line, and fucking off to a club and leaving your wife at home on your anniversary is one big line I wasn't prepared to cross. And she certainly wouldn't have wanted to come along to the event with me cos she absolutely
hates dubstep (along with virtually all other forms of electronic/underground music - still, they say opposites attract, right?). So I did the descent thing. Really enjoyed the evening actually, although I'm not prepared to go into all the details of how Mrs. Gutta and I spend our time together. True, there may have been the odd moment of insanity in the past where I might've been tempted to proclaim that listening to
Vex'd was
better than sex, but I went to sleep with a big smile on my face last night, if you know what I mean.
Besides, I'm a 36 year old family man with loads of responsibilities and commitments, fer christ's sake. It amazes me that I find
any time and energy to follow the latest developments in electronica, let alone write about them! Still, while I'm on the subject of Vex'd, check this
tasty little interview with Jamie over at Grimemusic.com, which pretty much renders my own attempt redundant before I've even begun, as the interviewer covers all the stuff I would've asked anyway. Interesting to note Jamie's comments about
"sound in general, the sounds of our environment, of the city" which sort of backs-up my own observations about the
"subliminal auras that lurk behind the beats" when reviewing
"Degenerate" back in July. Lot's of other insightfull comments there too, although Jamie was rather cautious when endorsing
"male, white, 30+" bloggers. Hrrmmm...I think I speak in
plain english, don't you? And I'm certainly not highly educated or a professional music journalist, so maybe he wasn't including me in his comments, even though the interviewer name-checked Gutterbreakz directly in the question.
It was also unfortunate that I missed the chance to see local talents
Pinch,
Blazey and
ThinKing in action too, although I have been spoilt recently having seen Pinch on the deckles twice this month already, at
Ruffneck Discotek and then back-to-back with
Loefah at
Subloaded Vs. Heatwave. What was particularly striking about the Ruffneck evening was that Pinch was on the same bill as
Atki2 who, as one half of
Monkey Steak was responsible for volume 1 of Werk's Grim Dubs series. As such they're almost ideologically opposite - Pinch with his dubplates and firm roots in jungle/d'n'b representing the 'true' militant underground dubstep vibe and Atki2 doing a laptop set that displayed his more cerebral drill'n'bass/breakcore background applied to the new 'bassline science' of Grim. Weirdly, a couple of people I knew there were coming up to me during his set and asking "is this that Grim stuff, then?", to which I replied "er, yeah, I s'pose so". I mean, I don't really know what to call it - I'm making this shit up as I go along. Personally, I don't feel much Grimness in Atki2's sound - Pinch's stuff is much darker - it's more playful in the same way that the best IDM-orientated jungle is. Maybe I'll start calling it Basscore or something. Although I reckon there's still a lot of common ground between them, Dubstep is essentially about expanding sound, whilst Grim Dub, like breakcore before it, is about compressing sound, filling in the gaps with new complex patterns, saturating the beats with information - taking things to extremes. This basic push-pull has been going on for years, since the days when Squarepusher and friends first started messing with jungle's DNA. I personally had been feeling that the whole breakcore/amentalist thing had run out of steam and had been hoping/predicting that Grime and Dubstep would inject new life into the more so-called 'intelligent' side of the electronic spectrum and on the evidence of artists like Atki2, Barry Lynn, Drop The Lime and Mathead, it's really happening. I know that many people like to stay firmly on one side of the fence (and I know certain people within the dubstep community were annoyed by the press release that Werk issued - I just thought it was bloody funny), but I'm interested in both approaches. From a purely selfish point of view, I'm fascinated to see what new twists and turns the Grim contingent will inject into the (itself still developing) Grimey bassline sound. Hopefully I'll be doing some special posts on several of these new artists in the coming weeks. In the meantime....
The second Ruffneck event promises another extreme clash of ideoligies, as Atki2 teams-up with his Monkey Steak partner Hanuman to do battle with the Joker, a local black sixteen year old unsigned Grime DJ/producer who was an absolute revelation when he played back-to-back with Blazey recently. Although they dropped plenty of heavyweight tunes from artists like Plasticman, Slew Dem and Roll Deep, Joker's own beats (spun off dubplates or laptop) were some of the freshest, craziest sounds I've heard this year. I'd love to get him to do a mix for the blog and after the show I tried explaining to him who I was and what I do, but he didn't seem very receptive. Maybe it'll happen at some point, but until then I urge anyone in the vicinity to reach this event on the 10th September and experience the Joker vibe for yourselves. It's gonna be a heavy night.
Forensics a name I've been dropping quite a bit recently. He's an DJ/producer called Krys Taylor, originally from Bristol but now based in London. I've featured one of his mixes before, along with a couple of his own tunes on Gutterbreakz FM. I finally got to meet him in person this month as he's the co-organiser of Ruffneck Discotek, also spinning all the 'hits' prior to Pinch's exclusive set. I'm hosting his latest mix, which you might've seen posted already at some of the message boards, but here's the link again for all you busy Gutterheadz:
Forensics Dubstep Mix #9(new link)
Singing in the rain (intro)
Vex'd - Crusher Dub (Planet Mu)
Supa Stylist - The Culture Anthem (Supastar Recordings)
Geeneus - Congo (Tempa)
Skream - Ain't it Cold (Destructive)
Toasty Boy - Guesswork (Storming Productions)
DJ Distance - Breathing Space (Lix/Sting)
Digital Mystikz - B (DMZ)
Slaughter Mob - Stopper (Destructive)
Eric H - The Lights (Hot Flush)
DJ Distance - The Ritual (Lix/Sting)
Kode 9 - Ping (Rephlex)
Burial - South London Boroughs (Hyperdub)
Kode 9 - Sub-Kontinent (Rephlex)
Kode 9 & Daddy Gee - Babylon (Dub mix) (Tempa)
Toasty Boy - Dibble (Destructive)
Gutterbreakz - Shiverz (demo)
And if you're wondering how one of my tunes got tacked on the end, it's not some condition I imposed on him or anything! What happened was, I knew Krys was gonna be playing that night, so took along this new riddim on cd-r cos I was hoping he might play it that night so I could guage how one of my Fruity Loops productions sounded over a proper PA system. But they hadn't brought any CD turntables (it was vinyl, dubplates and laptops only) so that was the end of that idea. But Krys asked if he could keep the cd-r anyway. Looks like he enjoyed the tune enough to include it in his mix - cheers, mate!
By the way, today is the second birthday of the Gutterbreakz blog. Just so you know...
