"I think that DJ and dubplate culture is the biggest thing to blame for the dip in quality control. DJs are only playing records that get an obvious response. So you may play a deep house set that people will sway and bob around to and it will change their lives - or you may hear an absolute full-on attack of warped noises that'll make people scream and bang their heads against the wall and then they'll never look back on it. Basically they wanted a release at that point and this is music that will have no effect further than that. If you're a dj it looks like they loved it because they're going mad, but that doesn't mean the people are buying the music. They'd rather spend their money on good drugs and clothes and then just go wild."
Rupert Parkes, aka Photek, interviewed in Overload magazine, late 2000. Of course he's talking about the d'n'b scene, but perhaps this line of thought could be applied to dubstep today.
most amusing about this of course is that just a few years later photek got back in the dnb game making just the kind of no-quality-control crapola he was talking trash on here. too bad for him, he was one of my all time favorites!
ReplyDeletethis has been a problem with me since the DNB days went the way of producers "deejaying" out all dubplates. 2-step wasn't so bad with it, but then the dubstep guys got all about it. so stupid, and definitely part of the problem with UK urban dance music. it's one of the reasons i went to strictly house/techno/electro/disco, i cant be bothered with flavor of the month music anymore.
A big factor in this phenomenon in D+B is that (with a few exceptions) most producers couldnt mix for shit, and so ended up making the beats simpler and more restricted so that they could play sets without constant trainwrecks. Photek for example couldnt mix to save his life in the late 90s, yet he still demanded the highest DJng fee of nearly any D+B producer at the time.
ReplyDeleteIt's not just 'playing to the crowd' it's what crowd you try to play to.
ReplyDelete