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Comment by fumar | Hacker News Reader

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I love electronic music. But, I can not get into Skrillex or American Dubstep for that manner. I feel like im missing something...

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I've been listening to electronic music for, at some level, my whole life, and I feel ashamed to say I like brostep. I don't think it's fair to call it dubstep, but it has to be accepted on its own terms.

"That's the worst turnip I've ever tasted!" "Sir, that's a daikon radish." "Well, then, it's not bad then."

I think a lot of it has to do with expectation. I find brostep good cleaning music, actually -- the quick change of pace works for it. I also find a bit of emotional release from it -- there's something in the contrast for me, at least.

But nobody I've ever met likes every type of music. :)

I like the turnip analogy. Sometimes it's just a matter of approaching a piece of art on different terms.

Yeah, a lot of the controversy seems to be (as ever) over genre classification. I hadn't really thought about it before, but I think I mentally file Skrillex-style music near "industrial dance" and some of the glitchier kinds of EBM.

I don't think you're missing anything, it's simply a matter of personal taste. I don't enjoy Skrillex either (dubstep to me is artists like Burial) but I can see why his more muscular approach might appeal to the American crowd.

Correct, Burial, on the other hand makes music I enjoy.

I see him as part of the first wave of the new pop-electronic which I think will be only more popular through this decade. It's certainly not typical traditional electronic music, so no, you aren't missing anything.

I didn't really get it either until I went to a club and danced to it. I didn't even know how, I just copied what people were doing, picking up on the ambiance of the place and what fun people were having. By the time the place closed, I was having so much fun I didn't want it to end. It's probably true with all types of music, that the context in which you experience it will create the associations that determine whether you will like it or not.

Agreed. I find Skrillex derivative. It's like Chicane with extra noise.

Dubstep can be awesome however.

Skrillex is derivative but Chicane is original. That's a new one. I say this as a fan of both.

Never said Chicane was original. They're both derivative.

Obviously every song is in some way building on other previous works, but there are degrees of originality and contribution above and beyond the building blocks that a song draws from. Some songs seem to be just "beautiful component" + "harmonious other beautiful component" = "pleasant synthesis resulting in more beauty", while others seem to be "beautiful component" + "rotting vegetables" = "pretty rotting vegetables"...

Curious how you got from Chicane to Skrillex. Or to Chicane in the first place...

Hehe - I'm just de opposite :) Not a fan of electronic music at all - but can't stop listening to Skrillex :-) So I guess they're not that related after all :-p

You're not missing anything. It's watered down.

The correct term for what you refer to as "american dubstep" is actually Brostep.

Dubstep was invented in Europe in the 90s and came out of the early techno scene. The shit these douches are making in California is completely unrelated.

Interesting. I've always thought that Dubstep was a mutation which came out of the acid -> hardcore -> garage -> grime lineage in the UK.

I really hate to be a "genre pedant", but Dubstep is a descendant of garage, dub, drum and bass and a few other styles from the very late 90s early 00s in England. "Early techno" is Detroit in the 80s.

If you're correcting someone on nomenclature please be more accurate, and if you're trolling, please be funnier.

You clearly don't hate to be a "genre pedant" :)

"Brostep" is actually a pretty good term for it.

Dubstep proper is a near direct descendant of dub techno, pioneered in Berlin in the early 90s, following in the footsteps of Detroit techno from the 80s and the 2-step and acid house coming out of the UK and Chicago.

I live down the street from Hardwax, for fuck's sake.

As much as there is an aesthetic link between the berlin sound and early dubstep, the croydon lot weren't listening to lots of basic channel and stuff at the time.

The UK scene has its own independent subbass heritage. People in the london scene at least aren't generally that aware of what comes out of europe, especially back in the web 1.0 era we're talking about.

Check out this from 2000: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doMX6su9Ue0

And this from 95: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjQZxMoF8Kc

Both pure london sounds.

Burial in particular was already doing that sound without having ever having heard of basic channel, until kode9 showed it to him.

http://blackdownsoundboy.blogspot.co.uk/2006/03/soundboy-bur...

Also living next to hardwax doesn't qualify you to know about tunes. My mum used to live near blackmarket and she hasn't got any dubs at all.

EDIT: Also technically the R&S lot took that sound from english people like Mad Professor in the 80s :P

There are too many electronic music genres. A slight change to the timing of the drums or the way vocal samples are used should not propel a track into a completely different genre. Does all this come about because people are ultra specific about what they will dance to?

It comes about because the genre names describe the scene more than the music. There may be only relatively small (to an outsider) aesthetic differences between, say, progressive house and UKG, if you go to raves where each is played you will find the people playing and dancing to it are completely different, with almost no crossover. The racial makeup will be different, the age, social class, the drugs being used, the clothes worn.

That's why people differentiate dance music so carefully. When people talk about dubstep they aren't talking about a halfstep drumloop and a falling 808, they're talking about Third Base, Plastic People, Big Apple, Music House and Red Stripe. When people talk about berlin techno they're not just talking about 909s on the up and white noise filter bleeps, they're talking about Hardwax, Berghain and D&M.

Good answer. Its a shame that a more cosmopolitan attitude does not prevail.

True, although a certain amount of isolationism is needed to fully develop creative ideas. Really good new art is typically utterly alienating to everyone except you and your associates, and it needs to stay that way long enough so that you can explore its potential before outsiders are let in and the inevitable compromise and dilution begins.

The internet has kindof put a top to this and it's a shame. The creative engine of the london underground which produced dubstep and everything before it is chasing its own tail right now, devoid of new ideas, and it's partly for this reason IMO.

Western Music Formation and Influences by Genre and Region: http://www.thomson.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/infographic...

Interesting, though it completely ignores Scottish/Irish folk music, Appalachian/bluegrass, country, and western.

Western Dance Music* ... sorry.

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