Quick Note: Still accepting song submissions for the next edition of the John’s Music Blog Reader Mailbag. Email jchiaverina at gmail. Thank you.
There are plenty of constructive things I could be doing with my time as a music listener. I could be trying to make sense of the neverending avalanche of content that is contemporary regional rap—for whatever it’s worth, “Super Jump” by LAZER DIM 700 is one of the wilder songs I have heard in a minute—or I could be backtracking and going through the discographies of jazz labels like Strata East and ECM. I could be listening to modern classical or brand new Baile funk or any number of other hipster musical signposts. But I’m not doing any of that shit! Or at least, I’m not doing enough of that shit. Instead, I’m listening to a Spotify playlist called “Dubstep Don.”
I can remember the first time I heard the term dubstep. It was printed on the July 2002 cover of XLR8R magazine in reference to the duo Horsepower Productions, who at the time were making music that was expanding the contours of what UK garage could be. I didn’t hear the word again for a bit, then I started hearing it everywhere. 20 years later, it remains imprinted on the corner of my mind, conjuring up images of everything from sweaty London basements to crunchy Colorado ski resorts. Dubstep really does mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.
“Dubstep Don” errs on the side of the kind of dubstep that an American non-dubstep listener might scan as dubstep, which is to say a good portion of the songs below have massive, abrasive drops. The sound design on these drops can be as warped as some of the best experimental electronic music. All the music surrounding it, though—the buildups, the choruses—is almost beyond decipherability. The tropes of EDM are none of my business, but I’m about to make them my business. Because it’s time for yet another confusing edition of Streaming Madness with John’s Music Blog.
Right from the jump, we get hit with a lead vocal straight out of the trailer for a YA movie. The intro to “CLOSER” sounds like a drone pan over a Nordic coastline. The drop takes up around 30 seconds of the track’s total runtime, and the rest is essentially a pop song. Dubstep has been in and out of the zeitgeist for over a decade, but a parallel universe exists where DJs in the genre still play to thousands of people at Red Rocks. A lot of these dubstep mofos are selling more tickets than critically acclaimed indie rock bands.
Eptic’s Spotify bio tells us that he is a native of Belgium and a “bass music icon” who is known as much for his music as his “off-stage comedy skits.” Instead of listening to “CYBERHELL,” I figured I’d give one of his skits a try. If there is a single thing in this twisted world that never fails to intrigue me, it is when a DJ attempts to be funny. I had to turn off that skit pretty fast and turn on “CYBERHELL,” which is not bad. It has a Front 242 vibe and a drop that sounds like a robot marching through quicksand.
The ESCARGOT project is the new house music alias of the Canadian bass music producer SNAILS. I’m learning a lot today. His self-titled track has ravey stabs and jacking drums and gurgling bass. Look, I’m aware there’s plenty of “actually good” bass music I could be writing about, and I’m aware that I’m more equipped than many in the general population to write about it. But it’s unlikely that any “credible” producer has a name as good as ESCARGOT or SNAILS.
Drinkurwater, Kliptic “Goes Like”
How many ways can one describe a drop? A writer could dedicate their entire life to figuring out how to most effectively communicate the feeling a listener gets when a disgusting bit of distorted bass hits after a long buildup. The single dubstep song that burrowed its way into my brain recently is “COUNTRY RIDDIM” by HOL!, which sounds like its name and achieved meme status via consistent play during those collaborative Skirllex, Four Tet, and Fred Again DJ sets that happened last year. A few months ago, I saw Billdffern post a few tearout dubstep tracks in a similar vein, which makes sense—they have drops that can be as sonically disorienting as contemporary Baile funk or Dembow.
JEANIE, DOIL, TINYKVT “Kiss of Death”
Many big festival-style dance tracks feature swirling, uncanny pop vocals. I don’t know what these vocals are trying to convey, but I assume the Hunger Games franchise factors into their aesthetic in one way or another. The drop here is punishing. It caused me to spontaneously start banging my head. There is a specific type of American neo-hippie drug connoisseur dubstep fan that gets referred to as a “rail rider.” They brace themselves on the gate next to the stage, and they headbang. When I see a rail rider in action, all tie-dye and dreadlocks, I obtain a glimpse into a purer freedom than most of us have access to. For a more thorough taxonomy of the contemporary American dubstep enthusiast, I recommend this TikTok.
It’s a Sunday afternoon in early March. Instead of enjoying one of the few nice days New York City has seen in months, I’m sitting inside and listening to a collaboration between a New Zealand bass music duo and a British vocalist. It’s hard to understand why I make the choices I make. YouTube user LETTmusic provides a bit of context for the song: “Wild tune. Remember when people got upset on this channel when LAXX - Step One dropped because it brought a little trap flavor? We're just here for some good bass music.”
The vocals on “SEE YOU DROP” sound like AI-generated T-Pain, or maybe Kevin Rudolph, the forgotten vocalist whose Lil Wayne collaboration “Let It Rock” was easily the weirdest track ever released on Cash Money Records. Pretty good drop, though! (For a partial explanation of how dubstep morphed from classy to trashy, I recommend this blog post by Ben Cardew, which explains why Caspa and Rusko’s Fabriclive mix was one of the “best records ever to wreck a genre.”)
I sorted my version of the “Dubstep Don” playlist based on the date that each track was added to Spotify. Using that system, the deeper I went, the harder the music started hitting. Moving down a few spots, there is “Kitchen Tearout,” which exists more in the “COUNTRY RIDDIM” world of bass than anything that might be played on the main stage at one of those Dutch EDM festivals where the set design looks like something out of a steampunk Harry Potter movie. There’s no pop vocals, just grinding, unrelenting dubstep, whose exact sub-subgenre I’m going to need someone to explain to me.
Even lower down the “Dubstep Don” playlist is “Rollin’ Deep,” the first track here that veers into anything resembling “real dubstep” territory. The drop is a bit more restrained and subwoofer-focused than most of the other cuts on the playlist. I wonder how much Skrillex’s interest in actual British bass culture has influenced American producers, but I can only wonder. I’m not going on any message boards.
Bobby Blakdout, Hekler, Gladez, Cam’Ron “DISRESPECT”
More questions: How much do you think Cam’Ron got paid for the tiny number of bars he recites here? “DISRESPECT” starts with a Dipset-ish soul sample and boilerplate Cam rhymes before cannonballing into a triplet lazerbeam drop. The second verse is the same as the first, vocally speaking, with an added stock drill glide. And now I’m getting tired and I feel like putting on Downward Is Heavenward by Hum, for whatever reason.