Just, why?
That's the question that's been on my mind for the past few days. I've been listening to a lot of dubstep at home and I'm struggling to figure out why I'm enjoying it so much. Because, for all intents and purposes, I should fucking hate it. Compositionally, dubstep is banal and incredibly amateur, with musical ideas that go absolutely nowhere. Texturally, its all the same. Bass, bass, sub bass, some sort of chimey synth, half time drumkit. Formwise, it follows the ebb and flow that's been beaten into the ground by every electronica artist since the 90s.
And yet, when that bass drops in with a bang and everything gets thrown to 11, I can't help but get up and get low. Is it a subconscious trigger in us all that's thrown by a pulsating LFO? The consumption of mass amounts of mind-altering substances before throwing on some Bassnectar? Or is it more primal, the desire in everyone to just get up and RAGE? I hadn't even heard of modern dubstep before the start of last semester, and it suddenly exploded everywhere. I'd listened to Burial before, sure, who are fantastic, but there's no way they'd fit in with the rest of today's dubstep artists.
Hell, look at the first 2 pages of comments, where everyone's up in arms over what Burial are. They've been rendered obsolete by many in today's technologically-driven electronic music climate. Which is a damn shame, because Burial are gripping and have a wonderful color palate they utilize to its maximum potential. "Untrue" made the list of the top 100 most important albums of the decade on a website I trust for unbiased music reviews.
And then, on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, we have Skrillex, who are commercial, loud, grating, irritating, yet oddly endearing. And people eat this shit up.
I suppose, in short, I really DON'T know why I like dubstep. But I do. Dubstep is fulfilling the roles that trance had in the early 2000s, 80s music had in its time period, disco in the 70s, and so on and so forth: its solely party music. You go out and dance to it. And occasionally dress up as Santa, cover yourself in coal and get low.
Just make sure you've had a few Jack and Cokes before you get out there. Trust me. It makes dubstep so much better.
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