When your glow sticks have faded and the sun has come up
I’ll be cooking breakfast and dub step will still suck.
Low frequency oscillations, something like 140 bpm and a halftime snare beat. Most music sounds natural, almost instinctual because it is based on rhythm we hear from birth- the heartbeat. Toe tappin’ a solid four beat has been the basis of our deepest blues and rockin'est heights for that reason. Dub step on the other hand appears not to be based on this friendly familiar rhythm of the heart, as far as I can tell the basis for dub step is the fart. Long mouth farts is what it sounds like. As original as that sounds, trust me it is crass and exploitive.
“When the bass goes… When the bass goes… When the bass goes!” Steve Aoki shouted while standing atop his Dj table hyping up the audience for an intense drop. But the bass didn’t go anything like I thought it would. The bass went WAHWAHWAHWAHWAHWAH in pounding oscillations. Remember how the bass goes at the beginning of One Nation Under a Groove? Remember Do I Do? Did you ever listen to The Meters? Sly and the family stone?? Jaco Pastorius??? This is what I think of when I get excited about bass. I used to play bass and I’d like to say I’m a bass head, a lover of the low end, an appreciator of a broad spectrum of musical talent and even musical novelty but on top of that, I’m someone who knows where to draw the line.
That’s how I feel when I hear the wah wahs. My friend was in rehab for a long time and he told me that people would inhale whatever products they could, shoe polish, paint, glue and it would give them the sensation of the “Wah Wahs” where they would hear “wahwahwahwahwah” ringing in their head for a minute or two. Being at a dub step show I think destroys your brain in a similar way. Kids, I know I won’t change your mind about “dirty grimy bass” (I always thought that’s how Flea’s bass sounded but call it what you want) but wear some freaking ear protection, you’re going to want to be able to hear later in life. Even if all people are saying is how dumb your gauged ears look.
Anyway I’m writing this because I just went to identity fest which is a daylong electro tour that just came through my city. I picked up some tickets when they dropped from 60 to 20 bucks to join my buddy who was going to be there on his birthday. I was surprised by the lineup to say the least. At around 5 pm who comes on but the Chrystal Method, probably one of the older and more respected electro acts of our day, in my book they’re up there with daft punk! Followed by the disco biscuits, now I’m not a huge fan of the jamtronica scene but these guys blew me away a few years ago at Bonnaroo and they’re definitely seasoned pros by now. Strange to see them playing to a meager 500 fans. Then who comes on the big stage but the British dub step phenom Rusko!! Let me tell you, this guy can get all his limbs going at once, I mean real jumping flails, I think at one point he was even dancing. I think everyone there was pretending to dance, because that music is hard to dance too. But that goes back to my conspiracy theory that any show with that many young people present is actually a meeting ground for black market dry sex trade where low quality drugs are exchanged for clothed sexual simulations.
I think dub step knows that about our generation, I think they know a lot. I think they’ve exploited a scene once ruled by good hardworking DJs and made a real shit show out of it for the youngsters. They draw on this collective conscious of electronic noise and feedback sounds from old video games and cell phones. Offensive sounds and beats that scare away parents or anyone old enough to pursue feelings from music besides the grime and destruction that comes from dub.
Anyway, I went to the other stage to check out Steve Aoki. And for the most part he was good. There is not a lot of performing in most electronic acts but he did his part to walk around and put his hands up and pop champagne. His stage set up and lights were cool, he remixed the hits and while laying down heavy beats stayed away from straight on whoomp whoomp until the end. Some good songs, some all right ones. I felt rightly assaulted listening to his new collaboration with afrojack entitled “No Beef” while not duby (listen to Augustus Pablo for as long as I have and it is hard to call Rusko or Bassnectar "duby" without cringing) it was totally unpleasant, it sounded like industrial saws in some god awful industrial factory farm. Between that and the visuals of cows being cut apart I hypothesized that perhaps this is a simulation of the awful things we do to the lower creatures on earth. Perhaps this music is not meant to be enjoyed and is instead a not so silent admission of our guilt for living in a society that is so brutal and at the same time so conscious of its brutality. That was the meaning I took from this.
On the other hand Kaskade rocked it. The visuals were intense and the music was danceable. It was new, edgy and for the most part dope. But is it really the kind of act that the Chrystal Method should take a back seat too? I didn’t ponder this for long because DJ Shadow was about to start playing at the other stage so I made my way again through the glittered googly eyed nymphs and the glow stick ogling masses to the stage.
Dj Shadow is the man. "This is my job, I’ve been doing it for 27 years, I hope y'all enjoy" The Atlanta crowd was beat and coming down off a day of sunlight and cigarettes, music and drugs but they enjoyed all right. I spoke to a wild looking Asian who told me he was there for DJ shadow only and not interested in rusko. He said he came to see a Dj's Dj. Good to hear. Between that and Kaskade those were the nuggets of joy I took from the day long festival. I thought for a moment I thought I had one of those “Oh Shit” moments during Kaskade when you are just overwhelmed by the immensity of an event, a real moment of elation when you realize that this is it and it doesn’t get any better. It turns out though that I just remembered I had a bunch of meat in the fridge that would go bad if I didn’t cook it soon. Oh, shit.
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