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Dubstep and avant metal (or whatever you want to call the actually not-so-new breeds of artsy thrashers and droning doom rockers) are definitely the hipsters current sounds of choice, at least if you go by music blogs and magazines. So by combining the two for a mix on Mary Anne Hobbs' Experimental Show, Vex'd and Distance made the wet dreams of every nerdy, trend-obsessed music blogger (like yours truly) come true. A quick look at the tracklist shows that they delivered the goods and came up with some ultra-heavy slices of pitch-black darkcore. And the best thing about it is that what seems like a great idea in theory actually does indeed sound good in reality too.
I don't really know about Jamie Vex'd, but Distance is an old headbanger anyway and really knows his metal (nice to see tracks by death metal veterans Napalm Death and Celtic Frost in there, by the way). Same goes for the show's host Marry Anne Hobbs, about whose metal past you can read more in this interview on Martin Blackdown's excellent dubstep blog.
From what I gathered on Dubstep Forum, there seems to be quite some love for the likes of Sunn O))), Boris, Earth or Neurosis among some of the dubsteppas. A guy named Blip posted his remix of the Boris/Sunn O))) track Aetna over there, which I included with this upload. I'm not entirely convinced by the results, but it's an interesting experiment and at least worth a listen.
Two interesting snapshot from 2003 of the then-nascent dubstep genre. The music was quite different from today's dubstep: there's no halfstep beats and none of the rhythmic sparseness, instead the music is still pretty strongly indebted to the dark garage it evolved out of. It's an intriguing blend actually, the bass-heavy minimalism and sinister ganja vibes combined with bustling and rattling percussion, harsh but often still quite slinky and 2step garage-y.
Future Garage by J Da Flex and Oris Jay was a covermount cd from the now defunct Sleazenation and it's a pretty great mix, especially the first half with Menta's remix of the Jammin' tune Tonka and Darqwan's (aka Oris Jay) delirious opium den fantasy Pipe Dreams. The whole mix is one single track, so here's the tracklist for you.
The second upload is a mix cd that dubstep don J Da Flex did for the first anniversary of BBC's damn fine urban music programme 1Xtra. It came free with the sadly departed Deuce Magazine which used to be my most important source of information on the whole UK garage thing and its various sub-genres, off-shots and mutations. Minimialist, dark, bass-heavy, yet still retaining something of a swinging groove (albeit in a pretty twisted way), this mix contains some fine tunes by heavyweights of the scene like Benga, Dub Child, Plasticman, Mark One and, of course, the man himself (see the tracklist here).
Future Garage
1Xtra Anniversary Mix
