[Critiq] "All My Homies Hate Skrillex 2": A look at contemporary UK dubstep

Reader be warned. This is once again a writing I have written and transferred from audiotool. You might have seen it before.

This isn't a reaction to Timbah.On.Toast's video, although I draw inspiration from it. Now, I have to disclose that I was never really part of the fandom of the original sound that emerged in the UK. I only got to know its increasingly more popular sound from the first half of the 2010s - the sound Timbah criticizes - Brostep. My new sense of self was based on EDM and specifically a certain Sonny Moore. My Name is Skrillex (Skrillex Remix), specifically, became the 1st love of my life (lol).

Let's hop forward to the last years of the previous decade. I was already browsing around on audiotool (abbrev. AT), big into lo-fi, getting a more varied view of music in general, when I stumbled across the music of TwoSworded's alt account called "in." on audiotool. Suddenly, I heard a side of dubstep I never really knew. Minimalistic, relaxed, hypnagogic, bass focused, textural and heavily inspired by dub (reggae's younger tapified & electronified cousin). What is important to note, is that there are many subgenres and styles, all somewhat different. 

I slowly developed a taste for "deep dubstep" (whether or not deep and UK are the same is debatable, but I will classify them as 2 separate styles here). It's also fairly important to note that it the UK style wasn't all alien to me at the time. Wubs were still almost as common as they are today and there's nothing more grass-roots than a wobble.

Just as I was discovering new grounds, the world was getting tired of brostep. I'm guessing Skrillex started quietly fighting his demons in the background (after Jack Ü). The sound went from everywhere to big festival venues, back into the background. I got into Duploc around that time and then, around the first 4 years of the 2020s - resurgence. But it was a little different. People were going back in time to the sounds of Benga, Skream, Kromestar & Coki (which would return in co-op with Leotrix), UKF Dubstep would start uploading mainly tunes without huge drums and complex mid-range basslines, rather, old wobblers. 2025 comes around and we see a genre shift in erthboy's and Head Trauma Romance's production on AT, which was gaining attention. All in this new style of the OG old skool UK dubstep.

But to me, something was off. The new sound started to stick to a formula. Almost always the same drums (dry as sh*t) a snare or a clap with heavily shuffled garage hats in front of it, sustain basses underneath them, formulaic sound design, similar rhythmic bass patterns. As if trying to find a compromise between brostep and actual UK dubstep. Then came the thing with the vocal stab on every 4th. Pure formula. Like eating dry wall. 100s of tracks from 100s of different artists sounding exactly the same. It was SO ANNOYING that I started actively avoiding this sound.

It seems to me that dubstep is experiencing an identity crisis. For dubstep to survive its resurgence, it had to stop being experimental. There is still a need for it to be bright & huge, but not nearly as big as Brostep. It (still) needs to stay in the clubs and has to deliver that 100% excitement, which means - fairly dry basses a kind of disillusioned mid-range focus, familiar drum patterns. The deep textural dub sound is too distant from brostep, so it can't catch on. The new style avoids deep dubstep's and old UK dubstep's sparcity and minimalism, due to obvious reasons, and its previously defining subtle melodics/dark ambiance, because it has no use in clubs. Meanwhile it avoids the brostep idiom of higly technical basses and its focus on sound-design. Two VERY important elements of emotional and artistic expression. Even brostep had an upper hand in artistry then, in my opinion. Contemporary Skrillex is, once again, slightly guilty too, but in a more nuanced way. I may get into that in another rant. I'm also questioning whether Tibah.On.Toast's video had such a huge impact on producers that it almost caused this resurgence.

To me, it just isn't exciting at all. It seems like artistic expression is put somewhere into the background. Or at least the expression it originally utilized. and I'm not saying that dubstep shouldn't evelove. The exact opposite.

What brostep did was exciting and new and in my opinion an important part of the genre's evolution. UK dubstep, especially old tearout, had some conventions that got a little repetitive. In my view, that is why it slowly fell out of favor. Perhaps justifiably so.

"Brostep" was, in my opinion, one of the styles following the classic sound and could fall under the umbrella of post-dubstep. Although, most "post-dubstep" styles emerged before brostep.

What I think is a pity is that very little of the post-dubstep movement retained its recognition. Sure, Burial's foundation for future garage is widely recognized today, but what about the melodics, experiments and pop cross-over which James Blake spearheaded. And not all post-dubstep has to be as bright and optimistic as Mount Kimbie or Four Tet - a sound people probably slowly got tired of. But then where's the appreciation of the hyper-clean, meditative "liquid" dubstep or chillstep of Dillard. Was the death of including good pop-ish singing in dubstep a necessity? Where are the blending experiments, the texture and the ambiance at? What is not explored or valued much, falls behind and gets forgotten are the sounds of older Mala or Silkie. Who listens to Von D, Egoless or Morillo? Ethnic melodies, rhythms and expressions are no longer as prominent.

What I miss most is that the focus is put solely on the bass, whereas, in the more old school deep dubstep there are so many different elements that could be explored. Melody, harmony, interplay of the 2, percussion, texture and space.

But there's one group of producers and one album I think of that did the right thing with how they understand modern dubstep and I just ask myself why I don't hear more of this kind of approach: That being Ternion Sound - "Digital Artifice". I may get into what they're doing right in the album sometime later. Another artist coming with a unique album was JLEON with their "Awakening of SIBU", an album that may not be as nicely thick and finessed (probably the mixing) as Digital Artifice, but certainly succeeds at bringing creative and unique sounds, and most importantly, melody and harmony.

What I'm trying to get at is that I think it's important not to dismiss the origins of dubstep and it's important to go into depth about its origins. Don't just seek out only the face melters, but also the introspective side of dubstep. Explore it at the points where it's melodic, where it is relaxed and downbeat, where it explores drum patterns and textures outside of convention. Because to me, the resurgence of UK dubstep seems to favor a populist, surface-level understanding of the genre. I'd even say there's a TikTok-esque immediate retention focus... 

And lots gets lost.