I like all kinds of electronic music, but I have simply never been able to enjoy techno, particularly minimal techno. I know it's probably a little uncouth or whatever, but I like raunchy, head-nodding, ruthless music, and techno always seems too dainty for me. It's the sonic equivalent to someone with spiked, frosted tips, too much cologne and $150 jeans: highly stylized, very sophisticated, but kind of cheesy. It's the Scarlett Johansson of electronic music, and I'm a Christina Ricci man; my taste in electronica bears that out.
I realize that there is a huge international market for this sort of music, and even a decently sized one in the US, but at this month's installment of Dub War NYC — the legendary Manhattan dubstep monthly and arguably the most important recurring dubstep event in North America — it certainly looked like a lot of people share my preference for Riccis over ScarJos.
Dutch DJ/producer 2562 very well may be the most talked about musician in contemporary dubstep circles and with good reason. His blend of atmospheric, moody, minimal techno with different elements of dubstep is a bona fide reinterpretation of both styles of music and, to me, one of the most interesting things happening in the genre.
Depending on how you look at it, his music is either really dirty minimal techno or really clean dubstep. Some tracks add the easily recognizable dubstep wobble to an otherwise smooth, shiny, ScarJo minimal ambiance, while others subdue dubstep's booming low-ends and dampen the third-beat snare hit, cramming the often grimy sounds of dubstep into a pair of tapered Sevens and waxing their eyebrows.
All of this is great in my Sennheiser headphones at home, but from my perspective, it looked like New York wasn't really feeling it live. 2562's primetime set at Dub War sounded wonderful on Club Love's immaculate sound system — his track selection was strong and his mixing clean and patient — but it just didn't feel right. I kept waiting for something to happen, but it never did. One smooth, subdued track blended into another, and after a while I just got bored. From the looks of it, so did a lot of the crowd.
Sure, people were enjoying themselves, nodding their heads approvingly and occasionally pumping their fists, but for all the well-deserved hype surrounding this great artist's NYC debut on the country's biggest dubstep stage, I think people were expecting more energy.
Contrast 2562's set with Starkey's, one of the most prominent stateside dubstep DJ/producers, also making his Dub War debut. Aesthetically, the words "night and day" come to mind. While 2562's style relies on sophisticated, subtle moods, Starkey — and I mean this as an exalted compliment — is more inclined to detonate subwoofers and make people get naked.
Exploding out of speakers with the subtlety and delicacy of a head-on collision, Starkey's music is fierce, dynamic and very much my kind of electronica. It's a kind that I can't imagine the Dub War faithful appreciating more than they did. After two rewinds of the standout track "Gutter Music," which highlights his vulgarly discordant "street bass" sound, I saw people, myself included, moving in ways I did not know were possible, maniacally screaming and gesturing so approvingly that I felt kind of bad for 2562, who played some objectively awesome music.
The distinction in crowd response raises an interesting question: Are Americans programmed to reject the sounds of minimal dubstep? Was the response at Dub War an isolated event, or is there something about our electronic music culture that prefers big, loud raucous music? As techno-leaning producers like 2562, Martyn and Peverlist continue ascending in the dubstep hierarchy, this may be an issue that the stateside dubstep community grapples with in the future.
--
Mikey Goralnik is a senior majoring in American studies. He can be reached at Michael.Goralnik@tufts.edu.
