Debaser1 wrote:Cheers for doing this.
Ok, so how did you know when was the right time for you to push your stuff and try and get releases And how did you go about it?
This seemed to happen quite naturally. I had been putting tracks out to people like Distance, N-Type & others since 2004 and had tracks featured on dubplate.net (which at the time was the only place to find out about new dubstep). I had some airplay from N-Type at DMZ (when it was at 3rd base), the whole scene was very open in those days as there weren't many people making bass music at 140bpm so it was easy to get your stuff heard - unlike these days!
Despite this early airplay it wasn't until 2006 that things started to take off.... I had spent a year in Preston lecturing & running some studios and that gave me great insight to how to structure music. I had MCs coming down and spitting on my beats and then they would send the vocalled tracks out to their mates....whenever i got on a bus there would be some kids listening to my tracks on their mobile phones! I think some of those tracks stood up to what else was around at the time but i didn't really send that much out to labels, mostly out of laziness. Then during that year (2005) i started writing Malicious, Sound, India and Killer which were all my first releases on Rottun....I got the basic bass, drums, vocal samples and atmosphere down and then used these tracks to develop my sound. I worked hard on structures and then EQing and then the mixdown (to obsessional levels) and then I thought that something was missing and i realised that there were no melodies really so i worked on that aspect for a while and wrote melodies on all the tracks. Then I learnt how to use Cubase so i got those few tracks and exported the parts to cubase to use those FX.... this is over the course of a year and a half.
So for 18 months or so i worked on just a few tracks really developing them and applying everything i learnt to them and then starting new tracks and ideas using what i had learnt. Finally they were finished and i sent them out to a few places and everything went crazy.... Literally every track i had worked on got signed up in the space of a month or 2. There wasn't a particular method for this it was just a case of sending the 320s to a few people and everything was signed up and Mary Anne Hobbs was playing my tunes. This was around 2006 and then it took a year or so for the releases to start coming and then they suddenly seemed to come out every week in 2008!
So to answer the question of how did i know when it was time.... well i had worked on the tracks to the point where i could play them in the mix with anything else and they would stand up....i knew there were enough layers, edits, production values and ideas to say they were complete and ready....
and how to go about it... well this is different now as dubstep has reached saturation point in the same way dnb did in 2002 when i was trying to break in with my early tunes. I think really there are 2 approaches,
1. you can get into stuff deeply. Listen to a few key people's radio shows and constantly be in chat and network + enjoy their shows and get your name seen and known and then after a while send some tracks to the DJ and he is likely to listen to it...always keep your contacts list fresh and updated!
2. Find a less saturated genre and be with it from the start as it grows around you and you grow with it. There will be less people to send your stuff too but if you are lucky the scene will take off... We are at a point now where everyone is looking for the new sound and really i think we are at the stage where dubstep is like where Hardcore/Rave music was in 1992... it is going to have so many offshoots (breakstep, future garage, wonky, UK Funky, drumstep, filth whatever) it will be similar to Rave music going housey, breakbeaty, garagey, jungley. I think dubstep has got enough different elements that it can morph to lots of different things.... it is just a case of making what you are feeling and seeing who will play it now.
