Prehistory of dubstep

[shonky]

Didn't El-b make techno before Groove Chronicles too?

[blackdown]

he was making jungle, hanging out with the Metalheadz guys but not really getting a look in. or that's how he explained it to me in interviews, anyway...

[weston]

i like these threads. they are much better than 20 people replying, sick, to so & so tune is bad.

that said, there does seem to be a common opion that if man makes tune that in hine sight has dubstep sensibilitys 10 yrs ago. that it/they are some how influential.

to me for someone to be truly influential to a scene (i know, but thats what we are in) they need to have pushed a direction that people followed, not just done a thing once, that randomly becomes relivant to us many years later.

thank god for the amen break, but we dont thank the bloke that drummed it for creating hiphop & jungle.



was it noodles that worked in the basement of mash on oxford st?

im sure i bought a jungle tape, that he did, off him in there in about 94 called dark & light jungle.

[joe muggs]

that said, there does seem to be a common opion that if man makes tune that in hine sight has dubstep sensibilitys 10 yrs ago. that it/they are some how influential.

That was not what I was aiming at with the original question. It's not about direct influence but about the multiple, tangled lines of history, about putting dubstep into the history of UK bass and electronic music. It's not to say that the biggest line of influence was London urban music, but to remind of others. After all, without Kevin 'Reece' Saunderson in Detroit, Hardcore would never have sounded as it did - and I don't think anyone would deny that the original UK Garage producers took a direct influence from the hardcore days (after all, plenty of them were making hardcore tunes BITD).... so although the first dubstep producers might not have been listening to Reece tunes, the echoes of those tunes are really strongly there in the sound.....

You're quite right, you can't say the guy who played drums on Amen Brother invented jungle, but you can say jungle wouldn't have sounded the same without him![/b]

[shonky]

he was making jungle, hanging out with the Metalheadz guys but not really getting a look in. or that's how he explained it to me in interviews, anyway...

This was what I was thinking of - found the blurb on his myspace saying "... EL-B started producing low-key Techno tracks in the early 90's but made his name as the creative force behind the legendary UK Garage production unit 'Groove Chronicles'.... "

[scoz]

interesting ,did bicknell have anything to do with the club i thought he did

the club yep and the label though that's called Cosmic.

[jred]

interesting ,did bicknell have anything to do with the club i thought he did

the club yep and the label though that's called Cosmic.

love those tunes wish some prick didint nick my crates few years back

[b0ttr0p]

Didn't Wookie work out of Jazzie B's office which was why he could rework Fairplay and all those other tunes?

Ewah, correct me if i'm wrong but wasn't his office "The Africa Centre"?

i think it might have been in '88, but by 2000 or so, Wookie was in S2S's HQ in camden. that's where i saw him anyway...

Yeah, Wookie worked in Soul II Soul studio in Camden. I worked there for a month myself - it must have been ....'97ish.

[b0ttr0p]

was it noodles that worked in the basement of mash on oxford st?

im sure i bought a jungle tape, that he did, off him in there in about 94 called dark & light jungle.

wasnt that Horace?

I used to buy tunes there in 1991. Bought we are ie there actually.

[b0ttr0p]

Most of the time dubstep history is discussed in terms of dark garage, D&B, dub and maybe Todd Edwards, but this made me think of other, more diverse music that is in the makeup of this sound. ...

DnB goes straight back to hardcore which goes straight back to Belgian Techno and New Beat.


Dunno who Todd Edwards is but this is by Travis Edwards:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DJTaT-wdeE

Fucking banger from early 1991.

It's better than any dubstep tune is and ever will be.

[slothrop]

that said, there does seem to be a common opion that if man makes tune that in hine sight has dubstep sensibilitys 10 yrs ago. that it/they are some how influential.

That was not what I was aiming at with the original question. It's not about direct influence but about the multiple, tangled lines of history, about putting dubstep into the history of UK bass and electronic music. It's not to say that the biggest line of influence was London urban music, but to remind of others.

I guess you're talking more about structural similarities and sounds evolving under common conditions than 'Horsepower was trying to sound like Portishead', yes?

For me another connection in the same vein is bleep / northern house / Unique 3 / Ital Rockers type stuff.

I guess another thing worth thinking about is that people like Massive (or whoever) may not have been a direct influence on the original genesis of the sound but might have been influential on people who came later, especially if they have a similar vibe and would appeal to the same sort of people as the earlier dubstep tunes...

[epithet]

How about 'carl mcintosh' from 'loose ends' the precursor of 'soul II soul' later went on to produce 'caron wheeler' and then there is 'wally badarou', producer for 'grace jones', keyboardist for 'level 42' and sometime 'sly/robbie' collaborator, truly an inspiration and sample bank for 'massive attack'.