Dubstep, a genre that started as the lovechild of only a few South London DJs, has ballooned into one of the most popular, widespread and well-received cultural movements in years. Dubstep finds its core sound and namesake among the twitchy drum beats and dark reverb of Jamaican dub music. From there, the sound was picked up by London grime artists and matched with what’s referred to as a two-step feel. In terms of musical specifics, two-step involves a backbeat that moves at half the speed of the tempo, while the remaining rhythms march on at the full tempo. To put it in simpler terms: It’s a fast beat that you feel as a slow groove.
The most distinctive and ever-present characteristic of dubstep is its heavy reliance on bass. Lots and lots and lots of bass. The difference between dubstep bass and your common booming bass is that dubstep’s bass is low. It is taken under 100 hertz to achieve a peculiar effect that makes the bass sound as if it’s wobbling violently back and forth.
The history of dubstep seems to move exponentially rather than linearly. It started off slow and blew up faster than anyone ever anticipated. From around 1999 to 2005, dubstep started to achieve some word of mouth after exposure from a few London radio shows, gaining a sort of positive notoriety that slowly began to disseminate throughout the electronic scene. In 2006, dubstep started its sudden climb into the mainstream through a BBC1 radio show, Dubstep Warz, hosted by legendary DJ Mary Anne Hobbs. From there the growth of dubstep followed a chaotically expansive path, spilling over into the U.S. and the rest of Europe and finding its way into popular festivals carried among the sets of Bassnectar and The Glitch Mob. Atlanta dubstep has similarly grown at an exponential rate with beginnings in small venues, expanding to more popular shows at the Masquerade and weekend showcases such as Basswars, curated by Atlanta veteran Quad Control.
So in less than a decade, dubstep has expanded from a couple forgotten B-sides on obscure drum and bass records to being prominently featured by even the likes of Britney Spears. Why? It’s a genre with a formula designed to outcast all mainstream sensibilities with dissonant melodies, jarring noise, intricate rhythms and sounds that can border on apocalyptic. Yet somehow, it has found appeal with everyone ranging from hippie fest-heads to intense metal enthusiasts.
I sought to find an answer to this question from one of Atlanta’s burgeoning dubstep DJs, Ployd. With the relaxed aura of a classic Grateful Dead fan, Ployd is a testament to the wide crossover appeal of dubstep. His career began in the very beginnings of dubstep among the vast underground contingent of drum and bass in the early 2000s. After becoming disillusioned with the stimulant-fueled electronic scene, Ployd bought some turntables and started making his own music for fun. He eventually began cohosting an Internet radio show about Atlanta dubstep, and his occasional DJ gigs soon turned into a career.
He thinks the key to Atlanta’s warm reception of dubstep lies in its tempo. Atlanta has shown a consistent, and sort of unfortunate, love for crunk music and its chilled-out, dirty groove. Ployd suggested that the half-time feel of dubstep allows for a synthesis of drum and bass culture with that classic crunk pulse. His theory is certainly proven by dubstep’s near-universal audience. People with seemingly disparate tastes in music can discover a strange common ground somewhere in the powerful oscillations of dubstep’s rumbling bass.
In that common ground is born an intense, tightly wound community with a weird sort of brotherhood that simply cannot be found in any other music scene in Atlanta. As Ployd recalled, dubstep started out as a collective of people finding identity in their love of this new, bizarre music (aptly-described by him as “the sound of machines f—ing”). The most notable thing about dubstep is that this identity somehow managed to retain its authenticity even as the genre was launched into the mainstream. There is no pretension in dubstep, only a sincerity that remains with an unparalleled consistency.
Propelled by its community, dubstep seems to have no intentions of fading off in to the background. Probably the best answer to my question of why exactly dubstep is so popular came from a tellingly nonchalant answer from Ployd. When I asked him about the craziest thing he’s ever seen as a DJ, he simply said, “I never really see anything crazy, just a lot of people enjoying themselves.”
