Thoughts on the "Frat Boy Market"?? Sure, Pitchfork is full of pretentious hipsters, but they've got a lot of interesting articles.

http://pitchfork.com/news/44141-echo-chamber-james-blake/

dj dials put this quote up yesterday:

and i can't agree more. i say a lot of the same things are happening to glitch hop now too? i mean, there are still ppl keeping it sexy and proper: russ liquid, jobot, opiuo, timonkey, and illesha to name a few... but they are the minority. i will go on record and say the same damn thing about myself... I SHOULD STEP UP THE MUSICALITY and stop spending hours dialing in the filthiest bass sound i can find. just take a look at how much "glitch hop" is out there that is really just "brostep-aggrobass" in disguise. anyhow, just thought i would point out how i feel that we all can bring more to the table than filthy bass. and it is way overdue that we do so. melodies can pack a dancefloor too. FACT.

i feel like aggro bass can be utilized well with lots of musicality. personally, for example, my music. I wouldnt call it bro at all, but it has harsh aggressive basslines and whatnot. but its also pretty damn musical. i donno. there is a way to use most musical techniques in useful ways.

Best advice ever ! !

LOL. I loooooooooooove all kinda of electronic music. Very, very SOOO DOWN with the nastiest, filthiest basslines that can give me multiple neverending mindgasms of basstronic bliss. I think the loathing for "brostep" is fucking hilarious. "who can make the dirtiest, filthiest bass sound, almost like a pissing competition" is a bad thing? Really? Am I the only one that loved having pissing contests when I was a kid? My girlfriends and I were super into seeing who could squat and shoot our piss the farthest. We had some pretty serious competitions.

I actually had a great pissing contest dream (in relation to electronic music!) not long ago. I was at a regional burn and saw this dude I grew up with and hadn't talked to in like over 10 years. (Back in our teens years I came back from clubbing in nyc and tied a boom box to my bike and rode all over blasting electronic "techno" (lol) music. My peers, including this guy, gave me sooooo, so, SO much shit telling me it wasn't "real" music because it was made with machines instead of gitaurs). ANYWAYS, I dreamed I saw this dude at this burn and we both had to pee and we walked into the woods and I showed him a bunch of super cool trees and then we went pee and I shot my pee at this fence like 10 feet away with perrrfect fucking aim and he tried to do it too but was just spraying everywhere...

So THEN, like a week later after that dream in real life that dude finds me on facebook and says "Guess who likes techno music now? Me."

Then I realized what the dream meant. I totally won the pissing contest about electronic music!



Anyways, I think it's so funny that so many people are getting their panties in such major wads over bass music instead of just enjoying the ever changing evolution of EDM. "This too shall pass"... Hang in there, haters! lol!

There actually are certain genres I really can't stand but I try to keep it secret instead of pissing on others parades....I save my piss for fun contests, hahahaaa!

very epic reply yo! haha. congrats on winning the pee contest. i have lousy aim so i don't think i would fair too well. my wife is always complaining about a wet toilet seat. so crazy bc she has trained me to sit down to pee even. man i really suck at peeing.

but jokes aside, i agree that hating on one genre gets you no place. i love me some filthy bass in tracks. i even love sets with a lot of heavy bass throughout. but if it doesnt have the swag, vibe, and soul, but rather is just 60-90 minutes of the most technically produced mind twisting basslines "peeing in my face" - then i get a bit tired of the charade. especially when it happens dj after dj, night after night, venue after venue... just saying.

but to each is their own! and music is music. some hate this and others hate that. big up to the arts that are filled with subjectivity! <3

****long live this techno music****

Pfft James Blake... the guy is the George Micheal of sleepstep.

Here's a better article:
“I think the sleepstep that has come over from the UK, and certain producers-- who I can't even be bothered naming because I'm over generalizing-- have definitely hit upon a sort of snoozing market where there's this urge to sleep being reflected in the sounds and the way the music makes you feel makes you drowsy. And to me, that is a million miles away from where the sound started. It's a million miles away from the slumber of it. It's been influenced so much by pillows and cushions, into who can make the softest, poofiest bass sound, almost like a resting competition, and that's not really necessary. And I just think that largely that is not going to appeal to the conscious. I find that whole side of things to be pretty relaxing, because that is a direct representation of the sound as far as I'm concerned.”

bahahahahah that post = win of the year

I'll throw in that the debate is not necessarily heavy bass vs melodies--it's a bit broader than that (I think). The brostep mindset is to put more and more and more into the track, to make it as big and ridiculous as possible. It's a pretty unclassy maximalist kind of thing. There is nothing wrong with heavy bass in itself, just like there's loads of wankery in melodic music sometimes. But if your track is about "I'm gonna keep chucking shit in here until people's faces melt" then I have a problem with it.

For example: Vibesquad's track Cling from Dawn Patrol. It's very bass-centric, but it's smart about it. Not everything about the track is apparent the first time you hear it. There are subtle elements to it, things you won't notice until you hear it again. For me, that's one of the things that makes music rewarding/fulfilling, and when you cram the frequency range full of shit, that aspect disappears. I get the impression that a lot of brostep (and brostep disguised as glitch hop) is not designed for people who really LISTEN to the music. It's designed for people who are really drunk and want to hear something ridiculous without having to try.

This is my opinion, and it's a generalization. The whole point is that these elements can be found across a variety of sounds--melodic, or bass-driven, bro'd out or mellow, or anywhere in between--those are just soundsets a producer chooses to work with. You can make subtle, interesting dance music with big basslines. It's just a shame to see so many people embracing something that seems kind of shallow to me, in terms of musical depth. I'm not saying it's easy to write brostep, but that it takes a kind of technical inventiveness, which interests me a lot less than musical inventiveness.

i think you just figured out the biggest problem with all EDM, ever. seems that a lot of dance music producers have a mindset that they need to 'manufacture' songs for people to dance to by always sticking to a formula, rarely branching out of their specific genre. they don't got soul.

i very rarely think about people dancing to my music when i make it. (if anything, my problem is making too much car-driving music.)

this isn't all bad, i suppose; some of the tritest bass music producers that all of the "DudeBras" list as their favorites make some of the coolest music in the world.

james blake is mad

i pretty much hate dubstep. then again i almost hate everything. if it ain't underground it ain't shit.

i made a brostep track the other week as a joke, and it was some of the most fun i had making music in awhile. not fun in the "I'm the best rapper alive" sense, but in the "how many stereotypes can I pump into one bar" sense. it made me realize, i often take myself morbidly serious when i'm writing music. sometimes it's just fun to clown around.

I agree with woof though. Vibesquad's got the funk (the most missing element in most EDM)

Amen brother! Sigged.

http://m.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/sep/ ... pe=article

Another pretty neat article on a similar topic.

*yawn*

I'm really just bored with reading this neverending commentary from people who are insistent on forcing their personal opinion of whatever genre they don't particularly like upon others.

Don't like dubstep? Cool, don't listen to it. Don't like glitch hop? Cool, don't listen to it. Don't like house? Cool, don't listen to it. No one is putting a gun to your head or forcing you to listen to any of this stuff.

I was recently added to a facebook group of "old school ravers", people who had supposedly been a part of the electronic music scene in AZ between 1995 and 2005, and EVERY SINGLE DAY it was always the same group of 5-10 people who felt compelled to post about how much they hated dubstep, and Skrillex this and that, and blah blah fucking blah. What good does it do to constantly hate on and criticize music that you aren't interested in? Wouldn't it be more productive to focus on what you DO like? I just don't get people sometimes...I mean, god damn, the thing that we ALL have in common is a love for electronic music. Others have always looked at us funny because of it, or didn't understand why we enjoy this type of music, so why segregate ourselves further over some petty genre hating bs? So childish and stupid, imo.

Not saying that you guys who posted in this thread are doing any of that, just bored and adding my $0.02

@ill-legal? I totally agree with you, but to play the devil's advocate: i've found that complaining about things is one of the fastest ways to bring people together. finding people who dislike the same things seems to make people happier than liking the same things sometimes...

^
Good observation...I've noticed that myself before.

maybe he skipped lunch. seems like he was upset. all upset over brostep.

they should've offered him a twix

omgosh, that's so funny because I have trained myself to stand to pee, haha. (germaphobe -don't want to touch toilet seats in public, that's why I wear mini skirts -so I can just stand over the bowl!)
Just got back from the GA Burn in the woods. I didn't see my old childhood buddy for a forest pissing contest though, hahaha.

Even tho I abstain from complaining most the time about how and what others are playing, I feel you. I actually won't touch a track if I hear another DJ play it more than once (send me exclusives, people!) unless I've got some ridiculous video that totally goes with it or if it reeeally goes with a theme or if I've been playing for like 3 hours and I'm just like fuck it.... sometimes I can't believe that DJ's will all just play the same shit everyone is playing over and over, even the same shit the DJ right before them played...but I'm actually fine with it...it just makes me more unique when I go on....
Although a lot of feeling the swag and soul of a track has to do with the vibe of the DJ or performer playing the track. One persons vibe can make you not like the same track that another persons vibe can make you totally feel and dig it....

There's just so many factors....

I just think it's so funny all these people complaining about the "hate" and "aggro" of brostep when the only hate and aggroness I see is coming from the people complaining about it. I see all these "frat boys" having the time of their lives with huge smiles on their faces being exposed to electronic music and LOVING it and I watch them go deeper and become more evolved really awesome wizards. The people who think they are too cool to allow frat boys into the club are the ones who are lame in my opinion. I like to welcome everyone and watch them grow. I think it's great that dubstep has gotten so many people into "TECHNO" music

Though I'm not a fan of totally overhyped James Blake (I'm definitely with Reapeted Offender on him), I still believe his statement is quite valid. Valid for dubstep and partially valid for glitch-hop or the direction which this genre has been following for the past year. And I believe that members of this particular forum are most qualified to discuss the music genre they are part of, actually they should discuss it from time to time at least ) This is not about hating, bur caring! Unless you want just sit and pat on your backs constantly self-satisfied rejecting any form of criticism as done by haters.

Leaving aside all this stupid "bro-step", "frat-boy" "aggro-bass" memes, I personally believe that glitch hop (which is now very strongly merging with dubstep in US) is evolving into the wrong direction. D&B has been killed by liquid bass and totally repetitious beat, dubstep has been killed by copy-cats taking part in the contest "whose wobble is the sickest, filthiest and dirtiest" and glitch-hop will die soon as a creative music genre if every f...g producer will focus on producing most spectacular and dirty bassline, forgetting about diversity, funk, good melodies and vocals. I have nothing against chest-thumping bass at parties in the clubs, but if we are talking about glitch-hop as music you listen to at work, in your car, at home - well this does not look too good.
Just tell me why for the last two years glitch-hop had moved from distorted but funky, twisted beats with great acappelas towards dull, dubstep-like bass monsters? Pantyraid's "Superior EP" is a good example here. I love "The Sauce" - it's among my top-10 albums EVER, it's pure glitch-hop heaven, thus I was totally disappointed when Marty and Ooah decided later to release a really weak, dubstep EP, producing tracks I've heard thousand of times before. I know that dubstep is a "thing" in US right now, but I hate when such a creative people waste your talents following dead-end trend.
I receive tons of tracks from up-coming producers both in dubstep and glitch-hop / heavy bass category. A year ago I rejected 50% of them after listening to a few bass notes, now this rate grew to 80% Not good! Believe me, the filfthiest and dirtiest bass is not a 'differentiating' factor anymore. Prouducing filthy bass is soooooooooo easy, producing a track which stands out from the sea of booring and sickly unoriginal heavy bass drops is way more difficult. Don't get me wrong - I've loved heavy bass for years, but because of that I've listened to so many variations of bass music that mere filthy drop does not work anymore. (And remember - I'm from Europe, thus I probably look at this from a slightly different angle )

Just my 2 cents.

DK

Doktor Krank nailed it.

i, johnny-come-lately i am, remember when it took more than beat repeat and decimation used sparsely to qualify as glitchy. it seems like glitch hop as a genre is hemorrhaging glitchiness. it's gotten to a point for me where the better your production values, the less i want to hear your music. sounding expensive ain't enough. IMHO, it's a liability...

and there used to be a lot more tracks around that were good for listening to in places other than Da Clubz.

now it's all "OMFG lulz Pump up da Jamz."

if that makes any sense. :p

haha yeah pump up da jamz!

and once upon a time a bunch of geezers moaned and groaned and complained about a young chap named Amadeus Mozart for pumpin up da jamz, raging too hard and ruining music.

lol

Yeah, yeah I hear you but this comparison is wrong unfortunately. This is just your wish which will never come true, to put it brutally. A young chap named Amadeus Mozart has actually pushed the envelope and moved music forward breaking rusty patterns of classic compositions, while - sorry for unfair over-generalization - those cats 'pumpin up da jamz' are running in circles, repeating over-used patterns and contributin next to nothing to the development of music I love. Let's talk in 5 years and see how many of these cats and their tunes remain there as 'classic', how many will be remembered then.