Dubstep V.S Witch House

teacake
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Re: Dubstep V.S Witch House

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Witch House and REAL Dubstep have many similar traits in my eyes. These similarities are what drew me to WH in the first place when I was getting pissy about the lawnmower-revving Brostep producers highjacking the dubstep genre.

Traditional Dubstep is about creating tension and anxiety. It's driven by chest-caving subs, heavy verb, and haunting atmospheres. These days though, you've gotta dig for the gems as it were, because the aforementioned lawnmower-jockeys are topping the charts every week.

As for brosteppers saying Dubstep requires more skill... any monkey can turn and LFO knob left and right.

In terms of differences though... in some ways Dubstep and WH are opposite in the fact that traditional Dubstep sparse, to the point in which it feels almost empty and WH has a lot of sonic density and complexity. Two very different approaches that produce equally dark results.

:EDIT:

A track I think illustrates similarity in sound between Dubstep and Witch-House would be Burial's "Near Dark." Burial's a big wig, but he didn't emerge until later in the scene (right before the Brostep explosion in 07-08) He tends to favor 2-step beats to half-timed dub beats, but I site this track more for it's bass and atmospheres.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHjxJItKbLQ
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iamthesunset
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Re: Dubstep V.S Witch House

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Burial has a fair few tracks that i'd consider very similar to WH. Especially on Untrue.
teacake
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Re: Dubstep V.S Witch House

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More dark shit, that is also dubstep.

Dakimh - "Done" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZBHV0aJXpc)
Shackleton - "In The Void" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16y06vaFzKY)
Ital Tek - "Bloodline" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcZLmyUvjMU)

Used to be a time in which I had to upload tracks like this to my server... now they're all on Youtube D:

:edit: A few months ago a friend of mine wanted an introduction to dubstep, and I made him a mixtape of about 30 tracks along the lines of the ones above, if anyone is interested in getting to know real dubstep, shoot me a PM and I'd be happy to hook you up with said mixtape.
Technoctopus
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Re: Dubstep V.S Witch House

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Yeah when I think of "real" dubstep I think dark sounds with real bass a little lfo but not too much just very slow emotional almost sounds
Mostly I think of the widdler because he sticks to what I would consider real dubstep
oOoOOoOoooOoooO
teacake
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Re: Dubstep V.S Witch House

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Found this guy's stuff on the boards a few days ago. Really good example of how dubstep influences can create really unique WH.

http://soundcloud.com/beautillion
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m◊◊nlit
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Re: Dubstep V.S Witch House

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iamthesunset wrote:Burial has a fair few tracks that i'd consider very similar to WH. Especially on Untrue.
Speaking of Burial, I think that if witch house were to "go mainstream" or w/e like dubstep has, it would need a flagship artist to get behind. Burial's two albums pretty much transcended the genre and got people into dubstep, leading to the rising popularity of both the future garage type dubstep and the womp womp stuff. Salem could be w/h's Burial, providing the follow up to King Night is as strong as Untrue and as widely publicised. Then again, there's artists like Creep that already have a pop aesthetic about them and could be a crossover success. Witch pop a la Creep and Gucci Goth type disco are probably going to be on the rise for a while and breach the mainstream. Maybe in three-four years we'll be hearing pounding bro-witch coming from the gym.

Dubstep is probably almost as sonically diverse as witch house when you consider the genre term can be used for music spanning from, say, Clubroot and FaltyDL to Joker and Salva to King Midas Sound to Nero and (the dreaded) Skrillex.
teacake
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Re: Dubstep V.S Witch House

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It's pretty obvious that S4LEM, Balem Acab, and White Ring are the forerunners for mainstream recognition.

Fact is, Brostep is nothing like traditional dubstep, and the closest thing you will find to trad stuff in the mainstream was Skream's remix of "In For the Kill" (which, by the way, is sited as THE song that truely brought dubstep into the mainstream among many producers) and some stuff by Banga. But after some time Skream started making Brostep like the rest and Banga is falling in behind him.

If WH went mainstream, it would be perverted into something completely different that what we know it to be. This can be a good thing, because the underground will continue to evolve at a steady pace while every DnB & Electrohouse artist moves to emulate each other to conform to what they have established as Witch House.

I watched Dubstep go from the underground to the mainstream first-hand, and because I was younger at the time, it infuriately me. In hindsight, I still find plenty of artists I love that produce the traditional sound, and in reality it's actually easier now to get ahold of the good stuff that it was. I definitely prefer sifting through mountains of Brostep clones on Beatport to find the good stuff over ordering expensive 2-side 12" overseas.

I'm not worried about WH going mainstream, because it wont have the sound I love when it does. And the stuff I love will continue out of sight of the mainstream producers and Britney Spears.
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m◊◊nlit
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Re: Dubstep V.S Witch House

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Absolutely.

I think Salem probably beats the rest as they have that landmark LP which will probably always be considered a definitive statement of the genre. You're right about Skream, I always forget about his work when I fawn over Burial. You seem to know a lot about dubstep -- how long were those brostep influences permeating through the genre? Rusko was probably my first encounter with it. My point is, maybe threads of this future witch house are already present in what's going around now.

What do you reckon?
cutups
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Re: Dubstep V.S Witch House

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Like alot of other UK styles, dubstep splintered off from other styles that came before it, but still maintains alot of links back, even now. So it's history in some ways is pretty long. The earliest stuff to be called dubstep was really just instrumental versions of uk garage & 2-step that were coming out around the turn of the century. The sound of the early el-b, horsepower productions, and tempa records were pretty spare, but had a bit more percussion than the stuff that came later.

The dominant "brostep" sound is really just another, further mutation and offshoot. It wasn't overnight...certain elements of the sound have been in tunes since 2006 or so, but it really only started to gain momentum as the dominant sound in the past few years, since maybe 2008-9? Kind of crazy how fast people's perceptions can change, isn't it?

I don't think WH has the right elements to be compared to dubstep, culturally. It's not really well defined, and has an even more niche aesthetic. But more so, it doesn't really have that continuous history and scene built up around it. Although the internet helps mitigate that, there just aren't the volume of artists and nights like there were for dubstep, or more importantly, for the things that spawned dubstep - primarily uk garage and drum and bass.
teacake
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Re: Dubstep V.S Witch House

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Fun bit of info here, Rusko actually started as a Grime producer, and his later-older splits with Caspa have heavy reggae influences.

Brostep is identified by many as high energy LFO-centric music (Wobble). Wobble had been around for a good long time in traditional dubstep, which was a product of it's UK garage and 2step roots, but was more often applied to much lower bass synths, and was sometimes a more subtle element in the track and had less complex patterns.

A good example of this would probably be "Nomad" by Distance back in '04 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hAso7YUTvA)

Some contemporaries actually maintain a modern interpretation of this sound also. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR2jGx7KhfY)

At some point, people started throwing mountains of distortion on it and the patterns got more complex, which gave the tracks more energy. This for me at least, was the birth of Brostep; producers began forsake creating tension (which believe to be the paramount goal of the dubstep sound) in favor of energy. At this point it started sounding more like DnB with a half-time drum beat and drop outs (Later came Drumstep lol)

The first truly Brostep track I personally recall hearing was "Down" by DZ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKlm9iZI ... re=related) But I was so focused on the traditional artists I didn't become aware of what was happening until a bit late (I think "Down" came out in 08?). Ironically I thought "Down" was the shit when I first heard it.
teacake
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Re: Dubstep V.S Witch House

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cutups wrote:I don't think WH has the right elements to be compared to dubstep, culturally. It's not really well defined, and has an even more niche aesthetic. But more so, it doesn't really have that continuous history and scene built up around it. Although the internet helps mitigate that, there just aren't the volume of artists and nights like there were for dubstep, or more importantly, for the things that spawned dubstep - primarily uk garage and drum and bass.
I have to agree with this.
teacake
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Re: Dubstep V.S Witch House

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On a side note: I just wanted to share this toon in general, it's been my all-time favorite track forever... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpzzGXBW4GA
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j∆ckr∆bbi†
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Re: Dubstep V.S Witch House

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Teacake, thank you. You just posted a mess of goodness. Can I ask what your top 5 dubstep albums are? :)
teacake
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Re: Dubstep V.S Witch House

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I don't own many albums per-say. The bulk of my collection consists of 2-sides and EPs, but I guess my favorite releases in no particular order would be...

"Deep Under / Sparkle" by Elemental
"The Knowledge / Like Sun" by Toasty
"Perhaps the Darkness / Bad Magic" by Compound One
"Rob One 7" by Darqwan
"Killamanjaro / Espionage" by Search & Destroy

If anyone wants any or all of these, just shoot me a PM.

Some of the stuff, like Killamanjaro and The Knowledge, is kinda of proto-dubstep from the breakstep side of things (as opposed to dubstep that originated from 2 step and Garage), but it all flows in the same vein.

The first one by Elemental was actually the very first dubstep release I heard, and it remains a favorite to this day :D
cutups
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Re: Dubstep V.S Witch House

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i've been banging this one tons lately. the aesthetic crosses over nicely.

Doshy - Suspiria
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soxUSBVaCEI
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