News / dubstep
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1 min read
The Widdler - Echo Chamber (Ternion Sound Remix)
Read more . . . →Put this on in a car with decent speakers and watched the rear-view mirror physically buzz on the low notes. Ternion Sound do that to a track — they might be the most precise crew in deep dubstep right now, three people who treat sub-bass the way watchmakers treat gears. Their remix of “Echo Chamber” barely raises its voice and still clears a room’s worth of air with every hit. The original was already spacious; Ternion just widen the gaps between the sounds until the silence starts doing half the work. Every element gets room to ring out and decay...
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1 min read
Feed Me - Bad Taste
Read more . . . →Feed Me. Jon Gooch has been making that grinning, cartoon-menace bass sound for over a decade and “Bad Taste” is him leaning all the way into it. The lead synth on the first drop sounds like a dial-up modem being tortured, and I mean that as the highest compliment. There’s a swing to the drums that most modern dubstep forgets about — it bounces instead of just stomping, which is the whole difference between something you headbang to and something you actually move to. About ninety seconds in the whole thing drops to almost nothing before the second half comes...
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1 min read
Modestep - NEED DAT
Read more . . . →Modestep still make dubstep like it owes them money. NEED DAT lurches in on a vocal chop that sounds like it’s being dragged across gravel, and by the first drop the whole thing has turned into a brawl. What I’ve always liked about this lot is that they came up as an actual band, guitars and a drummer and the works, so their heavy stuff has a swing to it that pure laptop dubstep never quite lands. The second drop swaps the growl for something leaner and meaner, and it’s the better half of the track by a mile. There’s...
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1 min read
MACHAKI - CAN'T STOP
Read more . . . →CAN’T STOP is a dare of a title, and the track spends three minutes proving it can take the hit. It’s dubstep built for maximum physical impact, the kind where the drop doesn’t ask permission. Once the first drop lands at 0:58 there’s genuinely no coasting section. It just keeps escalating. What separates MACHAKI from the wall of Monstercat bass producers is a sense of groove underneath the aggression, so even at its heaviest the track swings instead of just stomping. The sound design on the second drop has this vocal-formant thing where the bass almost talks, a trick that’s...
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1 min read
Buunshin - Luminous Body
Read more . . . →Buunshin keeps building tracks that sound like they were assembled out of glass. “Luminous Body” opens with these clean, almost fragile melodic tones and then the low end slides underneath so smoothly you don’t notice the floor’s gone until you’re already falling. This producer sits in that lane where dubstep and forward-facing sound design overlap, and the design work here is absurd — every bass note has its own texture, none of them muddying into each other. The drop at 1:35 doesn’t reach for maximum weight, it reaches for precision, a bassline that folds in on itself like origami. That...
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1 min read
Axel Boy - Maxxin
Read more . . . →The bassline in “Maxxin” moves like it’s made of tar, slow and thick and pulling everything down with it. Axel Boy works in that deep dubstep pocket where the tempo stays patient and the weight does all the talking, and this is a masterclass in saying more with less. There’s barely anything in the arrangement: a hypnotic bass figure, sparse percussion, a bit of space echo, and that’s deliberately the entire point. The drop doesn’t announce itself with a big buildup, it just arrives, and it lands heavier for the lack of ceremony. Listen at 1:20 for the way a...
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1 min read
Zero - Stop Scheming
Read more . . . →Filthy. That’s the first word that came out of me when the bass hit on “Stop Scheming,” and I stand by it. Zero builds this around one of those detuned, talking basslines that sounds like a machine trying to form a sentence, and around the 1:30 mark it descends into a wobble that has no business being this precise. There’s a vocal snippet — a chopped “stop scheming on me” — that gets mangled a little more each time it comes back, the sort of small cruelty I love in this genre. This is proper UK dubstep, all weight and...
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1 min read
WINK & borne - Drown
Read more . . . →“Drown” is the kind of dubstep that doesn’t announce itself until it’s already got you. WINK and borne spend the first minute building something almost gentle — a vocal that sounds like it’s being sung underwater, a pad that keeps swelling and pulling back — and then the drop at 1:18 arrives heavier than anything the intro promised. That’s the trick: the melody sets you up soft so the low end lands like a slap. borne’s vocal is the anchor, doubled and pitched down until it’s less a lyric than a texture, and it keeps the whole thing from tipping...
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1 min read
Casey Club & Paige Eliza - Virtual Girl
Casey Club and Paige Eliza's Virtual Girl is melodic dubstep at its most unashamedly pretty. This one's staying on repeat for weeks.Read more . . . →Get the tee →Support the blogWhat if your laundry was also a personality? -
1 min read
Cartridge & Hypho - Feng Shui
Read more . . . →The sub on Feng Shui doesn’t drop so much as settle into the floor and refuse to leave. This is the deep, patient end of dubstep: no screaming mid-range, no festival-sized theatrics, just a bassline that moves like something big turning over in its sleep. Cartridge and Hypho both come out of the UK 140 scene where restraint is the whole flex, and this is a masterclass in saying less. There are maybe four elements in the entire track and every one of them is load-bearing. I put it on in the car and the door panels started buzzing at...
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