Magnetic Man - Gig Review - Scala Oct 08

Like a call to prayer I hear the dark dubstep beats. Knees bending I begin to bounce bounce bounce. Not many people here so early. Dancefloor’s empty. Good. More and more and more room to dance dance dance. Arms and legs and hands, each pop of each part of my body is to a beat.

I’m sweating. I’m thrashing it around the dancefloor. Hmm. Need brief respite. I’m leaving the dancefloor. Oh no. Catastrophe. I’m seeing them now. All of them. I hate them all. You’re posh. You’re posh. You’re a twat. You’re a nob. You’re posher. You’re caked in make up and smell of vanilla perfume. What are you doing here? You’re checking to see who’s looking at you. Why are you here? Get out. So this is it. The end. I’m here in dubstep and it’s being ruined. I’m probably doing some damage myself. I’m too middle class to like this. I’m devastated, this fucking incredible moment in music was all to fleeting. I’m watching the twats as they wrest it away in their dickish look-at-me clothes with their juvenile self-obsession.
I’m back on the dancefloor. Appleblim is playing an impressive support set, albeit with maybe one two many bassy wobblers.
Time for the main act. I’m still dancing, I’m trying to ignore the posh fucks. Skream, Benga and Artwork are taking to the stage, each hiding behing an Apple. I’m being amazed. I’m momentarily distracted by four horrendously confused girls with neon shades and flashing necklaces as they constantly take pictures of themselves. I’m resisting the temptation to throttle them. I’m turning around, sinking into the music. The future sound of the underground is being mixed live before my eyes. Each producer is providing samples and beats and mixing it all together. I cannot resist. I’m moving harder and faster. I’m becoming more volatile. I’m losing myself in dubstep. I’m wanting bass. More bass. I move to the the speaker. More bass. I’m humping the speaker. I’m literally humping the speaker. Uh oh. There’s other people here. I’m embarrassed. I’m leaving. I’m happy.

Benga and Skream - Interview

To borrow a phrase from the Matrix's Oracle, dubstep is a bit like being in love. No one needs to tell you this is dubstep. You just know it through and through. The love metaphor is particularly apt, because hearing dubstep for the first time on a proper sound system, is a lot like falling in love. Metaphors seem to be the only adequate way of conveying the rush of exhilaration felt when the first wave of dubstep crashes on to you. The most accurate comparison is that of coming up for the first time on ecstasy, even though you're completely sober. As the bass rattles your ribs you find your knees bending, with that low centre of gravity you begin to bounce. The beat rolls through your entire body and with a rush of realisation you're simultaneously incredibly excited by this new sound and pining for all those lost years of your life that you weren't listening to dubstep.

It can't be described, it needs to be felt, but nonetheless there are elements of dubstep that are at the least recurring themes. Vocals are rare, tracks usually have a 140bpm, big wobbly bass lines and a syncopated (often 2-step) drum pattern. Yet this is still a relatively young genre which is always pushing the boundaries of its own definition. Producers bring in samples from a plethora of places and other musical genres. The variety is particularly impressive, given the relatively microscopic roots of the genre.
The sound grew out of a mish-mash of Grime, Garage and Dub. Yet the scene itself grew out of one small area of South London, one record store, one club night and a small number of talented individuals. There are a number of names who can be credited for creating and growing the genre in its early days, Kode9, Mala, Coki, Loefah and Hatcha among a few others. No list though, would be complete without two of the most prodigiously talented producers out there, Benga and Skream (Beni Uthman and Oliver Jones respectively). Both are just 21 and both have been involved in the scene since its inception. Even if you've never heard of dubstep, it's practically guaranteed you will have heard their two biggest tracks. Skream's Midnight Request Line came out in 2005 and is considered one of the most recognisable dubstep hits, as well as a pivotal moment in dubstep history. It opened up new ideas for producers, and the tempo change in the middle is seen as particularly important. Benga's collaboration with Coki in early 2008 produced the electronic anthem Night. If you've been to a club in the past eight months then you've probably heard it. I talked to both of them about the genre, its future and their place in it.
Dubstep is relatively unusual, in that it is now undeniably international, with people all over the world producing music, yet there is still that small group of pioneers who people look to and who are so much more visible than other producers. I wondered if they saw themselves as still part of the movement or just as producers making some tunes. Benga does want to "move it forward," and he added caveats only I suspect through modesty, "I'm not saying I'm some dubstep captain, I'm just saying that I do see things and think, right we've got to try and push it in this direction or that direction. We should get into this or get out of that. I'll sometimes occasionally say we need to do this or we need to do that, but it's not like I'm some leader of it." He thinks he couldn't keep dubstep afloat single handedly, "there is more of this movement thing where everyone's doing their own thing and we all play each other's music and it all helps." Skream situates himself in the middle "There is movement and then there's just people making tunes. I've been involved in the scene since I was 13 so I would say I'm someone who's tried to push it forward, I don't just make tracks. I can only speak for myself though, I'm just writing." This is no longer an embryonic genre, perhaps it doesn't need to be pushed. "The scene's developed, a lot of the hard work's done, for me I'm just looking at building myself as a producer." Skream has been labelled, to his chagrin, the ambassador of dubstep. It is a fairly accurate description of how important he is to the scene, but he eschews the title, " I don't really like that term though, it's a bit wankerish, but it wasn't like I really carried it all on my own, there's a number of people like obviously Benga, Digital Mystikz and Kode9. "
Benga and Skream, along with another producer called Artwork, have for a while now, been performing intermittently as Magnetic Man, in what is a live dubstep act. There are no MCs just the three of them with their laptops. Each attempted to explain what exactly this live dubstep act is about. Benga tried first, "We have three laptops, and um we basically do live remixing." What is your role as an individual? "Well it's kind of hard to explain." Do you all have different roles? "No, basically it's like, thee laptops all midi-linked and it's live editing and live mixing." I resolved to go see the act before I understood it, deciding the failure in comprehension was entirely my own ignorance. I asked Benga how it was different from the crowd. "You hear the same song when a DJ plays it, but when it's live you hear it differently, things are mute, basslines are on their own, drums are on their own at certain times." It all sounds very exciting, perhaps more involving for the crowd than a DJ set, but it's a different experience for the producers, as Skream said, "You're just standing there, you're not moving as much as when you do a DJ set, you're still like moving your head or whatever. It's fucking wicked, but sometimes I miss that energy of when you're jumping around and you're grabbing and looking for tunes."
I'd read that Skream has 1500 tunes he's currently working on, this out of date figure pales in comparison to the current number, roughly 8000 (I waited an extra ten minutes as his PC counted them all). "I'm not saying they're all finished, but they're all ideas and you just do it. You start something then you get another idea so you start something else then you get another idea, then you go back and finish two off then you get another three ideas out of one track." How long could it take to produce one track? "I can do two in a day. It depends, if you've got all the elements there. It just works. Things start coming easily, you automatically just hear something and go, fuck me that goes there! You're mind just starts working automatically. You almost know what's coming out." Skream has been known for really pushing the boundaries of dubstep, I was interested to see whether he’d thought about producing anything of a completely different genre. “I’ve been doing some work with Jamie T. It’s completely different to dubstep, 150bpm, 808 drums with him playing the bass.”
Skream’s work with Jamie T sounds exciting, but there is always that danger we’ll see the genre diluted as it gets a taste of commerical success. “I wouldn’t sell myself out, if I was just gonna do it for the money and not think that I could get something out of it then I probably wouldn’t do it.” Yet once the sound gets out in to the wild it is a far harder beast to tame. The international scene is growing exponentially, North America in particular. "The scene over there at the moment is like London was in like 2005/2006, where it's still new to a lot of people." Canada as well, Skream played Shambhala (the best festival in the world, see below) for the second year running this summer. "Shambhala was fucking wicked man, and the actual DJ set was one of my favourite sets I've ever played as well."
There are dangers of such growth though. At the moment a small number of people are, as Benga puts it, “pushing the cause. If you Google dubstep you see a few faces a lot more than others.” Inevitably there will be people who take the sound and corrupt it. There is a new Britney track, “Freakshow,” that has an omnipresent bass wobble. Perhaps a signifier of worse things to come. Dubstep is the anti-thesis of modern pop music; never about image, style or sales and only ever about the music. As long as these pioneers keep pushing the boundaries, this tremendous new sound will continue to evolve and excite.

Magnetic Man are playing at Scala on the 9th October.

Shambhala

The Salmo River Ranch is nestled deep in the heart of the Kootenay Mountains just north of the 49th parallel. Visitors and locals alike are amazed at the beauty of these sharp young mountains overrun by coniferous trees. They led the Canadian province of British Columbia to advertise itself, somewhat audaciously, as “The Best Place on Earth.”
The Ranch is unrivalled in the devotion it commands and joy it inspires. For the past eleven years it’s been home to the annual Shambhala Music Festival. Yet it feels sacrilegious to label it as simply another electronic music festival. Shambhala is so much more than that. Unrivalled and unsurpassed anywhere in the world, it is a singularity, a confluence of factors combining to catalyse an explosion of sheer ecstasy.
Ten thousand people flock to the Ranch each year and on the first day tents are erected throughout the jumble of fields, forests and a river. Various stages dot the landscape, each offering a unique experience. The Fractal Forest, with its turntables in the middle, is surrounded by towering trees. Lasers refract through the mist, piercing the raindrops and bouncing off branches, drawing astonished gawps from the throng of revellers. Trees are plastered with glowing paintings, giant dreamcatchers and in one corner is a massive silver pyramid. In every direction paths lead to other stages. The trails cut through the forest, lit by glowing orbs, twinkling fairy lights and sometimes only the glowsticks of the ravers who bear them. Vast neon paintings adorn the great trunks; intricate models of miniature houses populate the treetops, almost too high to see them. The next stage is The Village, an outer courtyard lays through tall wooden gates. Through a further set of doors the huge open dance-floor appears, surrounded by rising and falling platforms which are all connected, providing vantage points from every possible angle, though thousands of people are too busy dancing to watch. Countless paths lead out of The Village, going to tents, other stages and bizarre clearings full of odd people and abstract art you’d never find again at a second attempt. Walking further across bridges and through twisting glowing tunnels you eventually come to where the forest opens out to The Living Room, a beach stage burrowed twixt river and forest. Here is chilled out ambient music, for those relaxing, resting or simply sitting back and trying to take it all in. There are other stages, the Rock Pit, a dirty dance floor dug deep down into the ground, as well as The Pagoda and Labyrinth. Yet none contain the ethereal majesty or raucous energy of Fractal or The Village.
The music at Shambhala is the bassiest, most aggressive and most exciting line up of any festival anywhere. The sound system is a 90kW fire-breathing monster. The DJs play a twenty-four hour pounding mix of the very best dubstep, funky yet deliciously filthy electro, breathless drum and bass as well as that downbeat ambience some people crave. The line up this year included Skream (see interview above), Bassnectar, Bonobo and the prodigiously talented Excision.
This being high up in the mountains and in Canada, the pharmaceutical selection on offer is absolutely extraordinary. Everything is out in the open and whilst not expected, it is more than accepted. Any chemical high you’re looking for is here in abundance and for impressively low prices. This isn’t just a drug-addled mash up though. People at Shambhala for the most part will understand the narcotics they’re taking and be in control of their high. The first aid tent is top notch and there’s even a pill-testing tent for you to determine exactly what’s in those strange looking green things you just traded in exchange for a cigarette.
Yet when reflecting on why Shambhala is so magical, why it truly is the best five days of your entire year if not your life, it always comes back to the people. Everyone is so excited to be there. Here is a chance to behave with joyful abandon, dance from dusk through dawn and longer. An opportunity to wear whatever you want, be it beautiful, ridiculous, or indeed nothing at all. It is a common occurrence to hear incredulous cries of, “I can’t believe it’s really Shambhala” or “It’s really happening right now!” For those who’ve been before there is such joy that it’s here again, whilst Shambhala virgins are almost overwhelmed at being somewhere quite so fantastic. It is more common still, to hear people shouting, “Happy Shambhala,” as if at Christmas or Easter. The religious connotations of this are no coincidence. We are ravers. This is a rave religion and Shambhala is our annual pilgrimage. Non-believers must rethink their heathen ways and make their way however they can to Shambhala, for here truly is The Best Place on Earth.

Bestival 08

This was Bestival’s fifth birthday, and never before had there been any rain. What with friday’s forecast being for “a month’s worth of rain in a day” 30,000 odd people set out for the Isle of Wight with trepidation. Well it did rain. The word torrential has rarely been more apt. The mud was predictably about 8 to 10 inches thick across the entire site. Yet people still dressed up and the atmosphere was quite nice, especially on the Saturday afternoon when the sky became a slightly lighter shade of gray. The rain did get very wearing what with the effort to walk anywhere, the indoor stages being rammed and the large number of acts who had to cancel. Yet Bestival had various problems entirely separate to the rain. The sound systems were almost all very weak. Even if the systems had been better, the levels were often very badly judged. For example, when CSS were playing you could barely hear Lovefoxxx singing, which is madness because she’s the whole point of the band. When Aphex Twin was playing no one could tell he was actually on, the sound was so quiet everyone assumed it was just an in-between DJ. Also, the headliners were universally shit, apart from My Bloody Valentine. In addition, someone had the audacity to try and sell me Canderel, while claiming they were tablets of something considerably more exciting.
That said, Mary Anne Hobbs was brilliant and Jon Hopkins played an incredible set on the best system at the festival, until it broke, for the fourth time that weekend.
So in summary, it was quite fun. If you’re more a fan of the gleeful silliness and dressing up than quality sound systems or quality drugs, then next year head to Bestival, I won’t be there.