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I think when historians look back at 2010-13, they will consider it the Golden Age of Dubstep. Here are two legitimate, modern dubstep classics from Adventure Club.

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Reviews l YouTube Playlist: Another Dimension

"All over a bowl of bitter beans."

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This was a rec that I picked up from a poster on a different forum, for which this person was sufficiently thanked.

Simple, subtle, yet repeatable and infectious.

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Reviews l YouTube Playlist: Another Dimension

"All over a bowl of bitter beans."

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Wicked piano riffs in this one; the piano work comes at you fast and furious, while the rest of the instrumental serves to build the tension and set the atmosphere.


Pete Tong called this an "essential new tune" of 2009, and as of 2016, it remains an essential tune to add to my collection.

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Reviews l YouTube Playlist: Another Dimension

"All over a bowl of bitter beans."

Aux-In

I've had this song stuck in my head all day.

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Reviews l YouTube Playlist: Another Dimension

"All over a bowl of bitter beans."

Aux-In

I have made no secret that I'm a heavy YouTube user. I've also made no secret that YouTube has been an extremely important vehicle in driving my collection to new heights the past several years. I am currently subscribed to 101 YouTube channels. These channels include labels, artist accounts, and unofficial channels as well. All of them are music channels, all of them upload new artists & music, and all of them are electronic-only.

Now, I have a "must listen to every upload" philosophy, knowing that life is going to get in the way from time to time, even if the music must go on. Of my active subscriptions for this week alone, I have only been able to get to 117 of 514 videos, which translates to about 22.76% of this week's total. I was several weeks behind before that, so I'm lucky to have caught up to this week as it is. So we're square, there have been no finds for 2016 releases as of this writing .


When it comes to media entertainment, for me, music comes first. In fact, it is paramount. I have always said that I will continue to do this for as long as I feel that the effort rewards me. To be sure, the idea is that when I find a new artist on YouTube that I like, I can then add the name to my Pandora electronic station, helping me build it up even more. This means that there is an important, beneficial relationship between the two systems. Ultimately, I understand this, even though part of me knows I'm not going to want to keep this kind of YouTube volume up forever.

But I know what I know, and I know what I've previously found; it's that constant search for a song that resonates and makes me say, "**** yeah this is worth it," rather than "don't I have better **** to do?"

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Reviews l YouTube Playlist: Another Dimension

"All over a bowl of bitter beans."

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This is my favorite track from both Seven Lions and Aruna Abrams. What I like about this mix is the wafting nature of the drop. This gives the track some unpredictability, particularly if you're unfamiliar with it. Solid production overall.


A progressive trance instrumental with a nice piano break in the second half.


A dubstep duet with a depressing tone. This is from some of Crywolf's earlier work.

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Reviews l YouTube Playlist: Another Dimension

"All over a bowl of bitter beans."

Aux-In

A followup to post #65 where I was talking about the volume of music that I listen to on YouTube.

I have to be honest with movements, because they are what they are. I still have a lot of songs off my master list to get to, because my selections rule , but this is something that's been on my mind in regard to the current movements of underground electronic music.

Fortunately for some, and unfortunately for others, dubstep has largely had its time as a scene powerhouse. While dubstep is still being made, a lot of producers have moved on to making trap instead. House music: progressive house is my favorite subgenre, but in recent years, this has given way toward a move back to both traditional house and deep-house influences, of which tropical house and future house are variants. Tropical house sounds, of course, tropical-like, and future house is essentially deep house on steroids (deep-house-like sounds set to a faster pace and fused with "EDM elements"). Electro house is on a mainstage kick: loud & noisy music with no rhythm or melody that is geared toward festival-goers. Trance? Trance is gonna trance; it's doing its own thing and doesn't give a **** what the other electronic genres are doing.

Given the above, 2016 will be a benchmark year in determining if I'm going to keep up the listening volume of 101 (+/-) YouTube channels. And that number is even down from a few weeks ago, when I unsubscribed to a few channels with which I was experimenting, but whose selections weren't making their mark. In that sense, 2016 is going to be a gut check, whereby I have to wonder if the patina has rubbed off and I'm now dealing with the law of diminishing returns. That, or it's a much simpler case of being a matter of good years and bad years.

If all of this is tldr, I wouldn't blame you, so here are a few songs from subgenres that make up a very small portion of my collection.


This has a top-notch beat. I don't typically like male vocals in electronic music, but here they're very good and serve to give the song an R&B flavor w/some slight pop influences. Catchy stuff.


Song: While this has some short vocal bits in it, with the main refrain being "Take it back to the old-school," I consider this an instrumental, because the instrumental is doing 90% of the work. The refrain is on-point, however, as the song gives off a '90s vibe, particularly the part where the energetic "wooo" is heard.

Video: I wasn't keen on the music video at first, but it grew on me. The opening scene is that of the male protagonist ruminating over a Polaroid of him and his ex. In an effort to woo her back, he begins writing a letter to her, but no sooner than when he has finished, the video switches to reverse-motion photography. From there, we get a glimpse into the preceding events and how these two functioned as a couple, including seeing them in various romantic settings throughout the clip. Midway through, everything seems like it's on the up and up. However, by the time we get to the end of the video, we learn the true nature of the indiscretion, trivial as it might be. Hmm...if only I could take back what I said or did by reversing time like this on less trivial stuff .

Supplemental:

- This is the edited version. It should be longer, but I didn't find the original mix to flow as well as this.
- Beatport has this listed as house, but then again, they don't break down a lot of genres into subgenres. It's my guess that this is future house.
- Bougenvilla, a duo, makes a cameo in the video.
- I found "Take It Back" in a one-hour podcast upload on Spinnin' Records, instead of getting it from a lone upload like in other cases. I don't like to, but I skip these hour-long mixes often, because I just don't have the time to go through all of them, even if I know I'm going to miss something.


"Golden Empire" was my earliest exposure to trap music. I had no idea what it was before this. I think trap is also part of subgenres of rap, too? I found "Golden Empire" to be very grating to my ears upon first listen, but it's normal to me now, and I like it. This is mainly due to its melodicicity, bouncing bass, and Apashe's unique Style.

- Apashe is from Brussles, Belgium. I know nothing about Zitaa.

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Reviews l YouTube Playlist: Another Dimension

"All over a bowl of bitter beans."

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THE RANDOMIZER

Back with a feature that I call The Randomizer. If you're new to my journal, it works like this: I close my eyes and point to selections from a paper printout of my Master List of almost 400 songs. If I land on a selection that's already been marked out, then I repeat the process until I find picks that I have yet to write about in this journal.

Exhibit A:


Remember when I wrote at the beginning of my journal that I always liked the whole female singer-songwriter thing? No? Well I did, I did write about that. It's even better when it's this type of combination (electronic noise w/lush female vocals). However, if you want the singer-songwriter motif w/out the dubstep, hit up Alexandra's YouTube to find more videos of her singing all by her lonesome. That's true for any of the other artists in this journal, too.

And who's Alexandra? That's Alexandra Seijnaeve to you, punk. She's a singer-songwriter from Belgium. Venemy, the producer, is also from Belgium. As for the song, I like the stutter effect at the intro, and also the main chorus where it goes, "Releeeeeese me," and then the followup, "Hear my soul, beating out of control." Other parts are slightly off, but that's no matter.


Song: A nice combination of a positive, bouncing-beat intro juxtaposed with the right amount of dirty drops for all your party-based needs. I have watched this clip several times, so I can't help but hear the guy's British accent when I play this instrumental on its own, even though it's not present in the song itself. That's how burned into my brain it is.

Video: Beginning with a few panning shots of flat-development rooftops*, the video depicts a day like any other day, in any other city. A few seconds later, the video tips its hand by revealing a shot of Big Ben, and now we know that London is the setting. From there, an alarm clock goes off and we see a young woman waking up and later joining her father for breakfast. When he utters the words, "So I spoke with your mother the other day," that signals to me that this is a father trying to talk to his detached, wayward daughter about her future. All is well and good until his tone turns demeaning, thereby serving for the daughter's motivation for the rest of the video, and also as the meaning of the track's title.

*Apartment complexes.


This is over-mixed and over-pitched, but then again, I only care about the vocals because of the powerful energy they bring to my soul. The drop, however, could be improved with a more cohesive, progressive mix. "The Other Side (Tick Tick)" is available as an instrumental as well, and if you want the longer version than what's presented here, a YouTube search will get you going in the right direction.

So there you have it for this post. Having a paper printout just came about on its own. It's old-school tracking, but I find that keeping a paper list makes for a much quicker look-up and increases efficiency when sorting through all of this new-school ****.

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Reviews l YouTube Playlist: Another Dimension

"All over a bowl of bitter beans."

Aux-In

This is a brief overview. Interested in reading the well-written article for which this post is based? Here's the We Got This Covered blog link: Breaking Beatport: Examining How SFX Entertainment Destroyed A Beloved Brand

For those following industry news with regard to electronic music, the SFX Entertainment saga is an interesting one. It is, in many ways, a classic story of corporate hubris, especially when considering their handling of Beatport, a preeminent music-download service geared toward DJs and electroheads alike. Not long after buying Beatport, SFX, led at the helm by founder Robert F.X. Sillerman, began struggling with a large debt load as they took on multiple acquisitions, largely with a focus on music festival promoters.

My focus is going to be on Beatport. Beatport was founded in 2004 as a way to help navigate the transition from vinyl to digital that was going on at the time.

Not only did MP3s reduce the amount of gear DJs had to carry around, but being able to buy music files on services like Beatport saved them a lot of time, too, as now they didn't have to convert all of their music files themselves. Over the next several years, Beatport would become an accepted standard for electronic-music downloads. Indeed, even regular dudes like me could now buy tracks from them that I couldn't find anywhere else.

Enter Sillerman, stage left. And he was on a mission:

Given what Beatport's original mission was, which certainly didn't include people running the show who knew nothing about the culture, SFX's ownership has gone the way that many of these types of buyouts do -- i.e., not swimmingly, and definitely not without its growing pains.

It's from this point that the We Got This Covered article tells the rest of the tale, from layoffs and staff reductions, to battles with site engineers about the functionality of Beatport, all the way to SFX's recent Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. It's a fascinating read, so check out the link at the top of this post if you're so inclined.

Additional:

According to this AP article, SFX Entertainment will restructure $300 million in debt and be taken private, all the while remaining operational.

Personal anecdotes:

- I was using what can now be called "classic Beatport" before they switched to Beatport Pro. There was nothing wrong with the site originally from a user perspective, although it was noted in the article that the structure was outdated and was experiencing scaling problems.

- I've seen this story a few times, particularly with what happened to a tech network called TechTV back in 2004, and also from having gone through a buyout myself with a company for which I worked. That is, the new management team promising that nothing will change, but as is often the case, everything changes. Is it all bad news? Perhaps not. As a consumer, I have yet to experience any direct side effects involving Beatport other than a site redesign, but I will undoubtedly be keeping an eye out on any further developments.

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Reviews l YouTube Playlist: Another Dimension

"All over a bowl of bitter beans."

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Something for when you prefer a little vulnerability in your dubstep...


...and something for when you don't:

__________________
Reviews l YouTube Playlist: Another Dimension

"All over a bowl of bitter beans."