OK, this blog is obviously to highlight my own mixes, but occasionally if I run across something else I like, I might as well highlight it, no?
In any case, I recently downloaded Sekklow’s ‘Mind The Step’ mix from Dubstepforum.com, and I think it’s awesome. Really it is! And so, in the absence of a new mix from myself (I am still planning on doing that Karim tribute one, I just need to find the time), I might as well write a few words of praise for this mix.
Dubstep is something that I have been listening to more and more over the last year. Although I have been listening to dubstep for the last couple of years (alongside my shorter-lived love for grime, which I used to write about a lot at my old blog), I have found that it has colonized an ever-increasing amount of my listening time during the last twelve months. Weirdly, this has occurred without it becoming part of my identity. I don’t feel like a ‘dubstep head’. I’m just someone who is listening to an inordinate amount of the stuff! Maybe this is a function of getting older, since by the time you reach your late 20’s it’s a bit unseemly to have a teenagerly identification with a musical cult?
In any case, one of the things that I have enjoyed about dubstep as it has developed over the last several years is how it has spread its wings and mutated in all kinds of directions, particularly in a more dancey direction. Some purists have gotten a bit sniffy (to put it lightly) about the more dancefloor-oriented stuff that people like Rusko have been making but, let’s be honest, who cares what purists think? I certainly don’t! Hell, I’m a long-term lover of hardtrance, so obviously I am not averse to a bit of ravey cheese. What makes dubstep nice is that the out and out “oi oi!” dancefloor stuff can snuggle up nicely next to more melodic and minimalist stuff.
When I first started listening to dubstep I frankly found it kinda boring – it was all a bit splifftastic minimalist for me. Fortunately, over the last several years it has opened up and incorporated an amazing range of influences, from styles of music as divergent as techno, drum n’ bass, reggae, and other areas.
In any case, Sekklow’s mix is a perfect blend of these varied influences, featuring as it does several of his own remixes of indie bands like Bloc Party, Razorlight and the Kings of Leon alongside deep and romantic tunes like Scuba’s ‘Tell Her’, minimal boingery like Shackleton’s ‘Girder’ and ‘3K Lane’ by Jakes & Joker, and out-and-out wobble-bass mayhem like ‘My Pet Monster’ by Caspa and ‘Fick’ by Skream. It’s all seamlessly mixed together with the odd bit of scratching, but what really made this mix stand out for me were Sekklow’s own tunes and remixes. Although I’m not really a huge fan of indie rock, I think his remixes work very well, with the rock vocals and guitars adding a nice texture to the stop-start rhythms and tweaked-up bass of the dubstep structure, particularly on his spacey remix of Kings of Leon’s ‘Closer’ or the wobble-tastic refix of ‘Biko’ by Bloc Party.
Good stuff, and well worth a download.