Toddla T plays dubstep and beyond.
Winter Music Conference was the biggest event to happen in Miami in the last few weeks. Huge industry events in “real life” aren’t really the place to discover new music any more — hello, blogs — but they still are the best to hear what people are really playing out, and how crowds are reacting. It’s one thing to experience a new track on your MP3 player, and quite another to hear it on a crowded dance floor at 3 a.m. The huge parties around South Beach are always centered around big-room beats; to hear what’s new and next, you have to head downtown.
One thing was clear: blog-house, or electro-house, or whatever you want to call it, with its relentless “bangers” and chainsaw basslines, is out, totally. The BBC One radio DJ Annie Mac always throws a party during WMC, and hers is the best place to hear where things are going. The answer at this year’s edition, held at the White Room near downtown Miami? On one hand, there’s an even further global exploration of beats of the the kind started by Diplo and his ilk. DJs like J-Wow of Buraka Som Sistema played stuttering, syncopated blends of beats whose provenance was often hard to place.
The other development, which is no secret to anyone who follows electronic music, is that dubstep has arrived. It’s the complete antithesis of goofily happy blog-house, going for darker moods and slowed-down beats. Dubstep was everywhere at conference, at its own dedicated parties, like one thrown by New York’s Trouble & Bass Crew, to Annie Mac’s party, which featured surprise late-night sets by dubstep kings like Skream and 12th Planet. Dubstep even got, practically, its own stage at Ultra Music Festival, which served as a kind of coronation of the style in the somewhat mainstream electronic music circuit.
I have a feeling, though, that with dubstep’s popularity, its older cousin, drum ‘n’ bass, may be due for a revival. Toddla T, a young DJ producer based in London, is often lumped in with the dubsteppers, but he mixes up any number of Jamaican-influenced derivations of the old ’90s “hardcore” rave sounds. On his record, this includes some straight-up drum ‘n’ bass, which he played to a receptive crowd at the Annie Mac party. Skream dropped some similarly sped-up beats as well. Among U.S. DJs, Miami’s own DMC champ, DJ Craze, used to play d’n'b around the turn of the millennium, and has lately been focusing heavily on bass music and dubstep. So, guess what else is beginning to peak back into his sets a little? Drum ‘n’ bass, but just in little flashes.
Miami's own DJ Craze
[...] So-Called “Blog-House” Is Out, Dubstep Is In With a Vengeance … [...]
[...] the time Winter Music Conference rolled around in Miami earlier this year, it was clear that the flavor du jour was dubstep, dubstep, and more dubstep. But I noticed something else creeping into these dubstep sets: a dash here and there of bona fide [...]