Blackdown Meets Burial

Ok, its an old interview(March 06), but I reckon Burial was hitting the nail on the head. With current moan-ology on forums and elsewhere concerning Rusko, Caspa and the areas into which they are taking the sound, its good to look back at a piece like this and remind yourself of the reality.

With dubstep nowadays seeming to be at less risk of degenerating into a k-hole of sludgy fuzz, and more at risk of splitting into genres that will want nothing to do with each other(havent we been here twice, three times before?), it was heartening for me last night to see Grizzle doing it like it should be done.
Toward the end of his set he dropped a dub of his that one would theorise would not go down well with either the trustafarians or the hipsters, as it is drenched in two step rhythms, a bassline aimed fairly much at the waist, and a vocal(as yet undivulged)which just lifts the track through the stratosphere.

The thing is, the dancefloor(as always at dubstep events) was a healthy mixture of male and female. Women like to dance when they are enjoying themselves, and this causes the men to feel the need. Standing at the back and nodding half time is for teenage boys ;)


Blackdown aka Martin Clark meets Burial


M: But with the r&b vocals, a lot of dubstep is very masculine and you often sample women…

B: It makes it a bit more sexy. I like that. I think people are afraid of that sexy garage slinkyness. Those rhythms. I love in FWD>> sometimes you’ll just hear one of those tunes. I’m not saying girls only respond to sexy Twice As Nice music, that’s bullshit, but there’s vibes to be had there. But there’s plenty of people who if they were given any room, would make dubstep sound like slowed down drum & bass. And those people are terrified of those sexy vibes I’m talking about. They don’t want this music to have come from garage.



M: It’s almost like a fear of inner city black culture.

B: But it’s also white culture, anything from the suburban rave culture that went into drum & bass. People’s sampling video games, films. They’re scared of all that history. They just want it to be tech…. Drum & bass was a mix of all those things, so was garage and so is this.

B: I was brought up listening to drum & bass. The thing that was scary for me was when I started liking club tunes that were a bit sexier. I was tempted over to that, totally.