EP Review – Martyn: Hello Darkness

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Martyn’s new EP, Hello Darkness, will remind you of why you liked dubstep before the brostep invasion. It is deep, intelligent, thoughtful, extremely well produced, and takes you through a full range of emotions rather than just smashing on the backside of your brain.

From the very first few notes of the title track, you can breath easy, and whatever stress is in your day will filter out in the spaces between the stuttered drum beats and nicely balanced sub-tones.

The EP consists of four tracks – three full ones and then a radio edit of “Hello Darkness.” This format makes commercial sense, as some people don’t have a full six-minute attention span, and the radio edit serves as an introduction to the essence of the music to that particular group. You can also appreciate that tracks two and three are remixes. EP’s occasionally get bogged down when there’s an original and three remixes all packaged together.

“Bauplan (L-Vis 1900 & Bok Bok remix)” is a beautiful expression of texture and tone, and it’ll float you away with sound effects, subtle vocal stabs, finger snaps and bird chirps, tin cans getting kicked down alleyways, and they some melody to boot. It gets darker as it goes along, and some classic drum machine breaks kick in a carry you the rest of the way through. Don’t be afraid to turn it up.

“We Are You In the Future (Redshape remix)” has a little more of the Detroit feel, and is introduced by a bite from a movie to get your mind thinking about death and sickness, and then heading into a four-on the floor click beat and some chill analog synths to keep the mood grimy. This one is a full nine-minute journey, but it never gets boring, and none of the layers ever sound canned or out of place within the context of the track. The slightly detuned flavor of almost every melodic instrument that shows itself gives the tune a forever-tense flavor, but the sounds themselves never get too dirty to make you want to run too far away.

For those unfamiliar with Martyn, his two full-length albums, Great Lengths and Ghost People, are absolute staples in the dubstep community, and the EP’s that he has been releasing since 2005 have been some of the best in the business. He’s on tour constantly and alternates between DJ-type sets and more organic live shows, and they are not to be missed if you have a chance to catch him out anywhere. Some of his tunes are a little hard to wrap your brain around if you aren’t ready for them, but the more you listen to his music, the more you’ll dig it and the more you’ll allow yourself to be transported into a very unique world of soundscapes and tonal drifts. He has three DJ mix albums/compilations out as well, and each of them has a character all its own, and is well worth listening to and studying.

Event Review – WMC Dubstep

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For those of you who have entered into the realm of dubstep appreciation in the last few years who are also familiar with Winter Music Conference in Miami, there is actually a little bit more crossover history than you might think. Even though dubstep-mania and the Skrillex phenomenon only blew up in the last year, and the Glitch Mob rocked the stage at Ultra a few years back, there have been rumblings in Miami since about 2006.

It’s no secret that if you know who Martyn is, you love him for his music, whether it’s that thoughtful brand of studio work he does or his brain and body mashing live sets he’s known for. Yes, Martyn was at WMC in 2006, at the Laundry Bar, playing his crazy atmospheres for a small crowd who didn’t know what hit them. Elsewhere in Florida in 2007, dubstep nights started creeping up as weeklies, and DJ’s Redcoat and Norbel made moves into the scene.

Dubstep Making Noise:

At WMC in 2008, dubstep was truly present, although prior to that, there were a few head nods to 2-step, speed garage, and its derivatives at various small showcases around the city. Benga, one of the early adopter brosteppers, played at Bassrush in 2008 at the end of a drum and bass set with his unconventional dubstep software, but those who stayed until the end got a taste of what was soon to come. Plastician also played that year, also in a small room, but also to a rabid crowd that was ready for more. Skream and London Bass played at further events that year, and the people who became aware of the dubstep sound kept growing as news of the parties circulated among what was then solidly the underground.

The next year, DJ Crazy brought his reputation and his bass music to Conference and smashed some bodies into the dirt, and Skream and Benga were back to play slightly larger parties because of their previous success. By this point, drum and bass and breaks DJ’s were borrowing elements from the newcomers, and the sounds of the wobble were beginning to be more common even in the more mainstream tracks. People’s ears perked up when they heard the screams of the speakers mixed with the massive bottom end that dubstep records were emphasizing.

By 2010, dubstep had a more formulaic sound and structure, and people were flocking to parties that promoted it. It was necessarily the same sounds from back in 2006, when it was described more as UK Grime or bass music, but the tempo and the energy remained the same, and that’s what people grew accustomed to.

WMC 2012 is going on now this year, and with Skrillex’s insane rise to fame, brostep and its strange bedfellows will probably be a highlight rather than a curiosity for the hundreds of thousands of people who’ll be converging on Miami, so it will be very interesting to see how that turns the tide of popular commercialism for the late favorite electro and trance genres. There may be changes in the air!