Mirror-shades

by Owlor

Track 2.

Track 2.

Astro$RF smiled at me after their last set at Clopernicus, warming the crowd up for the mane attraction. I waited behind him to drop the needle and really get the crowd going.

“It's allright, I know when I'm beat,” they told me.

The next day, Astro$RF was in an airship heading to San Flanksisco and I was all over the flyers of Manehattans nightclubs.

It was getting harder to keep my distance to the crowd. Everywhere I went ponies recognized me for my distinctive mane and my mirror-shades. I got roughly ten party invitations a week, each of which I put in a trash can once I was out of sight.

---

The world was changing around me, new ponies and new beats came to the dance floor. Nu style they called it, I felt centuries old when I listened to the new dubplates and found them as incomprehensible to me as my parents must've found my techno music. The world was changing, but under the shades, I was still the same.

Curiously enough, ponies began seeing me as the authority on the new trends in music. The logic went as such: I was the coolest mare in existence, Nu Style was the coolest genre in existence. Therefore I must listen to Nu Style. Both me and formal logic would disagree with that statement, but there you go.

It was the same sort of logic that led to the genre in the first place: The bass and the beat is what ponies respond to on the dance-floor, therefore more bass and a harder beat must be better. So they made a genre which consisted of nothing but bass kicks, the louder and faster the better. Music became more about decibels and BPM than about crafting an atmosphere. Suddenly, all the flavours were gone.

---

I couldn't help but poke a little fun of the whole thing. I dug up the worst bedroom-produced tracks I could find and released them on the dance-floor. It was my private little joke, I smiled a nasty smile as I watched the crowds confused reaction. A week later, I had made superstars out of at least half a dozen pimply teenagers.

I took this as a challenge and put myself In the producer chair. If ponies wanted nothing but beats and bass, I'd GIVE them nothing but betas and bass. I chopped up a breakbeat until it was almost unrecognisable and I added a bass that reached all the way down to the subsonic level, yelling nasty insults at whales.

This was my white flag, my resignation letter to the rest of the world. “I give up,” it said to whoever cared to listen. “Listen to whatever you want, just let me enjoy my own music in peace.” I dumped it on the dance floor and watched it burn... you can already tell where this is going, can't you? The next day, it was a massive hit.

Author's Note:

"Nu Style", or as I'm more used to calling it, Gabber, is a genre that originated in Rotterdam and consisted mainly of heavily overdriven bass kicks. It's the genre I think about the most when I see people under the impression that the heavy sound of Dubstep is something new and unique...

I'm coming across as really anti-dubstep in this, aren't I? Well, I'm more ambivalent to the genre than anything else. Don't tell my dad this, cus he HATES dubstep, but I listen to some of it. Skream, 16bit, Broken Note if I feel angry enough. I'm mostly annoyed at how OLD it makes me feel, don't tell me Joey Beltram, Prodigy or Fatboy Slim is already forgotten? How many Skrille-fans have even HEARD original Jamaican dub music or know what it is? I just don't want the old classics to be forgotten just cus something new and shiny comes along....

Comments

[G-AB Acid]

I'm coming across as really anti-dubstep in this, aren't I?

On the contrary. I find your criticism towards dubstep quite clever. I myself like the genre quite a bit, I admit; but I also admit that people nowadays are so trendy that they most likely are swallowing dubstep down just because it is something everyone else does. This isn't the point of your critique, though. It can mostly be expressed and infered in the sentence: "They lost their flavors" and that is exactly it! Dubstep is nice, sure. Kind of aggressive and, I guess. Mostly fast (not like a good D'nB though!). But in the end it is exactly that: bass kicks and drops without any sort of coherent melody to help you enjoy (or even create) an atmosphere. As much as I love the good examples of dubstep out there, I have to admit that they are mostly repetitive and boring after a while. Heard 30? Heard 'em all.

Again: The few good dubstep there are out there are the exception to this "rule".