Dubstep: Can Everyone Just Calm Down?

I’m not entirely sure what ruffles me more. All of the people who have become suddenly, uncharacteristically keen on the sparse and sometimes barbed sounds of James Blake’s dubstep, or those people who are so angered and possibly afraid of the hype surrounding a genre of music that they’d never normally be forced to listen to that they’re labelling it trendy bollocks before even listening to it.

It’s probably the combination of both types of people surrounding me (I mean that mostly in cyberspace, what a lonely life I lead!) that’ve made it rather difficult for me to even digest the songs I’ve heard from his debut album properly. This subculture, well James Blake specifically, has entered the mainstream domain, and it’s thrown most people I think. Not that it doesn’t belong here, any breakthrough from a murky underground scene deserves to be celebrated I think, I just wish we’d all treat it with the blank canvas it deserves and try not to lose our shit over it, whichever side you support.

It just seems to me there’s a lot of people who don’t know very much about a genre of music trying to make sweeping statements about something that could potentially be very important or very insignificant to music as it stands. Undoubtedly, James Blake is a very intelligent and talented man with a great voice, but I’d like to live with it for a bit before I make my mind up. But I suppose such is the nature of the beast that we’re not actually allowed to take our time. We need to decide if he’s going to do an xx now god dammit!

James Blake is easy to mention (god forbid Magnetic Man are your dubstep reference point!), and he is making dubstep which automatically makes him cool. So for those of you who haven’t actively followed this genre of music until now, the looming popularity of dubstep has probably made you a little nervous and unsure of which side of the line to stand. For indie music journalists in particular, people who are used to shouting their mouths off about bands, something they (sort of) know about, it’s a terrifying beast we’re not sure how to tame. But it’s important not to forget that people like Four Tet have been paving the way for James Blake for years. He’s not really doing anything new. He’s been plucked from a genre of music to be its new poster boy, and due to well placed marketing and help from a major label we’re all expected to treat him like some prodigal genius.

After meeting him very briefly he seems like a very normal guy, clever and nice, and just like a musician who’s very happy that he can make music for a career and the type of music he makes is getting the widespread recognition he thinks it deserves.

That’s all I have to say on this really. Now has anyone seen my British Sea Power album, all this talk of dubstep is making me dizzy…