{"id":391,"date":"2011-01-01T22:45:10","date_gmt":"2011-01-01T22:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicurbanism\/?p=391"},"modified":"2012-11-11T05:14:49","modified_gmt":"2012-11-11T05:14:49","slug":"haunting-the-urban-dubstep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/2011\/01\/01\/haunting-the-urban-dubstep\/","title":{"rendered":"haunting the urban: dubstep"},"content":{"rendered":"

First post draws on\u00a0Bassweight<\/a><\/em>, a new documentary about the dubstep scene coming out of South London. The film begins with a DJ leading the camera on a daytime tour of Croydon\u2019s sidewalks, pointing out a nightclub here or there atop anonymous commercial buildings before ending up at (what else?) a record store. At some point our tour guide laments that none of the passers-by know about the city\u2019s legacy as the birthplace of this electronic genre.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Watching the film, I\u2019m struck by scenes it uses to depict the creative settings for dubstep: nightclubs not yet open for business, record stores specializing in 12″ singles, bedroom recording studios, bedroom pirate radio stations, a record mastering facility\u2026\u00a0 And lots and lots of establishing footage of dreary south London streets where (it should be remembered)\u00a0no one<\/em>knows about<\/em>\u00a0dubstep<\/em>\u2014no one on the sidewalk or in cars whizzing by.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So where is the urban in dubstep? To narrow the question down, where\u2019s the\u00a0public<\/em>? The documentary does a fine job of illustrating dubstep\u2019s reach over the airwaves (with a nifty little section on how not to get your pirate transmitter taken down), but I recall a conspicuous absence of footage featuring people congregating face-to-face in public space under the auspices of music.\u00a0 The relationship of the musical community to the city per se (as opposed to its underground nightclubs and private spaces) is illustrated in terms of isolation, distance, withdrawal.<\/p>\n

(Interestingly, the one public space featured prominently in\u00a0Bassweight<\/em>\u00a0where dubstep DJs, industry types, and listeners literally come out into the sun together is Amsterdam, for club gigs and drug tourism.)<\/p>\n

Of course, many self-consciously urban genres of popular music have aestheticized the alienated relationship to the city. But hip hop, to name the likeliest example, also celebrated the public communion of strangers in the ritual of the block party. By contrast, it seems the city never really \u2018hosts the party\u2019 for dubstep.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Significantly, dubstep\u2019s aesthetic and lifestyles seem really obsessed by this exclusion. Heads nodding to earbuds, hit-and-run graffiti landscapes, headlight traces of time-elapsed traffic: these are\u00a0hauntings<\/em>\u00a0of the urban, not communions. How do we understand dubstep\u2019s emphasis on the urban in light of\u2014what do we call this?\u2014the\u00a0cloistered<\/em>\u00a0experiences of its artists and audience?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First post draws on\u00a0Bassweight, a new documentary about the dubstep scene coming out of South London. The film begins with a DJ leading the camera on a daytime tour of Croydon\u2019s sidewalks, pointing out a nightclub here or there atop anonymous commercial buildings before ending up at (what else?) a record store. At some point our tour guide laments that none of the passers-by know about the city\u2019s legacy as the birthplace of this electronic genre. Watching the film, I\u2019m struck by scenes it uses to depict the creative settings for dubstep: nightclubs not yet open for business, record stores specializing in 12″ singles, bedroom recording studios, bedroom pirate radio stations, a record mastering facility\u2026\u00a0 And lots and lots of establishing footage of dreary south London streets where (it should be remembered)\u00a0no oneknows about\u00a0dubstep\u2014no one on the sidewalk or in cars whizzing by. So where is the urban in dubstep? To narrow the question down, where\u2019s the\u00a0public? The documentary does a fine job of illustrating dubstep\u2019s reach over the airwaves (with a nifty little section on how not to get your pirate transmitter taken down), but I recall a conspicuous absence of footage featuring people congregating face-to-face in public space […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":308,"featured_media":395,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[43691,43678,43762,16,43783,43663,43647],"class_list":["post-391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-aesthetics","tag-alienation","tag-communion","tag-documentary","tag-dubstep","tag-london","tag-public-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/308"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":746,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391\/revisions\/746"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.vassar.edu\/musicalurbanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}