Defining dubstep, Aphex Twin and Skrillex

Two months ago, Skrillex posted a YouTube link on his facebook page with one of his favorite songs — a song by Aphex Twin called "Flim" (I highly recommend listening to it). What's so important about this? The comments his fans left all seemed confused. They were wondering why one of Skrillex's favorite songs had no "drop?" They consider him to be a dubstep producer, yet this wasn't actually "dubstep." What is so important about these comments? It brings up some questions: How would you define Skrillex's music if this were an influence of his? Is Skrillex a dubstep producer? Who is Aphex Twin? Finally, what exactly is dubstep?

Lets first start off with the question of dubstep. What exactly is it? You probably have heard it all over the place, yet most people probably don't really have a clue where it started. Dubstep originated in the electronic music scene of England during the 1990's.

The "dub" comes from dub reggae, which emerged out of the reggae scene during the 1960's. In simple terms, dub is practically reggae music with a delay pedal, which is an emphasis on the drum and bass with an extensive addition of echo and reverb. Existing tracks of music (which most of the time were reggae) were sampled, with the vocals taken out, and then experimented on in the recording studio or the dancehall with the use of soundboards or mixers.

The manipulation of such tracks would then become new tracks that could sound completely different from the original samples. This became the basis of what is known as "jungle" or "drum n' bass music." The "step" part comes from 2-step, which is electronic music with irregular rhythms and beats. Instead of the usual 4/4 beat seen in electronic music, there is a kick on the first and third beat with a shuffled pattern of percussion in between. In addition, there is also the unusual placement of snare hits and accents in the drum patterns. In layman terms, it's basically a really bizarre rhythm.

So dubstep is a genre of music with a syncopated drum and bass rhythm that is usually in the range of 138–142 beats per minute. But that is speaking in technical terms. What about how the songs sound? This is where it gets difficult to define the genre because there is such a diverse range of sounds within dubstep. In general, the songs are more atmospheric in the sense that they usually do not have "drops." Dubstep music is just as repetitive as any of Skrillex's material, but it focuses more on the ambience it creates rather than how loud and obnoxious the bass can get.

Some of the more ambient material can at times be defined as either soulful or spooky sounding. For example, material like James Blake's self-titled LP falls under the more soulful category — generally sampling material from soul, R&B and jazz. For more ominous material, there is stuff like the LP "Archangel" by Burial. Sampling soulful vocals driven by a syncopated drum and bass rhythm, Burial definitely creates a very spooky atmosphere. The less ambient-sounding songs, which sometimes may or may not have a drop, can be seen as a bit more upbeat. This can be found in such LP's as "Sepalcure" by Sepalcure, "Room(s)" by Machinedrum, "Where Were U in '92" by Zomby, "SBTRKT" by SBTRKT, "Outside the Box" by Skream, "Return II Space" by the Digital Mystiks, "Sam Baker's Album" by Samiyam and "Cosmogramma" by Flying Lotus.

Despite the fact that such songs off these mentioned albums are not as ambient, they still range from "regular" dance club sounding songs to avante-garde and minimalist pretention.

There isn't a set formula to any dubstep song. The atmosphere created is based entirely on the producer and is dependant on the samples they use or the types of vocals they sample or have. On one side you have Joy Orbison's "Hyph Mngo" single and "Pharaohs" by SBTRKT, which have more "club-like feels"; on the other side, you have something like "Clock Catcher" by Flying Lotus, which is a very mystical-sounding song with some unusual samples.

So that is dubstep, but who the hell is Aphex Twin? Aphex Twin is an English electronic musician who started his career in 1991. As a very influential figure when it comes to current electronic music, Aphex is considered to be one of the first musicians to be a part of the Intelligent Dance Music (IDM) movement. Not surprisingly, when it comes to music, IDM is fairly hard to characterize. The main aspect that IDM and dubstep have in common is the bizarre drum and bass rhythms. At times, it can be ambient and avant-garde as can be seen with songs like "Flim," "Goon Gumbas" and anything off "Selected Ambient Works 85-92" (all by Aphex). But, in general, IDM is industrial sounding, glitch-like and jarring. Examples form Aphex Twin would be songs like "Windowlicker," "Start As You Mean To Go On," "Cornish Acid" and "Come to Daddy."

So where does Skrillex fall into with all of this in mind? In a way, Skrillex is to Aphex Twin as Nirvana is to the Pixies. Both Aphex and the Pixies have generally influenced more musicians than seen success, while Nirvana and Skrillex have achieved unbelievable levels of attention. When you hear some of Aphex's songs that are of the more industrial/glitchy type, you will see where Skrillex got some of his tricks. For example, the song "Windowlicker" has a fairly unusual beat throughout supplied by the drum and bass in addition to some weird vocal samples. At the end of the song, there is a fairly huge drop into a loud drum and bass part. This drop is nowhere near as schizophrenic as Skrillex's, but you can definitely hear what Skrillex learned from it.

Skrillex avoids the avant-garde aspects of Aphex's music and instead applies the idea of the "glitchey-ness" and the unusual rhythms to his trademark drum and bass drops. In a sense, Skrillex technically falls under that dubstep category. However, it is just that his "version" of dubstep is a very mainstream and American take on the genre.

All Skrillex did was take aspects of house and other popular electronic dance music and merge it with a more abrasive form of Aphex Twin's glitchyness and the unusual rhythms of dubstep.

Experimentation in music is always a good thing. That is how it progresses over time. Even the great Jazz legend Miles Davis said, "Don't play what's there, play what's not there." However, whether such experimentation is good or not, is an entirely different story. In the end, it will be interesting to see how music history treats Skrillex.

To his diehard fans and other so called "dubstreamers," perhaps open your ears to other stuff, you may be surprised. There is a relatively untapped reservoir of underground electronic music that goes beyond this "American" dubstep trend, and it is not bad at all.