Brostep: | Sputnikmusic

Brostep 05.16.13	inb4 dev rips this apart also, this is what happens when i have no access to a sputnik blog
coocoocachoo 05.16.13	interesting list will read later (seriously I will)
coocoocachoo 05.16.13	personally though imo i don't think it's dead in the slightest i mean shit beatport gets like 500,000 new uploads a day of new electronic music lol but like idk w/e
liberi 05.16.13	Would be helpful if you could clarify what exactly you are referring to when you're talking about EDM in this article. Otherwise people will end up arguing apples while you argue oranges.
InnerExperience 05.16.13	EDM as it is understood in the U.S. was never alive - at least, I found it totally abhorrent. But there is a lot of good, danceable electronic music still out there. In fact, there are even some great releases coming from America! I'd check out Long Island Electrical Systems - a great label running out of Brooklyn, if I'm not mistaken. I particularly enjoy Vapauteen's "Weld EP" and Maximillion Dunbar's "Everyday EP."
pizzamachine 05.16.13	it ain't dead
Eclecticist 05.16.13	"I'm trying to be serious and critically thinking here." lol okay
MisterTornado 05.16.13	a u t e c h r e l i v e s
greenlinkinmuse 05.16.13	all of my friends love EDM... especially 1 & 2. they be jamming it next to their lockers while the teachers be like "turn that shit down". seriously, my english teacher hates EDM.
foxblood 05.16.13	it's not dead, and saying that genres 'die' makes no sense in the first place
Cygnatti 05.16.13	well, foxblood, 20s/30s swing music is pretty dead, right? as is grunge, well... yeah. :/
foxblood 05.16.13	just because genres aren't popular among the public doesn't mean they're dead, only the scene behind a genre can die out. genres are just ways to label style and sound
Acanthus 05.16.13	I didn't think I'd miss Deviant, but god I do. I'm glad you don't have access to the official blog, the site doesn't need that type of traffic. "After all, why waste talent on coming out with a high-quality remix when there would be virtually no difference with a release of far cheaper nature?" This is wrong, there IS a difference, and a large one; it's not a waste of talent to have pride in your work, and do a stellar job. You're arguing the merits of two track remixes that are meant for mass consumption, coming to the conclusion that they are too watered down and low quality. You don't fucking say?!? I thought that would be obvious, in an entire "genre" that was coined because the American public at large had no real knowledge of electronic music (let alone having it played on the radio) that things were going to be produced quickly, in quantity; ghost producers, bedroom studios, underage jockeys in clubs, things have changed across the board. The "term" was doomed from the start, unlike other historical instances of a word being taken back EDM will forever be a low point in American music, regardless of the merits of a few. It will continue to be a laughable description, especially when compared to the rich electronic histories of some of the other countries in the world. I don't mind your reviews, and I don't mind a lot of the music you rate; I've spun it, bought it, and seen many people dance to it. But this list is inane, and fuels my inner dislike of the growing youth music culture in my city (and others); it isn't dead, there's thousands of events nation wide attesting to this fact.
Calc 05.16.13	tell us how you really feel!
Acanthus 05.16.13	I'm just an occasionally bitter person, pay me no mind.
Cygnatti 05.16.13	That wall of text speaks the troof
Acanthus 05.16.13	I tried to keep it short, OP isn't the main cause of my inherent issues with the word or the music/people that go to the events.
Cygnatti 05.16.13	I don't know how long it is for sure but it's a wall of text on my phone. :p
YankeeDudel 05.16.13	deviant is dead and took edm with him
sideburndude 05.17.13	dead nigga
NeoSpaz 05.17.13	Deviant is still alive yo.
TMobotron 05.17.13	This list just sounds to me like you're starting to somewhat see EDM from the proper perspective, rather than an actual change in the scene. This is exactly how it has been. Mainstream EDM is mainstream EDM BECAUSE it's watered down to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Everything you say in your description of why the hardwell track is bad can be applied to 90% of the music he puts out. Why suddenly take offense? The reason people who pay attention eventually grow out of their appreciation for the scene is because re-hashed derivative cliches are all it takes to become popular, and the "tactic of building a song up with an excellent trance-like bridge and then dropping a stunning minimalist section on the unsuspecting audience" is somehow considered innovative or deserving of any of the praising adjectives you lumped into that statement. That tactic is as old as time, and majorly a gimmick. I mean really, if you can put so simply into words what their "tactic" is, how is it that the audience is "unsuspecting"? EDM is, by design, music for a single purpose and it isn't artistic integrity. That's not to say great music in genres like electro house doesn't exist. I use boys noise's oi oi oi as an example a lot, and while that type of music done right draws him a sizable crowd, artists like him are never going to be the "big thing" when EDM fans are more drawn to surface-level attention-grabbers. See: trap.
Aids 05.17.13	EDM is not dead, it's only in its teenage years. ps ^^^ TMobotron speaks the truth
Aids 05.17.13	pps I > E
fromtheinside 05.17.13	aids go to that one thread plz
Aids 05.17.13	which thread? you're probably tip-touching with rosaparks and lakes and shit. i'm chillin in here with straight Gs like TMobotron and liberi and Brostep and fukin butcheredchildren.
fromtheinside 05.17.13	hillary said you're a fThis Post Edited 5/17/2013ag or something, i defended your honor
fromtheinside 05.17.13	oh my god, am i going to be banned for that?
Brostep 05.17.13	I suppose it's not really that everything's changed, but rather that I'm starting to realize that a lot of stuff is starting to sound the same. I mean, there's still quite a lot of good stuff out there, but I'm starting to realize that more and more electro house is shameless ripoffs of each other. And Hardwell's "Spaceman" is really fun - that's what makes me like him in the first place. Same goes for Zedd's "Slam The Door." Or maybe it has actually become more "mass consumption" over the course of the past year or so - I don't really know.
Omaha 05.17.13	Why so grim, Acanthus??
fish. 05.17.13	What do people even consider 'EDM' to be anyway?
ViperAces 05.17.13	depeche mode 4 lyfe
Acanthus 05.17.13	@Bro - Seems like your tastes are changing in time with the music. @Omaha - EDM is an American thing, no where else did younger music listeners decide to slap a hugely commercialized term on just about everything (see the second Daft Punk review comments, funk is now EDM). Though I don't agree with all genre nitpicking some is needed/quite obvious, but that's become harder to do with the culture using names they (and in some cases I) don't understand; DJs claim to play electro, and people forget that that was it's own genre and wasn't just a term in front of "house music", the word dubstep is used for everything from dnb to reggae (with real dub mostly forgotten), and breaks appears on many a flyer only for the jockey to never even go close to the genre. This lack of understanding does a disservice to the bands and people that helped make some of this newer music possible, and yet it doesn't really stop. We've even got our own party terms now, as well as refashioned others (rip actual raves). Of course I'm younger as well, and Dev and I used to get into it over the merit of the newer music quite often; I've been trying to do better for awhile now, and just enjoy music that I find interesting regardless of nomenclature (I really, really, REALLY hated "brostep" for the longest time, same with garage and actual laid back dubstep). Being a DJ frustrated with the way my towns gigs and events work also doesn't help anything, as EDM and this local issue are closely related.
greg84 05.17.13	tl dr, but featured
andcas 05.17.13	trends be dying
ILJ 05.17.13	reading the comments in this list remind me of how little i know about electronic music fuck
Pawpnbawtlez 05.18.13	i feel very stupid saying this... but is EDM the parent genre, with all the sub genres off it, like house, dubstep, deephouse, minimal, rave, tech house etc.? Ive never heard the term EDM before. lol being serious
Jash 05.18.13	EDM will never die, but you will
Typhoner 05.18.13	Most things have been said already, but yeah: it's strange to suggest this stuff "suddenly" became shit. It's a lot broader than electronic music alone: each musical genre has some kind of dumbed-down variant that can get annoyingly popular.
StrangerofSorts 05.18.13	"i feel very stupid saying this... but is EDM the parent genre, with all the sub genres off it, like house, dubstep, deephouse, minimal, rave, tech house etc.?" Yes and no. Where a genre will give you an idea of what something sounds like, the term EDM is more about the purpose of the music. You're right to say it's an umbrella term, and it's certainly developed its own tropes and styles after entering common usage, but theoretically it defines itself: electronic dance music.
StrangerofSorts 05.18.13	@Brostep, most of the comments here can be explained by where everyone comes from music-wise. I mean, you've always been a bit of an anomaly by breaking in through the mainstream route and digging down. People like me came in from the IDM side and took some persuading before seeing EDM as anything but shit. So for people like me, it's always been a bit shit with the exception of specific artists/ releases.
fish. 05.18.13	"i feel very stupid saying this... but is EDM the parent genre, with all the sub genres off it, like house, dubstep, deephouse, minimal, rave, tech house etc.?" no. edm is a term people applied to various electronic genres at some point, specifically to the "danceable" ones.
Deviant. 05.19.13	I detest all the connotations associated with 'edm" and how it's an apparent new phenomenon in American music culture (I mean yeah, it's breached the mainstream consciousness now, but house music was born in America in the 80s and is just now finding its way back, though in an incredibly watered-down sugar coated version) but this list is really kind of pointless. I could argue that the the trends you're just now noticing have always been here (as in, all of this is shit) but that would be me insinuating that you have terrible taste in music. I'm not going to do that, even though I'm sure that a few people would expect that of me haha But to assume that this entire "scene" or whatever the fuck you want to call it is now dead is preposterous. It might not be the phenomenon that it once was, but just because Rolling Stone and any other misinformed junk-rag isn't dedicating front page space doesn't mean it has gone away, it's just had its 15 minutes and is now just another facet of the music world that will exist in all its normalcy, while the generation of drugged-up kids who walked around screaming 'I love that dubstep bra" will look for the next new thing (the new electronic take on trap music immediately springs to mind). Genres will inevitably rise and fall, both in popularity and in its own content. Dead? No Stagnant? Maybe. Look at dubstep these days (you know, the actual genre): any time experimentation was shown it was immediately regarded as something else (post dubstep, bass music etc). And now, any of the old stuff is being churned out as "deep dubstep" for some bizarre fucking reason. Listeners are fickle - they need a label for the most part, and so when dance music came back to America and everyone from Diplo to Taylor Swift began to dabble in it it needed a name. Hence, "edm". A name so it could be marketed, otherwise what else can you print on the t-shirts? "i feel very stupid saying this... but is EDM the parent genre, with all the sub genres off it, like house, dubstep, deephouse, minimal, rave, tech house etc.?" It's a marketing tool
TMobotron 05.19.13	"the generation of drugged-up kids who walked around screaming 'I love that dubstep bra" will look for the next new thing" I think one of the biggest issues with looking for "good" edm is that it's a style that's mostly aimed at kids looking to party. The stuff that's popular is popular because it's the music that makes people who aren't really into music want to party, so if you analyse it from the perspective of someone who wants a deeper look at music, you're going to have a problem with the artists who gain popularity in the scene. The audience that determines who becomes popular is an audience that does not have good taste in music, they just know what makes them want to move/dance/party on the surface with no regard for anything deeper.
Brostep 05.19.13	"Dead" is the wrong word - "past saving" is more what I'm getting at. And maybe it is that my tastes are just changing, poisoned by the venom of better music. I don't really know what it is, it just seems like recently I've been exposed to way more bad stuff that falls under the blanket term than ever before. Sue me, why don't you
Omaha 05.19.13	I'll sue you, you little asshole you! How dare you?
clercqie 05.19.13	I remember raving madly to Crookers and Dada Life a couple of years back. Good times
Brostep 05.19.13	That's what I'm talking about, kind of. I realize most good electro doesn't actually want to be labeled "EDM," but it seems as though there's less and less of that actually available nowadays. Like, look at where Dada Life's gone since then.
Brostep 05.19.13	Also, something people should probably know so they kind of understand the point of view from which I'm coming: I am the target demographic of the term "EDM." As an American teenager, the crap that comes out of Beatport's electro/progressive house sections daily is marketed towards me. And, up until about a month or so before I joined Sputnik, I ate that up. I loved it. I loved Afrojack's "unique" style, I loved most of what Skrillex did (sure, even then I thought More Monsters was just stupid, but whatever), and I was generally acting like the teenager I was. It's been hard to shift and change my viewpoint drastically, and this is just probably me maturing in terms of my musical taste. So when I say things like this post, while it's pointless to a lot of people who have believed it for a long time, it's not pointless to me, since I still identify with a lot of tropes within the EDM blanket.
TMobotron 05.19.13	A lot of my distaste comes from the fact that I was kind of into a lot of EDM stuff for awhile until I saw the same patterns being repeated over and over and grew tired of them, being amazed that no one else seemed to care that they were essentially listening to the same thing re-packaged every time they thought something was "new". A big turning point for me was when I saw Kaskade before his last album dropped and his entire set was generic electro house and even his own tracks he played were generic remixes that completely destroyed any uniqueness he had, while everyone else in the audience thought it was awesome. When one of my friends gets excited about some new big track - be it electro house, dubstep, trap, whatever - I always hear the generic formula and the same cliches that were forced down my throat over and over until I grew to hate them and despite some effort on my part I just can't really enjoy it much any more, at least not in a simple listening environment. I can of course still move to the danceable nature of house even if it's shitty if I'm at a show or something, but it's still bothersome. I really have no problem with people enjoying that kind of music even if I've grown to hate the music itself, but it annoys the shit out of me that then on the other hand pretty much the entire population where I live will think you're fucking weird if you listen to deep house, techno, or dubstep that isn't brostep. A lot of people know I like dubstep, but ofc they assume Skrillex-like stuff because they have no clue there even is another style. So any time I'm around them and dubstep gets mentioned or a brostep track gets played everyone's like "oh TMobotron you love this don't you?" - no, I fucking hate it, but I'm not about to be like "well actually the kind of dubstep I like is a very different style that's more rooted in garage and dub" because no one would know or care what the fuck I was talking about. And actually, when done right, I fucking love stuff like trap and electro-house. But the fact that it's so often done poorly is just one more frustration to add to the pile. Sorry about the rant, but I know I can come off as a bit of a dick when discussing this stuff sometimes because a lot of aspects of EDM really annoy me so I thought I should clarify why. BTW Brostep, I know you're not like the people I'm talking about in this post, but THEY contribute to my distaste for it, which obviously comes out when I talk about it.
klap 05.19.13	as long as EDM is selling and festivals like EDC are selling out within a couple days of going on-sale, the genre certainly isn't going to die anytime soon. quality and originality are def going to suffer, but that happens w every popular "fad"
andcas 05.19.13	womp womp womp and berk berk berk and stuff
Gyromania 05.19.13	tl;dr
aok 05.19.13	i skipped edc ny this year for kinda this reason. i liked afrojack a lot when i saw him a couple years ago at a festival, butlike the mainstream isn't heading in a positive direction overall much in the same way he is. at the same time, it's really easy to get down to some trashy dubstep (+ not quite as bad as it's generally made out to be) and as it branches off and stuff like trap starts taking off, better shit will start coming out again
aok 05.19.13	also what klap said
fromtheinside 05.19.13	what is musicdizcovery?
scissorlocked 05.19.13	Dev said it all actually it's also kinda sad for people believing that some genres are dead or something just because they never paid so much attention to the scenes. I mean, there's so much going on out there, and most of it is mostly limited to smaller audiences for reasons that need further discussion. And this is something pretty obvious for people concerned with what was commercially tagged as EDM, as far as they choose to scratch the surface a little. Genres like Dubstep, house, techno and all their weird branches and interconnections need to be approached from a slightly different angle, when discussing their reciprocal relationship with the mainstream eye. The whole thing, from the paradigm-shifting technological advancements to its social context, is probably something currently unexplored.
theacademy 05.19.13	the girls in krewella r total babes edm lives
Deviant. 05.20.13	It's also kind of sad that edm was ever a thing, like electronic dance music just didn't exist before 2-3 years ago
Aids 05.20.13	Deadmau5 was revolutionary. thumbs up if u agree.
clercqie 05.20.13	http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wd9qkBBPjdc Love love love
klap 05.20.13	it's just a term dev who gives a shit. like indie rock didn't exist before the term did?
fish. 05.20.13	no one danced before excision came along thank you excision
Brostep 05.20.13	#TYE?
Jash 05.20.13	"I could argue that the the trends you're just now noticing have always been here (as in, all of this is shit) but that would be me insinuating that you have terrible taste in music. I'm not going to do that, even though I'm sure that a few people would expect that of me haha" Oh my god Dev you're a saint now "And now, any of the old stuff is being churned out as "deep dubstep" for some bizarre fucking reason." I love it because you're the only person who bitches about this, most of the artists in the scene right now describe their sound to be on the "deeper" side of dubstep or "deep dark dubstep". Not to mention for years and years now Crazy D has used the term in his MC'ing for Hatcha and others "DEEPER AND DARKER WE GOOOOOOOOO" I do agree though that EDM is a marketing tool, all of the music existed before but once it started to become popular with the certain demographic and churned out lifelessly for the masses marketers needed an easy to remember umbrella term so that all the brainless frat kids with a handful of E in one hand and Jack Daniels in the other could remember what they were dancing to last night
Jash 05.20.13	Oh and m8's, I just got some killer Deadmau5 synth patches, hmu if you need em. Compressed and ready to go
theacademy 05.20.13	i also have them despite not knowing what they are or what that means ^^^
Acanthus 05.20.13	" all the brainless frat kids with a handful of E in one hand" Here it's mainly methadone, the purer MDMA isn't as easy to come by.
Jash 05.20.13	Pure MDMA isn't too hard to find where I am, done E a couple times though and i'll never do it again, just such a gross feeling during and the next day
Acanthus 05.20.13	It's my drug of choice, other than alcohol. Waited a year to find a purity level to my liking, pretty choosy on when I partake or not.
Jash 05.20.13	Yeah same here. For the last few months i've had a friend with a personal stash of literally %100 uncut M (most pure stuff you get will be just MDMA as far as drug content but it will usually be cut with a filler at some point along the lines), his rich drug dealing friend paid a chemist to buy and make the stuff for him. It gets you higher than you've ever been, but it feels so clean, and the best part is you can basically bomb a gram of the stuff and go to sleep and wake up feeling pretty fine the next day. He's down to the last of the bag though, I think this weekend was the last time i'll have got to do that stuff which is a real shame
Aids 05.20.13	the more I listen to dubstep the more I agree with Deviant on the whole "deep" dubstep thing. It's definitely a scene right now, but it's not like it's a completely new genre. We just need to put tags on things so this whole group of guys coming out right now are distinct from the other branches. It's kind of like how "future garage" is a bullshit term cause it's just garage. Like, Biome, Killawatt, Proxima etc., it would be enough to just call (most of) their music just "dubstep." Where I disagree isthat I don't think it's worth spending too much time thinking about it. We live in a musical society that is constantly coming up with new terms to describe music that probably doesn't warrant a new tag, and it's not just electronic music that this happens in. The term is harmless and is pretty descriptive, so I'm ok with using it describe this certain style of dubstep that has been coming out in the last few years. It's an interesting conversation to have in my opinion, but at the end of the day, unless we're talking about fucking witchhouse (sdghasdg;lkhawjoiawe), I don't see the harm in using these micro-genre tags, as long as they're accurately descriptive and not retarded sounding.
theacademy 05.20.13	lets all go back to listening to metalcore for edm's time has passed
Jash 05.20.13	Nobody ever said it was a new genre, it has always been a way to describe the sound within the realm of dubstep just like in house music (deep house, tech house, ect)
Vespiion 05.20.13	I actually really enjoy Alive.
Scoot 05.20.13	the crash/kalkutta remix of alive is better than the original and so much better than any of the other remixes
Gyromania 05.20.13	fucking stupid arguments over genre tags
Brostep 05.20.13	Pegboard Nerds remix of Alive is pretty legit too though
Jash 05.20.13	YIPPIE DIPPIE DIPPIE
Brostep 05.20.13	"Every second here makes my heart beat faster-er-er" (double time wubs)
FourthReich 05.20.13	edm? sounds like a venereal disease.
theacademy 05.20.13	korn is keeping edm in good shape edm lives
Acanthus 05.21.13	@Jash - very nice, normally take Magnesium with my 5HTP so I can sleep after, cool that your friend had such good stuff
Jash 05.21.13	I usually never have a problem sleeping, I do hit up the 5HTP the day after though
Deviant. 05.21.13	"Nobody ever said it was a new genre, it has always been a way to describe the sound within the realm of dubstep just like in house music (deep house, tech house, ect)" The thing here is that isn't anything separate from everything that came before it, to the point where it almost just feels like a way of simply showing some differentiation from the American "dubstep" scene. You talk about "going deeper" - that was the whole point of meditating on bass weight. The whole "deep dubstep" thing is just a simple recycling of tunes that were rinsed out into oblivion 6 years ago. Personal opinions on the state of dubstep today aside, it's not really a realm within the genre. It's still just the genre
clercqie 05.21.13	Egh, more than enough quality releases still.
Deviant. 05.21.13	I haven't heard anything worth getting excited about lately to be honest. Biome's Spawned was a fresh breath of air, but that's only because he had the nous to expand beyond dubstep. Balkansky's latest was similarly great, but again: it's the outside influence that's working on that one I'm certainly not arguing that the genre's dead (or whatever) because there is still enough talent floating around, but it's certainly not producing anything revelatory at the moment. Which is fine, but unlike Brostep I don't think it's cause to believe that the genre (any genre) has died as a result
TomArnoldsArmpit 05.21.13	club it up
TomArnoldsArmpit 05.21.13	what the fuck is "future garage"? am I really that out of touch
ilovetree 05.21.13	burial = D D D D
Deviant. 05.21.13	"what the fuck is "future garage"?" Garage went away for awhile then came back, someone* thought they should throw a "future" on the front of it *That someone was Whistla but even then...
fish. 05.21.13	Often it's got some atmospheric ideas as well but that's not particularly new either http://futuregrooves.bandcamp.com/album/future-grooves-vol-1
theacademy 05.21.13	worst user ever^^^ participating in this discussion???? edm is surely dead, may she rest in peace