After publishing my debut (drum & bass) album in 2008, I had to finish university. But since I am almost graduating now and I am starting to write new music again. Since then, the electronic dance music (EDM) scene has changed completely.
Some five years ago, people were nit-picky about genres. If you were a drum & bass producer, that’s what you did, drum & bass. Wanted to try write electro house music? Get another name, cause you’d be laughed at for doing electro house. Then dubstep blew up and with bass music for the first time critically hitting the mainstream, it also somehow blew away many of the distinctions between electronic music genres. It seems that a new generation of listeners simply does not care which genre a track is. The fact that drum & bass, dubstep and many other bass-oriented genres are now often put under the umbrella-term ‘bass music’ is a testament to that fact.
It’s especially good for drum & bass, since it has been one of the most inward-looking genre cultures I have ever seen. I remember back in 2007 when drum & bass outfit Pendulum released their more mainstream album Hold Your Colours, they received a huge amount of criticism on the drum & bass forum DogsOnAcid. Pendulum’s Rob Swire responded:
“I never wanted to make straight up dnb — it was never on the cards.
“Oh, and by the way – I’m not sure if drum and bass is dead or dying (I’ve been in the studio / on tour too long to tell).
“However, if your genre was flimsy enough to be knocked over by ONE SINGLE RECORDING ARTIST who happened to – god forbid – sell some fucking records for the first time in about 5/6 years, then I’m glad it was us that got to drive the final stake through its stale pig shit heart – and good riddance.
I can’t even imagine the time when he wrote that, since things have changed so drastically. And it’s great that genres have become less important. There’s still genres and people use their names, but they’re less important. People cross over much more than before and on top of that with remix and bootleg culture now huge, everyone remixes everyone without permission, and it’s fine. It’s probably never been a more fruitful time for electronic music than right now.
Now, I was actually writing this to show my new music work, but got slightly side-tracked. To continue: I am pursuing to create a fresh sound that disregards genre. So, this is the first track that I’m really happy with again. It’s called Cockblockalypse and may be part of my first EP that will be out this year, I say may cause you cannot point your finger on these things, ever.
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