Dubstep Turned Me Back "On"
I’m not sure where I’m going with this, but….
I used to love Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I still have a healthy respect for them now, but I don’t know that I would characterize my feelings for them quite so strongly. I was just in the kitchen thinking about their theme song when a very distinct memory came over me.
I lost my ability to play with action figures. I don’t remember exactly how old I was, or what day it was, or anything like that, but I remember the incident, and remember the absolute confusion I felt when it happened. I was sitting on my bedroom floor, I has set up the TMNT action figures, I was ready to go, and then I just hit some sort of mental blank spot. I didn’t know what to do. I was overcome with the feeling that none of this made sense. I was a little embarrassed. I didn’t say anything about it, and I think my first conscious reaction to it was “no one can know that I just wasted my allowance on something that secretly makes no sense to me anymore…”
My taste in music have shifted and changed over the years. At one point in my twenties I had a very “Stan Marsh” (of South Park, season 15 episode 7) reaction to popular music that ended up bleeding into all music, and helped fuel a self-inflicted music moratorium for some 10 years or so. I literally lost touch with music all together. My ears sort of just turned off. Its amazing how much music is constantly around us all the time, and how I was able to just tune it out on the pretentious presumption that it all sounds the same and everyone is ripping everyone else off.
I really got to a dark place when I started to hate Primus. That was a hard day. I LOVED Primus, and to be listening to them one afternoon, and think to myself, “eh.” It was surreal.
I was turned around in a rather surprising way. I saw a clip in a YouTube video that I couldn’t stop watching. It wasn’t just the dancing, although I think that was my initial draw, it was the music.
I had a 1984 Casio keyboard the was given to me before even my first bass guitar for one of my preteen birthdays, I don’t know which. I kept that keyboard and used that Casio drum machine, and sound effects to write music right up until my self-imposed ban on music. I loved weird digital noises, and especially enjoyed taking alternative sounds like record scratches, instrument cable distortion, and movie clips and incorporating it into compositions. I made a whole cassette tape of it that never saw the light of day. There was something about taking not only the abstract sounds of life and converting it into songs that I captivated me, it was the incorporation of digital technology that bridged this invisible gap that I envisioned occurring between mankind and our innovative minds. There was so much, (and still is) fear about A.I., which I never saw as anything but an extension of our creativity. But I digress.
I watched Marques Scott dance to a dubstep version of “Pumped Up Kicks” in 2012 and I fell in love with music all over again. This was music like I had never heard, and a series of motion that wasn’t just the breakdancing or pop-and-lock style from Brooklyn. This made me feel like someone else felt like I did, and that music surrounds us all the time, and that it wasn’t just some crude academic fumbling of theoretical application, but the organic processes of life that we orchestrated every day as we traversed our own challenges and successes.
A bit over dramatic, for sure, but I heard strange digital and analog noises that someone had arranged into beautiful melodies and rhythmically intricate patterns. Dubstep is what turned me back on, and over the period of a few months, I got back the ability to appreciate and love music again. Today, I have no prejudices. I may not personally enjoy a style, but all music is worthy of love.
I suppose I will just add, that for me, the experience of dubstep and dance are almost inextricable. I feel like the physical representation of the music is so fitfully intertwined, that without it, it’s only half the performance. The dancing is this imitation of digital motion to digital music that is an imitation of human endeavor. The beauty of this partnership is amazing to me, and I’m forever grateful that it re-awakened my love for music.
Perhaps it’s not your own cup of tea, but here is one of my favorite “wobble” dubstep mixes called Sinkhole by Noisia. Even without dancing, this half of the story is pretty amazing: