If minimalism is an art form stripped back to its fundamental elements then a genre of music built solely around bass & drums should have, by definition, the principle of minimalism at its very core. Yet the recent surge in minimal drum and bass, led by artists such as Data, Instra:mental, D-Bridge and others, has been a revelation, and given the anticipation surrounding forthcoming material by these artists and the favour it has found with numerous a list DJ’s, its rise looks set to continue. But where did this sound come from and why did it come about? And moreover, is it really drum & bass?
The where and the why can be answered easily by just one word – dubstep. Born out of the remains of UK Garage, which by the early 2000’s had been crushed by the weight of its own commercialization and mainstream success, dubstep took UKG and applied the concepts of minimalism to it, with its emphasis on deep sub bass and sparse beats. One artist that really caught the public’s imagination was Burial, and his sound and the influence it has had on drum & bass cannot be under-estimated. In a recent interview with everydayjunglist, Metalheadz’s Data pointed at the significance of Burials ‘Untrue’ album and the effect it has had on d&b.
“That album, in my opinion, broke many barriers that had appeared within the music scene, the grimy, lo-fi sound seems to be the opposite of what was going around. Big bashy synths, over compressed drums, hard quantizing, were dropped in favour of crackles, off time loops etc. It’s music that let it’s vibe do the talking. I think that many producers came around again to the thinking that vibe was the most important part of a tune.”
Due to its nature, minimal music is very precise in its approach. There is no ‘filler’ in minimalism, as each element, note & sound has its own important place and it is this precise approach that has allowed producers a greater scope to experiment with their music. Slight alterations in the arrangement and composition of a track can dramatically alter the mood and feel of it. This spirit of experimentalism harks back to the days of drum & bass old, the time of its birth when it was at the cutting edge of underground British music. Back in the late 80’s and early 90’s, the boundaries between Acid House & Hardcore began to blur and producers capitalised on this grey area to create a more breakbeat orientated style that would later become drum & bass as we know it today. It is when lines cross and definitions of what should be what get lost that new ideas come to the fore, and it is just this that has allowed drum & bass to go down the ‘minimal’ path it currently finds its self on as producers and dj’s have started to play with the pre-conceived notions of what defines drum & bass.
It is worth noting that this dramatic shift in sound away from ‘the norm’ is not a one off. In the early to mid nineties, ‘intelligent’ drum & bass was king. Spearheaded by artists such as LTJ Bukem, Photek and Alex Reece, the style quickly gained mainstream popularity and success, with the latter two artists securing deals on major labels. Backlash against this from the more underground artists quickly followed however, especially in the case of Alex Reece who was ostracised by Goldie for his commercial leanings, and the result was the birth of darker forms of the music such as neurofunk and techstep, cemented and defined by Ed Rush & Optical’s seminal ‘Wormhole LP’. Much similar can be seen to have happened in recent years also. Pendulum achieved enormous cross-over success with their ‘Hold Your Colour LP’, which broke into the UK top 40, selling over 175,000 copies and getting regular airplay on Radio 1 and other major stations. Other artists followed in their footsteps such as Chase & Status and to a lesser extent the Brookes Brothers and this recent commercial success has no doubt contributed to dramatic shift away from this stylised ‘stadium drum & bass’ sound.
As well as allowing greater scope for experimentation in production, another factor that can be said to have contributed to the rise of minimal d&b is the desire by DJ’s to add something more to their sets. Again, dubstep can be seen to have had an influence over this as given its tempo and structure, it lends itself to far many more differing types of music, and in turn has itself been influenced by a multitude of genres. Techno, Funky, Garage and Grime all blend seamlessly with dubstep letting DJ’s create multi genre sets that keep the listener entertained in a way that one style cannot. A criticism that has been levelled at some drum & bass dj’s time and again is their propensity to ‘anthem bash’ for an hour and be done with it. While short set times and the desire of promoters to fit as many different dj’s on the bill as once has undoubtedly contributed to this, the fact there is little music that readily fits into d&b sets has also had an effect. With music piracy so rampant, many have come to rely on dj’ing and live performances as means to sustain their careers in the music industry as so little money is made from releasing music today. As such, the desire is there from dj’s and producers alike to create more of a show for those paying money to see them play.
Yet can the product of this new found experimentalism really be called drum & bass? Many of the tracks being produced under this ‘minimal’ d&b heading do not conform to any of the attributes that make drum & bass drum & bass. In the same way that funky isn’t techno just because they mix together, it seems daft to classify something as d&b just because dj’s can mix the two together in sets. A perfect example is Abstract Elements’s track ‘Fourth Dimension’ which is currently doing the rounds on dub and getting played by Loxy, D-Bridge, Instra:Mental et al. This is a track written at 80-90 bpm, with no real drums to speak of, save for a muffled kick drum to anchor the beat. It has far more in common with downtempo or ambient music than drum & bass, yet it seems to be classified as drum & bass because some of the scene’s leading names have been dropping it in their sets.
Despite this forward thinking approach, it could be seen to be counter productive. Drum & Bass is undoubtedly music for the dancefloor. In a club environment, energy levels are high and the crowd rightly expect them to remain so. Ambient music is anything but energetic and it could be argued that dropping ambient style tracks in drum & bass sets kills the vibe somewhat. It has lead to some heavy criticism of minimal d&b with many branding it ‘undanceable’, which in turn could push it away from the clubs and into people homes and ipods. This would be no bad thing save for the fact that a lot of don’t pay for the music they listen to at home anymore preferring to download it illegally, and if people aren’t buying a producers music, or paying to see them play, then it will make it unsustainable in the long term.
What is needed is a happy medium, tracks fusing the gritty, atmospheric experimentalism of tunes like Data’s ‘Blowpipe’ with the dancefloor vibes of ‘Tear You Down’ by the Brookes Brothers. Ok, perhaps that would sound awful, but the ideal behind it is a good one. A lot of things have been written, debated, argued, blogged etc in recent times about the state of Drum & Bass. Many think it is dead, or dying, many have jumped ship to dubstep seeing it as the new sound of underground music in Britain, with producers pushing boundaries and creating sounds no-one has heard before. Many would be inclined to agree with the latter half of this statement. Dubstep is new and exciting, as Drum & Bass once was, but it is whether this can be maintained that is the question that remains unanswered as yet. It must be remembered that drum & bass is a music that has been around for the best part of twenty years now. It has years of history and the weight of expectation weighing heavy on its shoulders, but with producers still pushing boundaries today, and judging by the amount of quality music to come out in the first few months of 2009 alone, Drum & Bass is in a healthier state and is more exciting than it has been for some time and this wave of minimalism is playing a big part in this.
Words: Tom Stewart
If you have a view on this article, make it known and drop it in the comments box below…
