Moving on from Drum n Bass

Not that long ago i used to love drum n bass, i practically lived for it. Anyone that remembers Underdog will know how passionate i was about the music then. I suppose a lot of shit went on at the time that made me want to step away from that scene. It doesn't help that now as i get older i see more and more youngsters at DnB nights and increasingly less of my older friends.

I'm sure the kids that are into it now really enjoy it and i don't wanna sound like some old fart when i say "Its not as good as it used to be" but it really aint. Like all genres there are high points and low points. When i was doing Underdog from around 99-04 DnB went through quite a change. Tech-step started to get more inventive and interesting, producers started mixing their influences into the tunes and there was a lot of real creativity, the whole genre became varied and interesting.

Right now, all i hear in DnB is the same shit as the next tune. Its all so formulaic, same beats, same basslines, same sounds. Theres hardly any real innovation in DnB right now and that bores me. My tastes have always been varied, i grew up on heavy metal and i think theres so much scope within electronic music to really push back boundaries. Problem is these boundaries are so fixed in place thats its really quite hard to break em. Every genre has its own tempo and its own definitive formula for what works. DnB isn't alone here.

So where does that leave those artists that want to make something original? How can anyone really try to be different when each every scene encourages the artists to be the same? Its that which perpetuates the steady fall in quality that has become so evident within DnB. Where a few years ago, producers tried something different in their music, those ideas have become the standard and now its all the same again.

Pendulum are trying something different now, like em or hate em you have to give credit for that, but it seems like they've been cast out of the DnB scene. No surprise when you consider that the biggest names in DnB are the same DJs who were around 10-15 years ago, hardly cutting edge.

Infact, i think thats where a lot of the problem lies. The scene has been manufactured in such a way that the select few who were there at the beginning are the ones that are at the top now. Still the big names on a flyer, these are the ones getting the respect for playing tunes made by the lesser-known producers. The old boys are the ones charging top-dollar to do something anyone with a pair of decks can do (often better). The whole dubplate culture perpetuates this heirarchy even more.

No wonder then that a lot of people are moving towards dubstep now, buts thats just another genre with own set of developing rules, dubstep will have its time, there will be a commercial point and everyone will hate it and probably go back to DnB, and so the cycle continues.

The point i'm getting at is that drum n bass, like any genre is ultimately going to be restrictive. A killer tune has to fit within a given set of rules in order to work. The tempo has to be the same in order to mix it with any other DnB tune. All that really matters is the drop anyway, the rest of the tune is just filler.

All of this is why i feel so disillusioned with drum n bass right now. I still enjoy the tunes i used to love, the classics. But right now i'm far more excited by the vast wealth of good music that exists outside of that scene. In this day and age of the internet theres no need for something as closed as the DnB scene to dictate to me, you or anyone whats good and whats not.