Bass Attack

A collaboration with four Mumbai DJs — DJ Uri,Bandish Projekt,DJ Pravvy Prav and DJ Randolph — Bonobo’s Wobble nights began five months ago,at a time when clubbers in Mumbai were already aware of dubstep as a genre of music. And that,Timbadia believes,is the key to the popularity of these nights at Bonobo. “Had we started our Wobble nights a year-and-a-half ago,it might have been different,” he says. This Friday marked the fifth of these nights.

But Bonobo isn’t the only bar that has taken to playing dubstep on a regular basis. Bangalore,for instance,has become one of the most popular destinations for dubstep. East London born DJ Uri,who is one of the brains behind the Wobble nights,has been playing dubstep in India for close to three years and tells us that Bangalore is his favourite place to play. “Bangalore draws the most concentrated crowd for dubstep and it’s always a totally crazy crowd,” he says.

Krunk,an all-India artiste booking agency,launched the Bass Camp festival in February 2010,and in its four rounds,so far,have featured leading Indian dubstep artists such as Mumbai’s Bay Beat Collective,Bangalore’s Vachan Chinnappa and Delhi’s Nucleya,thus contributing immensely to the growth of dubstep in the country.

Dubstep is traditionally electronic dance music with heavy bass and drum patterns that tend to reverberate. When it first began as an underground movement in a town called Croydon in South London,England,the sound was bass-driven but more experimental. As a genre,dubstep is believed to have evolved from dub music,which in turn grew out of reggae in the 1960s. In the late 1980s,DJs began altering the speed at which dub music was played,and this led to the birth of a genre commonly called jungle. Some 15 years later,they began incorporating the dark elements of drum and bass into two-step garage tracks,and the genre of electronic music that resulted came to be called dubstep — a name taken from the previously established dub music.

This,however,was a little over 10 years ago,and since then,the sound has changed dramatically. Today,dubstep artists from all over the world play their own versions of the established genre. Magnetic Man,for instance,a group comprising dubstep bigwigs,Benga,Skream and Artwork,released their debut single,I Need Air,in July 2010,and this had a newer

electro-pop feel to it.

Drawn by its powerful sound,now even commercial pop artists use dubstep in their songs. But this may not be an entirely good thing,believes Sohail Arora,DJ for Bay Beat Collective and founder of Krunk. “The rise of a genre too fast often leads to its fall,” he says. DJ Uri echoes that sentiment.

“The market in the UK has become very saturated with dubstep,and it

has become very commercial,” he says. And for this reason,he prefers to play dubstep in India. The scene here at the moment,he believes,is what it was like in the UK before it became commercial. And that can only be a good thing.