One small dubstep for man...

Many of us have at one stage in our life danced to what sounds like four robots having a seizure inside an oversized industrial garbage compacter, but there are very few who are clued up as to how this musical genre became a clubbing staple. Thanks to startling new evidence uncovered by researchers at the Department of Research in Underground Music and the Bachman Association for Statistical Studies, the true origins of this musical form have been thrust into the spotlight.

“It all started in early 2003,” says Head Researcher for the teams from DRUM and BASS, Rone Exskill. “According to a diary entry by a smalltime DJ at a small indie event in California, he spilt his drink on the soundboard, causing it to malfunction. Being a student, he couldn’t afford the repairs to the expensive hardware, and so he just kept acting like he was DJ’ing.”

The ploy worked, and slowly the secret spread. By Spring of 2005, Disc Jockeys across the country had their own busted equipment. 

Some of the early equipment is now housed in the Museum of Dubstep.

“It was a golden era, man,” recalls ex-DJ LooseKable. “I remember we’d all go around old tips and to Cash Crusaders and buy up all their crappy equipment. The more pops, squeaks and feedback we could get, the better. Sometimes we’d put all of our CDs and equipment onto one wooden base and throw it off a building – hence the expression, ‘dropping the base’. And best of all is that the people didn’t even notice. Hell, we were praised as geniuses.”

Dubstep DJs became more and more creative and bold with their music mixing, making more and more complex tracks to dance to, or rather, to shake your body back and forth like a velociraptor to while you reel around drunk, a cigarette in your hand that you’re not even smoking.

“We started playing around with all kinds of completely effed music,” tells LooseKable. “Broken CDs, cracked vinyls… even a few Nickleback albums.”

It wasn’t to last, however. Soon, the secret methods behind early dubstep had reached ears further to the East coast. New and more creative forms of dubstep coming from emerging talent forced the old stuff into obsolescence.

“After early 2006, things just weren’t the same again,” recall ex-DJs PoppedWoofer and WhiteNoiz. “A whole new bunch of DJs swept in and changed the whole game. Ever since Skrillex dropped his phone into a blender whilst Transformers 3 was playing on a broken television in the background, there’s been a lot of fierce competition.”

The early pioneers of the music genre were soon left without a crowd. “They moved on quickly,” said WhiteNoiz. He now works in Debonairs – the only place, he says, where he can still drop the base from time to time, even if his manager threatens to fire him after each offence.

When asked whether he’ll ever touch his decks again, WhiteNoiz smiles. “I’ve been playing around with a new form of dubstep: live dubstep. I’ve had marginal success with forcing a bunch of cats and a screwy microphone into a bag and beating it against a sheet of tin, but we’ll just have to see where it goes from here.”