Dubstep for New Listeners!

When I started listening to Dubstep I disliked it. I couldn’t get my head around the range of artists and the mechanical music. I thought that Dubstep is similar to trance where they just add beats after beats with no poetry, no skill and no soul.

I was wrong.

I was wrong because I was yet to explore and find music that would satiate my hunger for beautiful noise that I wanted from trance but could never get. It was the hunger for the extra bass that wouldn’t suit metal and would sound way off on any kind of pop.

Now, a lot of people want to explore the genre. People keep asking me which artists to listen to when they are new to dubstep. So, here are some of the artists who are easy to listen to for crowd that is coming from metal, rock, hip-hop, pop genres. This is not a definitive playlist for those new to dubstep. If you’re game to explore, find what your ears like and keep on exploring. There is always new, good awesome music out there. Here are the five tracks I think are suitable for new listeners.

Tommy's Theme by Noisia

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Breakin' A Sweat - Skrillex 

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Discord by Midnight Conspiracy

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Speechless by Breakage (feat. Donae'o)

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Promises - Nero and Skrillex

Enjoyed those? I hope you did. These five are good songs to give listeners a taste of Dubstep, after that it’s up to personal exploration and taste of the artists that you like.

How to find New Dubstep music?

You can search Google for Dubstep, but that would be confusing with SO many results, few of them actually relevant. Best methods would be

1) Explore Twitter for #dubstep and follow the recommendation of people. 

2) Join the Facebook pages of artists you like because the community is strong in the genre and artists often collaborate with other artists and keep offering free music through their FB pages. 

3) You can also search Soundcloud.com for Dubstep, there is some awesome free music there. 

4) There are internet radio channels, you’ve got your apps on smartphones and what not. 

Find songs with female vocals, rap verses, spoken poetry, find slow dubstep, fast dubstep, feel the wobble bass, the wub, it will move you! 

And when you find good music, share with others. If you like the work of artists, buy their music, if you can’t buy it, tell someone who CAN buy it. International readers can go and attend concerts and parties and stuff. 

So, get some deadly speakers, find an hour long dubstep mix, and play it LOUD!

Do share in comments how you liked these tracks and what YOUR favorite tracks/artists are!

Cheers!

--EDIT--
Suggestions from the comments

Zedekiah said...

One more recco for you http://soundcloud.com/breed/kelly-dean-steady-juakali-smoke-clears-breed-remix

trippykrip said...

Bangarang and Reptile should've been on the list for new listeners, those tracks sound more mainstream.
You guys must checkout Rusko and Netsky as well.

Acedip said...

nice, i'm a big fan. artists i'd like to add sia ana,akira-koan sound,Tek One-Broken String. anyway, the important thing is, it'd be great to hear about clubs or pubs too playing dubstep in india.

Shadow Zone - Part 4 - Pentagrams

Your ear itches but your hands are tied. There is a raging hangover hammering behind your eyeballs, but you've got bigger problems on your hands. Which are tied. You try to squirm and move your hands but whoever tied the knots knew what they were doing. The gangster is sitting in the middle of the two pentagrams. One where Nancy Negative's dead body lies and the other where you're tied up. This has all the makings of an epic shitfest. The candles burn brighter as the gangster turns up the volume of his chants. The pressure in the room drops and your ears pop as a wind picks up. There are shadows moving in the corner of your vision but when you turn your head to look at them, they are gone. 

The chair on which you are tied up slides to and fro, then there is a pressure on your legs and shoulders. Ghost fingers, light as winter sunlight touch your cheeks and a whispered kiss traces your lips. It feels like love and it feels like death.

Her arms are warm around your neck.

"I've waited for you," she whispers.

"You're dead. "

"Was, my darling, was. Now, I will use your soul and her body to come back to life."

"My soul is mine."

"We'll see to that claim very soon, love."

Her face flickers like a TV screen trying to show a picture on a very bad signal. She is still a beauty, just as she was the night she died. For a moment, you're temped to give away your life so that her beautiful face can grace the earth again. She flickers again, and through the emptiness, you see Nancy's body slowly spinning in the pentagram. A piece of bloody brain falls from her skull and makes a sound like a jam loaded piece of bread hitting the floor. You swallow bile rising from your throat.

"No. My soul is mine."  

Nancy's body now floats in the air, her arms and legs splayed wide open, and the wound in her head slithering with remains of what was once her brain. Everything slowly slips into a dream like state. The candles take on sound and color and burn like miniature suns, the red lines of the two pentagrams slither and snap at each other and somewhere far to your right, there is a crash and a loud boom. It rattles your brain inside your skull and suddenly the pressure on your legs is gone. There is no one sitting there anymore and there are no more ghost kisses on your lips. 

 

Someone is untying your hands. A familiar face. The girl from the docks who was in her transparent shirt looking for business. She has a shotgun hanging from one shoulder and she is saying something to you but you can barely make out the words like Nancy…hoodoo shit…the body. Nancy's body is back on the floor. The pentagrams extinguished. The candles give off a strange scent from the slow smoldering wicks. The gangster is nowhere to be seen. But you know where he will be. The map of this place is clear in your head from the one previous visit. The bedroom is the clearest destination in your head.

 

"I'll borrow that," you croak to the girl and take the shotgun off her shoulder. The gun is loaded and there are six shells taped to either side of the barrel. More than enough for what you're about to do. You stumble and feel your way up the stairs, the shotgun pointed in front of you like an old man's accusing finger. There are blood drops on the floor and they lead to the room where you're going.

 

You kick open the door and half stumble and half fall into the room. The gangster is lying on his bed. The rotten and dug up body of his daughter lies by his side. A wide gash on his head it leaking blood that has stained the pillow. There is an overpowering smell of perfume and incense in the room but even that can't hide the decay that is lying on the bed with the gangster.

 

"I-I loved her. I had t-to bring her back." He babbles, but it's just bullshit of a different color to you. They should have never killed Nancy. They should've never woken the ghosts of those who were gone.

 

"You were not the only one who loved her," you tell him and shoot him point blank in the face. The sound is loud in the room and it hurts your alcoholized brain. You pick bottles of perfume from the tables in the room and start breaking them on the floor, the drapes and the walls of the room. After that, the room only needs a sight of your lighter and it's on fire. You drop the shotgun on the floor and walk out of the house. The girl you once loved, now just a shell, left burning in the building. 

 

It's still raining outside, alight drizzle now, when you light up a cigarette and start to wait at the corner of a street for a new accident.

Shadow Zone - Part 3 - The Gangster's Girl

The voice that you heard in the shipping container is still ringing in your ear like a catchy song. But there is nothing catchy about it. It's just morbid. Spooky and morbid. After the noise of the gunshot had died down, you fumbled your way out of the jungle of shipping containers. You reached the only place where you knew you'd be able to get your thoughts in some semblance of order and then think how to get out of this strange jam. The place was just another shady bar from the hundreds of shady bars in the city. The bartender was Sam Jiggles, a fat man with two chins too many and a bad case of combover on his balding dome. For some reason Sam was wearing a bow-tie today. You took a stool near the bar and ordered your usual. Sam brought you the drink with as much compassion as a coroner shows to a corpse. The foul smelling liquid looks specially rancid today but you knock it down your gullet anyway. 

The burn from the alcohol sends jolts and shakes all the way up to your brain and the first thing that comes to your mind voice in the shipping container. You remember the voice, it belongs to a girl from years ago. The girl died because you were too confident for your own good and for hers too. It was not a pretty death. Her father was one of biggest gangsters in the city and he gave you a hell of time for fucking up something as simple as drop money and pick the girl operation. As clarity slowly dawns, you realize that you fucked up your last pick and drop operation too when someone bumped into you on the sidewalk. This calls for another glass of the burning firewater. You signal the barkeep and he slides another glass filled with transparent, brown liquid. 

Night progresses. 

The clock in your head says it's around 3 AM when you move your ass from the stool. The bar swirls for a while and it takes a few seconds for the whole scenery to stabilize. You take a step towards the door and then another and another but the door is not getting any closer. A man appears in your field of vision. It's almost 3.05 AM and he is wearing black sunglasses. He looks a little like a penguin.

"We've been looking for you all over," he says as you stumble in his arms and puke all over his penguin suit.

Awakening

Your head pounds like thousand gerbils jumping on a tin roof. You open your eyes and it's only darkness. You think you've gone blind but after two seconds of furious blinking you realize there is a black cloth bag over your face. The stink of vomit if all over you. This should teach you to not drink on an empty stomach, but when have you ever learned from mistakes like these? Your hands are tied too and tied tight. You try to speak out but your tongue is cotton wool in your mouth. 

"Finally, you're awake!" A giant voice booms so loud that it hurts the deep bottom of your brain. Someone pulls the cloth bag off your head and the lights hurt like everything else.

"What the fuck is all this?" 

Everything is a blur and you can only make out blobs of people standing in front of you. You close one eye and try to focus but even that doesn't help. Someone throws a glass of water in your face.You shake the water off your eyes and look at the people around you. It's the gangster and his men. The same person whose daughter died because of your mistake. He has you tied to a chair and the chair is in middle of a pentagram. There are black candles burning on all five points of the pentagram. This is some heavy hoodoo shit. 

"She's back?" you ask.

"She's back," the gangster smiles, "my little doll is back."

"What does this have to do with me?"

"She needs your soul."

"Fuck you."

The room suddenly falls all dark and the candles light up on their own. The pentagram glows with a throbbing red buzz and then you see Nancy Negative's ruined body lying in another pentagram across the room.

"This will hurt a lot," the gangster grins at you again. 

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Ah, magic hoodoo shit. SHIT!

Shadow Zone - Part 2 - The Knife and Nancy Negative

[Read Part 1 here]

You run till your heart threatens to burst out of your chest and the sirens are but a fading memory. 

You're far away from where you wanted to go but you're right where you wanted to be. Away from the scene of crime. The address on the business card in your pocket got left far behind and it doesn't make any sense to go back there. The police would be on that place like flies on hot shit. Someone must have ratted you out. The same someone who stole your gun, killed the taxi driver and put this bloody knife in your pocket. The knife is still in your hand. Its blade gleaming almost black with blood. You open your fist and look at the knife again. There is a silver dragon etched in the handle of the knife. You press the dragon and the blade calmly slides back inside the handle. You don't know much about knives, gun are your forte, but you surely know someone who does know her knives. 

Nancy Negative

Like every person in this city, Nancy has an interesting story too. She came here as a slave to be sold off in the prostitution rings that work the harbor market. She was sixteen. On her first night on the job, she "grievously injured" her first client. She had sharpened a spoon handle to perfection and used it as a make shift knife. Her pimp knew he could use her talents elsewhere in the business so he put a complete area under her control and told her to manage the business. Even today it is said in the streets that none of Nancy's girls were ever harmed by their customers and they were always paid their price in full. The few customers who dared to harm Nancy's girls were fish buffet before they saw another sunrise. 

Nancy Negative is your best friend and she knows knives like a teenage girl knows her barbies.

She lives in one of the shipping containers near the dock. The harbor area is quiet like always and the clock in your head tell you that it's 1 AM. The time is ripe for business. You find one of Nancy's girls and tell her that you want to meet her boss. The girl is a plucky little thing dressed in a schoolgirl outfit, her shirt almost transparent with nothing underneath. A sight that would get her business on the street but it's something you've seen enough for it to lose its charm for you. She tells you to follow her and takes you through the random paths among the shipping containers that lie haphazardly in the storage bay on the harbor. Every evening Nancy moves to a different container because she believes in some shitfuck vastu eastern philosophy. 

Tonight it's a green container. The school girl knocks on the door of the container. Tap-Tap-TapTap-Tap. Something moves inside the container and the schoolgirl leaves you standing there, waiting for the door of the shipping container to open. When nothing happens for two more minutes, you take the initiative and push open the door of the container by yourself.

Nancy has lit a candle in the far end of the container. You walk towards her. She is sitting in a chair, and as you get closer, you realize she is not wearing any clothes. Her body is covered in a thin film of sweat and there is a book in her lap. The light of the candle flickers as a sudden gust of wind moves inside the container. You get close enough to see her face and she has a thousand yard stare in her eyes. Something makes a grinding noise outside the container.

"Nancy, doll, are you okay?"

"Give me the knife?" she says.

This is spooky, but you take out the knife anyway and show it to her.

"I've got the knife right here. I'll give it to you. Are you sure you're okay? Why aren't you wearing any clothes?"

You put the knife on the table where the candle flickers again.

She just stares at the knife. A tear falls from the corner of her eye. This is not the girl you once knew. The girl who once cut Johnny Antelope into so many pieces that they had to vacuum his pieces for his funeral. 

The book in her lap is a thick leather bound journal. She opens the book and its pages are cut in a hollow shape of a gun. Your gun. The gun that was stolen from you a little while ago.

She picks the gun from the hollow.

"Don't do this, Nancy."

"I'm sorry."

"Just hand me the gun. It'll all be okay."

Nancy puts the gun to her temple and pulls the trigger.

The blast is loud like a canonball's boom in the steel confines of the container. 

Nancy's body spasms once and her foot knocks off the candle on the table. 

The container is dipped in darkness.

And a voice whispers in your ear. 

"Welcome to the shadow zone," 

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Part 3 tomorrow. If you liked reading it, please feel free to share buttons given right below this line. Thanks!

Shadow Zone -- Part 1

The night in this city is as dirty as it can be and even the constantly falling rain hasn't washed away the filth.

You stand on the corner of the street, out of the circle of light from a dying street lamp, and light another cigarette. The motion of flicking the lighter's wheel feels alien to you but touching the flame to the cigarette's tip and then sucking the fire in feels like a kiss from a lost lover. Comprehension will take it's own sweet time, but you take a deep drag anyway. The grey smoke curls from the corners of your lips, from your nose and clarity dawns. You are waiting for a package and the girl who was supposed to deliver the package is late by twenty minutes. The clock in your head tells you that it's twenty past eleven. You trust it. That's why you don't wear a watch anymore. You rub the cigarette against a wall and decide to look for the girl yourself.

By now, the rain has slowed in its intensity and it's only a half hearted drizzle that gives the sidewalks a wet, glistening look. It always rains in this city.

You stop under another street lamp and take out the business card from your coat's inner pocket. Your hand brushes past the comfortable weight of the gun in your shoulder holster. The writing on the card is immaculate, all the letters are formed so perfectly that it looks like it's been printed. You like it. You'd not accept anything less from your own handwriting. 

The address on the card is few blocks away from where you stand. You decide to walk. The wait has been long and you feel like stretching your legs for a while. The taxis pass you by on the road, few of them blink their lights in hope of picking up a passenger but you don't pay them any attention. At this time there are very few people on the sidewalk, and those who are outside are hurrying to one place or the other. You pity them and their rat lives. Always rushing, running, trapped in the same routine. 

Another car blinks its headlights at you and then it starts to turn towards you. Before you can move out of the way, the car stops, its headlights pointed at you on high beams. You shade your eyes from the glare and someone bumps into you on the sidewalk and as you fall, you feel a hand make its way inside your coat. You roll with the motion and get up in a crouch, your hand pats your shoulder holster for the gun, but it's gone! 

You look for the person who bumped into you but the sidewalk is empty. The taxi is still pointed to the sidewalk, though. You walk up to the driver's window and look inside. The driver's throat is open from ear to ear, a grin from hell etched on to his throat. Written in blood by something sharp and nasty. You don't need to feel the driver's pulse to know he is dead.

A creature of habit your hand moves to your pocket for the cigarettes and you feel something heavy in your pocket. It's not your gun. You grip the thing by its handle and take it out. 

It's a knife with a nasty blade and the blade has blood on it.

Somewhere behind you sirens start to wail.

You run.

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Part two, tomorrow.

This at 4.43 AM

Been some time.

I've been busy reading A Song of Ice and Fire books. I have no idea why I started those in the middle of November, just when I was struggling with my NaNoWriMo project (which I didn't finish, by the way). So, I am on book 5 right now, A Dance With Dragons. And I've read this one slowly. Because I know that once I finish this, I will also join the legions of fans who are waiting for the sixth book, Winds of Winter. But, what is started must be finished, so, I am looking at this weekend as the time when I will finish reading this book. I was very hesitant in picking up A Song Of Ice and Fire because of the same reasons that I am facing right now. I knew that I'd fall too deep down into it, I knew that my writing would suffer and I knew that I'd find it hard to wait for the next book.

In fact, I am still reeling at the scope GRRM has created and this can be the single most important work of the era of fiction writing. Because, I, for one, cannot fathom how anyone can top ASOIAF. 

Also, something happened in November last year. I discovered dubstep. I hated the genre earlier because I thought it'd be some off shoot of trance which is all mechanical with no soul. I didn't find any soul in dubstep either, but whatever the breaks and drops are in there are extremely sexy and delicious. My brain does a little barrel roll in my skull when I listen to the tasty mixes of dubstep artists whose name I don't care to remember or know about. I just know that it's a tune I like and my head likes it and that's good enough. Fuck the name of the song or the artist. Dubstep took a lot of my mental energy and the time I could've spent writing, I was reading and listening to dubstep. So that's another one.

And, one more thing, my job as a content monkey involved lot of writing, day in and day out. Normally, it's close to 1500-2000 words a day on the job, on topics that vary from anything to everything and beyond. Things I don't care about from my heart, but writing about them pays the bills, for my internet, my phone, my bike's oil and other unnecessary stuff. How do I put this in perspective. Let's say you love eating Lays Chips. So, I get you a job as a chips eater. You love it so much that you eat and eat and eat those chips and it's  the most awesome thing to have happened to you. But then you come home from office, after eating chips all day, and at home in dinner, you have Lays Chips again. How'd you feel? That's how I am feeling right now, but I am sure this is just a feeling. It will pass too.

Yeah, so that's about it mostly. Shitty excuses. These aside, my brain has not been at rest. I'm having this visions of forces colliding, like the shit in DragonBallZ. But instead of power levels or shit, there are swords and punches. It's really interesting once you think about that. But it's the image that's in my head all the time. Two swords clashing with each other. I do not know what it signifies, but I am willing to find out. If I do, I will tell you for sure.

For now, I'll just trudge along and get the blog back on line.

To the future then!

This is 5.05 AM