Saturday, September 14, 2013

Complextro - What is it and why it could be the death of Dubstep.

Complextro is defined as a Sub-Genre of Electro House,   It has the same 4/4 beat, it's usually played around the same BPM about 128 - 132.  The term itself was started by Porter Robinson, but producers such as Wolfgang Gartner were producing Complextro tracks way before Porter came around.  Complextro tracks will consist of elements from 3 different genres (Dubstep, Glitch and Electro House).  Complextro is said to be one of the most difficult genres to produce due to the wide range of varying synths that are used.  You will hear the modern elements of Dubstep such as those Modulated bass synths, Modern talking, Saw synths  etc.  as well as very glitchy sounding synths.  While dubstep still has a somewhat large following even though it is very mainstream now, dubstep lacks one thing, Its not very danceable when compared to House music.  So Complextro  takes all those filthy nasty bass synths that you love from dubstep and it adds the 4/4 danceable beat structure found in House music, its truly the best of both worlds.  Some producers that are big in Complextro include DallasK,  James Egbert, Feed Me, Skrillex, Knife Party, Mord Fustang.

    

And heres Mord Fustang, he's still complextro but he's more melodic, not quite as filthy, he uses more "One-up mushrooms" in his tracks.


        

Moombahcore..... Now we're just making up shit.

It started with Moombahton (House + Reggaeton), but then they started adding dubstep synths such as modulated bass, modern talking etc... and they are calling it Moombahcore. This is by far the most unrecognized genre, as even beatport just puts all Moombahcore tracks in the "Electro House" section.  I remember alot of people just referring to this as 110 Dubstep, since its usually played around 110 - 115 BPM,  but IMO I think this genre is more similar to Complextro  just slowed down to about 110 BPM.   Dillon Francis, Nick Thayer, Skrillex and Knife Party all have several Moombahcore productions.

Saturday, September 7, 2013

Feed Me's epic new track

Last sat I got the chance to see Feed Me perform here in atlanta, Feed Me is an Electro and Dubstep side project of well known DnB producer "Spor" whose real name is Jon Gooch.   This was my 4th time seeing Feed Me and I really wasnt sure what to expect.   The very first time I saw him was at a grimey dubstep club here in atlanta and as expected his set was mostly really heavy non-melodic dubstep, he did include some of his original electro and dubstep productions in his set , but overall the set was just way to hard.  Second time I saw him was at The Loft / Center Stage. I went in expecting another hard dubstep set, but what I heard was the complete opposite,  He started his set off with a lot of Progressive House/ Electro, He then started playing some of his harder electro tracks and his encore was his hard bass driven drumstep track "Trap Door". His set was extremely similar to a Deadmau5 set I witnessed earlier in the year like how Deadmau5 starts off progressive and builds up into more of his electro house tracks and sometime encores with his Dubstep track "Raise your weapon.   Even the LED set up of "Feed Me"s teeth had similar patterns as Deadmau5 cube which makes sense as at the time Feed Me was on Deadmau5's label "Mau5trap" I can only assume he played his set this way because this was an all ages show. Third time was at counter point music festival here in atlanta,  he started his show with some heavy dubstep and trap and i just left after 15 min to go see Steve Angellos set.

Due to the hit and miss sets ive witnessed by Feed Me, i was even hesistant to go at all, This was club Opera a more upscale club where I had no idea what he had in store.  He started off with a drum n bass track or two from his Spor days, how ever he then started playing the tracks we all love such as "Cloudburn, Strange Behaviour, Blood Red, Pink Lady, Grand Theft Ecstasy" but he also kept adding in ID tracks that I have never heard before which were really fucking good.  He must have played about 13 tracks that I have never heard but every one of them was epic. His dubstep tracks were vocal and melodic but still had that nasty bass drop, he played one Trap track and even though it was  a little too crunk for my taste I was actually ok with it,  But I also noticed something new he's doing with some of these ID tracks. The intro will be a very melodic chill arrangement of progressive synth notes such as you would typically hear Deadmau5 do, but then it builds up and drops into a hard electro/ complextro style drop.

I would have to say his set was about 85% Hard electro / complextro and then about equal amounts of dubstep and drumstep, with maybe just one or two trap tracks and DnB tracks.  However his encore was one of the sickest tracks I have ever heard.  Before he played it he brought the music to a stop and got on the mic and said something about how this next track represents everything he has been trying to do in his carrer.  The track started with that beautiful arrangement of progressive synth notes,  then this rumbling bassy build up comes in and then the drop, the drop can pretty much only be defined as Big Room Electro, this goes on for a few minutes and then he changes the beat structure to a Halftime Dubstep beat out of no where and blows the crowd away with a short filthy dubstep section, finally the track  changes one more time, i believe he changes it in the end to drumstep.

So here it is from his most recently released LP "Calamari Tuesdays" under his own label (Sotto Voce) one of the most epic tracks I have ever heard "Lonely Mountain".