Dubstep Artists: What are they like live?

Recently, me and a few friends visited the O2 Academy Brixton to see popular Dubstep Act Nero. This was done purely for educational purposes of course..... nevertheless it allowed me to further insight into the Target Audience of this genre of music, comparing it with my research on UK Tribes. It allowed me to see if the perceived stereotypical specification associated with a fan of dubstep is as it's commonly thought of. Below shows a few video's that my friend recorded from the gig along with a youtube user's interviews with people at the gig.

Here is one of their more popular songs ^'Crush On You'^ as you can see the pictures shown on UK Tribes linked clubber gallery website Dont Stay In shows similarity to that which you could screenshot from here. This gave me some re-assurance that the classification I have chosen to represent my Target Audience was correct. As you look at the various videos taken, you'll notice that the similarities become more and more evident.

 

 ^Nero-Me & You^

^Nero- Must Be The Feeling^

As you can see in ^this video^ and as stated earlier, a youtube user recorded fans reactions before and after the gig. I can use this video to show comparisons between the images collated and the people who are interviewed, turns out, there is much more variety in terms of the types of people than I first anticipated. Many age ranges were taken into account, this can be used to help develop my ideas for my evaluation questions associated with my target audience (questions 2, 4 & 5)

Clothing/Model Research

Obviously I cannot just put any old person on my front cover. The results would be disastrous! I needed to discover just what type of person fitted in with the Dubstep genre (clothing, appearance, attitude) and then find a model (term used loosely for fear of the 'model's' ego getting any bigger!) which would fit this criteria. After looking at various images of Dubstep artists in photo shoots & at gigs, some clear similarities started to show:

Headphones

 A repeated find amongst all of the pictures was the appearance of headphones. Due to the frequent appearance of headphones, it is clear that they are associated with the Dubstep genre. This aided me in coming to a conclusion that I should try and use headphones in my pictures for the front page, contents, and double pages spread. Seen above to the right, Skrillex is pictured with the popular Dre Beats Studio headphones. With such a well known figure in Dubstep wearing them, it would be sensibly assume these headphones could be used.






Clothing

To find out what sort of clothing my model would wear, I started to look deeper into image searches as the majority of results at the top were either irrelevant or album covers. After once again looking through the typical artists (Skrillex, Chase & Status, Magnetic Man, Nero) I soon discovered that although there were various different images with different shirts and jackets, a continuous pattern emerged. 

This was that there was at least one picture within the first 2/3 pages of results where the artists were wearing leather/material jackets. This is shown above to the left with Skrillex, directly left with Nero and directly to the right with Chase & Status. As I continued researching clothing, I kept seeing a leather style jacket appearing, bringing me to the assumption that I will try and get my model to wear a leather jacket or at least some type of clothing resembling this.




Stance/Attitude

This is perhaps the most important part it determining how my magazine will ultimately come together. The stance and attitude of the person featuring in the magazine must look realistic and suitable for what I'm using them for which in this case, is Dubstep. It is therefore key I get a good understanding of how the various artists within the genre act and how they look when they appear to the public. 

This was perhaps the most influential picture in me deciding on the stance my model would be trying to imitate. When you ask people about Dubstep, whether in a good opinion or bad, Skrillex is almost always mentioned. I wanted my model to capture the Skrillex mannerism and this was fairly easy to discover. This picture shows Skrillex in front of a wall (I'm so good at this analysis stuff!). He has his legs close together with his hands in his pockets. This would usually be considered as an insecurity or just bad posing however for this genre it does appear more frequently than you would think. Along with this picture, the image of Skrillex above under clothing shows him with his left hand in his pocket, indicating this pose perhaps would work on a front cover or on a double page spread.

In terms of a pose for the contents or perhaps even being used within the double page spread story, I liked the way a publicity shot of the upcoming artist Gemini was taken. It showed him sitting down with his arms laying on his legs, looking like he is in deep thought. I personally thought that this not only looked extremely effective, but could also be imitated quite easily. It would also allow me to reference my decisions associated with picture choice to my research and show the reasoning behind picking certain stances. 






Props
Due to my decision of picking Dubstep as my genre (much to my teachers disgust) I felt props were not needed as much as if I were to pick Indie music, Hip-Hop or Rock. This is due to the fact no real instruments are used in the creation of a Dubstep track and the majority of the work is done by computers. Nevertheless I looked into various images and noticed something which I knew I could use in at least one of my pictures. Vinyl records kept appearing on the results pages when I was searching Dubstep Artists. I quickly decided I wanted to try and use a vinyl record as a prop in my pictures as it would give a clear indication of the genre based magazine.


I shall shortly be putting my collection of photos on this blog, allowing you to draw comparisons between my attempts of recreating and altering some of these techniques.

Magazine Genre

DUBSTEP


So, What is Dubstep?
Dubstep is one of the fastest growing types of music in the world, Dubstep is a form of electronic music that combines heavy bass with samples, synthesizer, keyboards, turntables and drum tracks. Dubstep originated in South London in 1998, but has quickly spread to other areas of Western Europe and North America after it originally started to gain publicity on BBC Radio. and is fast-becoming a mainstream form of dance music around the world. 
It's early roots are found to be closely linked with UK Garage producers who were wanting to incorporate elements of drum and bass into their typical garage sounds. Dubstep is generally instrumental, showing similarities to grime, the feel of the genre was originally dark and featured frequent use of minor keys however, as it has become more popular and entered into mainstream music listeners, some Dubstep artists have chosen to change this early representation of the genre and altering it slightly to form variants such as Skrillex, who appears to have become the figure head for a new, perhaps more popular sub-genre called Brostep.


Popular Dubstep Artists
Since the creation of what is now known as the Dubstep genre, many artists have come to light and really headlined the rise of the now popular music scene, Artists include:


Rusko

Skrillex

Magnetic Man

Nero

Chase & Status

Okay, so give me a bit more info...

SBTRKT

With the genre only now entering the mainstream music scene, you would be forgiven for thinking the genre has only been established within the past couple of years. It has infact been round much longer than that, as stated earlier, the genre originated within late 1998 to early 2002. With many "underground" garage artists opting to use the sound of Dubstep within their tracks, it was not long before it started to get publicity and in 2002, an XLR8R (music magazine) cover story helped this genre of music earn it's name. The term Post-Dubstep is used consistently to describe songs and artists which, although use features associated with Dubstep, do not solely focus on it and instead combine various musical influences together. A well known name in this style is the musician SBTRKT (pronounced Subtract)

Although commercially, this style is perhaps the most popular (teamed with Brostep), many how they've come to been known "Dubstep Purists" dislike the direction Dubstep is going in, with the emphasis more on a "heavy drop" (when there is a build up in a track leading to a deep bassline) than the actual merits of the music. Some artists are also supporting this argument such as Rusko. shown in this interview.



However Skrillex, in a recent interview, disagrees with this view and states that "I love all types of music" along with his statement that instead of Dubstep music moving in the wrong direction, he feels it's "in it's prime". This is of course expected as he is pioneering Brostep and in his opinion, Dubstep has never been better.