Last I heard of the Bug was the Ganja 12″, which was a serious banger. The B-Side, Flying, was a real slow burner, kind of going into the territory that he explored in greater detail with the King Midas Sound album. Both tracks were pretty great, and have always been hits whenever I’ve thrown them on at parties.
However in the King Midas Sound interview Kevin Martin expressed a certain frustration with the characterization of the Bug in the music journalism world, where the production under that moniker was described as “angry music”. Seemingly, the King Midas Sound seemed to be a shot back at the critics who thought of Martin’s music as unidimensional. Look, it stated, there are other emotional capacities I am readily capable of you know. There are many great artists who wear all sorts of different masks.
There is, of course, always a great risk from people sensitive to criticism that they overcompensate, and by taking such great steps to avoid previously perceived mistakes, thereby make even greater, although different, sorts of mistakes. Unfortunately, I have serious misgivings about this new track. There is nothing wrong with it per se, and the production is superior to anything off of the Pressure LP or before then. Despite all that though, I don’t think this track is on par with anything from London Zoo, even though there are a lot of similar sonic traits. Although I appreciate more mellow tracks as much as anyone else into that sort of thing, when I listen to this track I hear more aimlessness than anything else, and I attribute that to a mode of production that functions negatively. That is, the inspiration is not something positive and concrete, but rather on the level of it is not this, but this sort of directness is ineffective without something substantive to back it up.
In a lot of ways, I think a similar criticism could be leveled against dubstep in general. The prevailing generic techniques of wobble bass ended up producing a self-consciousness in a lot of more earnest producers that resulted in a lack of clarity behind the vision of where to go next. The result was a lot of half-hearted tracks that were too worried about playing it safe to have anything interesting to say.
I dunno though, what do other people think?
Tags: dubstep