Airhead: "Black Ink"

Airhead implies something flighty and inane, but homeboy's "Black Ink" is a focused blend of old school IDM glitch and modernist post-dubstep. Fuck, is it possible to come up with descriptors without sounding like a pretentious douchebag? Probably, but not if you are in fact a pretentious dbag like yours truly (that's post-douchebag if you're nasty).

Just listen to the fucking joint already.

Ean: "AulderKincher"

Essentially footwork with a bit of the ol' echo chamber sinister-ness dubstep is known for, "AulderKincher" is the lead off track from Ean's upcoming five track EP Darknet. Out July 2 on Cosmic Bridge.

Netsky: "Come Alive" [Rockwell Remix]

Even electronic producers that ostensibly wouldn't touch brostep with a 10 foot pole still seem compelled to acknowledge the menacing, fractured monolith of sound that the genre has inspired... everyone is scrambling to top the latest fucked up beats. Ladies and gentlemen, I think we may have a winner: Rockwell starts off modestly enough on his remix of Netsky's "Come Alive", but in just over two-and-a-half minutes he manages to cover a pretty impressive range of spastic schrizophrenia.
(via FACT, for whom homeboy has also put together a long-form mix)

Royce Wood Junior & Stac: "Edge" [Fybe Remix]

Fybe:one is a South London producer and co-founder of the Shades of Grey label, which released the Second Lens EP from Royce Wood Junior & Stac (no idea if that's four people or just... less than four). Dude's taken it upon himself to remix "Edge" from that EP, and what a bang up job he's done. This is one of those new school of dubstep (post-dubstep?) tracks that seek to both take the genre back to its minimalist roots while at the same time pushing it forward by incorporating other genres, in this case deep house.
(via Soulection)

Benga: "I Will Never Change"

Those who rail against so-called "brostep" are usually criticizing one of two things: 1) the sheer formulaic repetitiveness of the Skrillex clones, or 2) the complete lack of restraint not offering much by way of tension or musical dynamism.

Benga is not brostep. There's a certain amount of the characteristic wobble present, but "I Will Never Change" - the title of which seems to be a big middle finger to bandwagon dubstep - has plenty of self-restraint as well as a sense of purpose. There is melody at work here, for one thing, and for another the moody pacing of it pretty much automatically precludes it from ever devolving into the electronic equivalent of nu-metal, which at heart is what brostep is really all about.

I Will Never Change by iambenga

Goth-Trad: "Anti Grid"

I've posted previously about how unfortunate the Goth-Trad moniker is for a fairly by-the-books dubstep artist, but electronic music producers swap aliases out more often than they change their boxers, so hopefully we won't be stuck with this one for too long.

The official vid for "Anti Grid" draws some interesting, possibly unintentional parallels between the cut-and-paste aesthetic of modern, Pro-Tools driven music production and traditional filmmaking. Of course, it could just be a film school project that was looking for a soundtrack... who knows.


Goth-Trad - Anti Grid (Official Video) Deep Medi Musik 2012 from Deep Medi Musik on Vimeo.

2 against 1: "Get Back" [Original Mix]

Ran across this via AK1200's Facebook profile. He's got a new group with Bill Hamel and Meaux Green and from the sound of "Get Back" it's squarely in the drum & bass tradition, with a few decisive nods to dubstep.

Goth-Trad: "Air Breaker"

The name Goth-Trad evokes images of Bauhaus-era post-punk, but nope: dubstep.  

Deep Epoch is the next installment in the Goth-Trad... legacy, out on DEEP MEDi... umm, soon.


Goth-Trad - Air Breaker  (Deep Medi Musik 2012) from Deep Medi Musik on Vimeo.

Alex Clare: "Too Close"

Taking the torch from James Blake, upstart British crooner Alex Clare crafts a more accessible, radio friendly version of Blake's neo-soul-via-dubstep template.  Whereas Blake's aesthetic tips the balance in favor of dubstep with soulful vocals layered over top, Clare flips that notion on its head: this is definitely pop music first, dubstep second.  Not that that's a bad thing, and the production courtesy Diplo and Switch ensures that the dubstep elements are legit, if only ornamental.