DUB WAR
Interview by Katya Guseva
Walking down the steep flight of stairs at New York’s club Love, I can hear the wobbling bass coming from downstairs. I pass the cave-like tunnel and enter the dark basement full of people getting down to the sound of dubstep. Bass faces and lazer lights everywhere. The floor is shaking. People are screaming for a rewind. This is Dub War. Dave Q is on the decks.
So Dub War officially started three years ago, but when did it start for you personally and how did the idea come about?
I was completely mesmerized by all of the groundbreaking music coming out of the UK “underground garage” scene going back to 2001. I was buying white labels and all sorts of great unknown records online from Big Apple Records, and it struck me as unbelievable that nobody in the States seemed to even know about this music, much less was playing it out or throwing events. Kode 9’s superb writing on Hyperdub.net about dub and soundsystem culture and UK hardcore culture, along with Simon Reynolds, further articulated what I already sensed from the music: that something revolutionary and special was taking place in the UK underground.
Meanwhile I had started communicating with some of the people in the scene in London (which was still tiny) through the forum at dubplate.net. That’s how I met Joe Nice. He was already cutting dubs from the main dubstep producers after having met Hatcha in Baltimore and going to Croydon to check out Big Apple.
After hearing the reports about the first DMZ allnighter in 2005, I felt that a bigger idea of dubstep as having a message of positivity and community and spirituality had been established and I wanted to contribute in whatever way I could. I decided to try to recreate that energy and spread the word about this music by starting my own night in New York. Since Joe was the only other dubstep DJ I knew, I invited him up to NYC, and we had the first Dub War only about 3 months after the first dmz, in June of 2005, in the basement of a great underground venue in Brooklyn called Sputnik.
Looking back, what do you consider the biggest challenge of Dub War? What are the challenges you’re facing right now?
For the first two years or so, the biggest challenge was creating a community and an audience for music that on its surface was completely alien to New York (and the rest of the US for that matter). New York is a tough place to break anything new because people are suspicious of hype and club owners have hefty bills to pay. I decided early on that dubstep could potentially appeal to open-minded people across a pretty wide swath of the various music scenes here. So I made a strong effort to reach out to people in the reggae scene, the hip hop scene, the drum n bass scene, the minimal techno scene, the IDM/breakcore scene, and whatever other forms of music shared an appreciation of deep, heavy sounds meant to be played loud on a big system.
Right now the main challenge is not to be complacent and for all of us involved to constantly challenge ourselves to continue progressing. It was the unpredictability and the mystery of dubstep that made it so alluring in the beginning, and I want to keep that mystery alive for as long as I can, and keep people coming back to the party because they never know what to expect.
What do you think is the future of dubstep? Some think it is repeating itself and not a new sound anymore. Do you agree/disagree?
There have been peaks and valleys of creativity throughout dubstep’s history. Most of the people I know, who have devoted so much of their lives to creating and nurturing this sound all go through periods of feeling completely disenchanted by it. Then the next month 20 new tunes emerge which take the sound in completely unexpected and exciting directions. It’s an ongoing conversation between the different producers, reacting to each other, being inspired by different sounds, and trying to go somewhere new with them. I’m really excited by a lot of what I’m hearing right now. It may not be like when Youngsta would play a set of all brand new Loefah, Mala, D1, Skream dubs in a single set on Rinse, but there are lots of new producers making great tunes right now.
How did the NY dubstep scene grow with Dub War?
Through a small community of open-minded and nice people coming to hear great new music, and telling their friends, who then tell their friends, etc. It has been quite grassroots in its growth. We have purposely avoided the kind of heavyhanded self-promotion which is common in the clubland and which is usually a substitute for quality. We try to keep the music and the vibe on a high standard, and let that speak for itself so that it spreads through word of mouth.
Do you see differences in the UK and US dubstep sound?
The scene is becoming more international in nature now, so the UK is not the only influence on the direction(s) of the sound. I rate Matty G highly for having a uniquely American twist on the sound. But not enough people are making tunes which reflect what is unique about where they come from. Badawi (from New York) is another artist who I think has a sound which is all his own, but his influences are quite international and diverse so I wouldn’t quite call it a US sound.
What is dubstep for you? Has it changed things/ opened any doors for you?
For me it captures the mood and the fears and the complexities and (inter)connections of the world we are living in, and out of that confusion can come a real source of hope. It reflects the technologies and forms of communication available today which weren’t 10 years ago. It is both physical and cerebral, hyperactive and serene, and to me reflects lots of these sorts of complexities of the world right now in a way that other forms of music don’t.
Tell us one fun fact about Dub War.
Joe Nice once opened his set with “Been Around the World” by Lisa Stansfield.
What do you listen to at home or in your car?
D’Angelo, The Velvet Underground, Motown, 70s-era Herbie Hancock and Miles, mid-90s hip hop (Mobb, Nas, Wu), Mojave3/Slowdive/Spiritualized/My Bloody Valentine, Hall & Oates, Michael Jackson, Eryka Badu, Pet Sounds, Thelonious Monk.
From dubstep – Loefah, Mala, Coki, D1, Pinch / DJ Premier, Timbaland, the Neptunes, Questlove.
