DUBSTEP FRIDAY

“In the beginning, dubstep in South London was all about dark rooms, whopping sound systems and ketamine. A friend looks back to his first dubstep rave when the music came on and remembers that “no one knew what to do”. It was a sound no one had heard before: the snare on the third beat instead of a four-to-the-floor and an incredible amount of space followed by the volume of the drop which would later encourage frequencies turned up to the max and a lot of NOISE. “We’d never heard anything quite like that sound, but we knew it was going to change how people felt about music in the UK,” says another in the FWD congregation. “It felt safe, a big shift from breakbeat garage and grime raves which I went to around 2001-2003, that atmosphere at those things got really intense. I saw a gun go off in the queue at Liberty, Club Colsseum in 2002, not fun.” Another friend describes her addiction to FWD: “I remember needing a fix of thorax-vibrating bass at least every 2 weeks. We used to call it ‘going to church’ or ‘our purification ritual’ .” - Beyond Skrilldawg - Where to Start with Dubstep