Dubstep. Any relatively hip college student has heard about the genre, and anybody who listens to the Top 40 has most likely heard it in action. But do these casual witnesses to the second British invasion really know what dubstep is? One thing is for certain, it’s not a ‘hella cool dubstep drop, bro’ in a Britney Spears tune. Telegraph music writer Gervaise de Wilde put it best when he asserted “[dubstep] amalgamates disparate elements of UK’s urban sounds and cultures into an innovative whole.” While this soundbite was a perfectly accurate description of the genre in 2006, it has devolved evolved as it broke out of its rigid 140 bpm structure and started to incorporate elements of house, hip hop and even reggaeton. In fact, the word dubstep has been misused so heavily in the past few years that it is currently a perfectly acceptable word to describe any kind of music that utilizes gut-wrenching bass synthesizers and incorporates some sort of break beat.
So here’s the question: Is Philadelphia-based Starkey, who is set to perform on Lincoln Field this Saturday, a quintessential dubstep producer/DJ? Probably not. While he has roots in the purest, darkest UK dubstep (see his appearance on genre proponent Mary Ann Hobbs’s show above), he’s managed to create incredible work within the larger genre of ‘bass music’ in the past few years. Bass music, if you’re wondering, is an umbrella genre within electronic dance music that has been making waves in the scene thanks to Diplo’s Mad Decent, NYC label Trouble & Bass and a fantastic crew of producers on London-based Night Slugs, as well as hundreds of up and coming producers in the US and Europe. If you’re into dancing while low-frequency sounds at unruly decibel levels penetrate your stomach lining, you’ll like Starkey. If your idea of a good time is ‘getting chay with Kenny,’ you may consider going to Duke not be part of Starkey’s target audience. Four essential tunes to get you acquainted with Starkey’s music and more jokes about country music after the jump.
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