Niche music post.

TL:DR Mat is still not over a particularly British music genre being co-opted by North Americans cosplaying our music culture in dayglow outfits, listening to people playing music in mouse or marshmallow masks with endlessly building, mindless music.

I'm currently listening to Burial because I'm having an early 2000's Shoreditch hipster moment (I love Burial but the hipster chin scratching was a bit much).

I'm not going to lie, I'm still not over how "Dubstep" as a "genre" went from being a grimy, scratchy, bass driven, 2 step, chicken shop and night bus in the south London rain sound, to some womp womp, no soul, endless build up to a pointless drop in a plastic, glowstick, mega-rave arena firework extravaganza, womp womp.

Dubstep music, the American version, is endless building to a "drop" with no soul, just sensation. It's the musical equivalent of edging (I'm not going to explain this bit), played by a guy in a giant mouse head or a marshmallow helmet or whatever. The crowd in a cosplay, Disney versions of what the organic acid house raves in the UK looked like in the 80s. Illegal underground parties through the lens of capitalism, at a premium price, definitely not free.

What I find most irritating is the fact the people of Chicago and Detroit created something beautiful, the UK took it onboard and made it our own, in many different forms, ran with the spirit, and then unimaginative America took it all back and made it into a soulless money making machine.

Chicago, Detroit, London, Manchester, Glasgow, Berlin, Rotterdam and many other places built this culture from the ground up, built new genres, new generations of culture. It will return, and already is, but the commodification of genuine, grass roots culture, boils my piss.

Sorry. Very long rant, but I care because the culture, and it is culture, is important and precious. If you don't preserve or care for it then it will be lost. Keep it alive or in 50 years the history books will attribute everything to Skrillex or Kanye.