Dubstep - den stora rekommendationstråden

As the wake of dubstep’s dramatic push into the mainstream continues to stir up
the waters of electronic club music, genre meltdown is all the rage. It’s all nu
this, post that and future the other, as a thousand hybrid sub-sub-genre names
are pulled out of the air to try and sum up what is going on. And as often as
not, key releases like Joy Orbison’s ‘Hyph Mngo’ and Mount Kimbie’s ‘Crooks &
Lovers’ album are held up as somehow representative of this highly variegated
zeitgeist. What this last tendency fails to register though, is that Joy Orbison
and Mount Kimbie are just the latest of a long and distinguished line of
individualist artists going right back to 2003 and the birth of dubstep who have
been nurtured by the Hotflush label. Hotflush is an institution that was always
just beyond or just outside dubstep, even as it released foundational tunes for
the scene. From the very beginning in 2003, it brought out the fine detail of
dubstep’s mongrel nature, emphasising its kinship not just to garage, dub and
techno, but to breaks, ambient and post-Aphex Twin electronica different
elements of these sounds coming together not into some homogeneous blur, but
into unique, precisely-engineered structures.There can be coherence in
diversity, though. Core dubsteppers like Benga, Distance and Loefah, and
maverick talents like Boxcutter, Pangaea and 2562 alike, have been able to come
into the orbit of Hotflush and despite the variety of their talents contribute
to a label aesthetic which sounds strikingly consistent from 2003 right through
to the newly commissioned tracks from the likes of Roska and dBridge on this
collection. It’s a shadowy aesthetic, one that doesn’t give up its secrets
easily, full of hints and clues, often suggestive of deep reflection yet always,
whether its rhythms are that of dubstep, techno, garage, acid house or something
more abstracted, rooted in the moving mass of bodies in dark clubs.At the heart
of all this is the main man, Paul Rose Scuba. Not only has his own music
embodied all of these influences and tendencies, but in his move to Berlin he
helped define the Hotflush mentality not abandoning the UK, but bringing it with
him, injecting it right into the dark heart of Berlin’s scene via his Sub:Stance
nights at the infamous Berghain club. Again, the connections and
cross-fertilisations are not vague things, random attempts to fuse a little bit
of everything, man, but very precise realisations of what works together, based
on one individual’s real experiences in the world. And that’s what Hotflush is,
pretty much. In the decentred, internationalist internet age where everyone’s a
freelance, marshalling so many individualist talents should result in a mess, a
carcrash, a tower of Babel. But Hotflush remains living proof that clear vision
and clear understanding of music and personalities can create from this myriad
of voices and influences something that grows over time as a distinct and
influential musical entity in its own right. Maybe the zeitgeist needs to catch
up with that. – Joe Muggs, 2011

Cobblestone Jazz (CAN)
Four Tet (UK)
Thomas Fehlmann (GER)
Nosaj Thing (US)
Untold (UK)
Pantha Du Prince (GER)
Mount Kimbie (UK)
Instra:Mental (UK)
Flavio Diaz (ITA)
8bitch (UK)
N-Type (UK)
Future 3 (DK)
Darkstar (UK)
Style of Eye (SWE)
JJ Louis (UK)
F ONE (UK)
PartyKillers DJ RMX Set (DK/DK/DK)
Barbara Morgenstern (GER)
To Rococo Rot (GER)
1. hit wonders
Dimlite (UK)
Jonsi (IS)
Fat Freddys Drop (NZ)
Sleeparchive & DJ Pete (GER)
James Braun (DK)
Zzzune (DK)
Wobble Squad (DK)
Jonas R. (DK)
Buzzy Norse (DK)
Skank Sound (DK)
GRAF (DK)
Sort Stof (DK)
Profound Venue (DK)
Applepips showcase: Appleblim, Arkist, Orphan101, Al Tourettes (UK)
Solomun (GER)