As the fine form of Popular Music approaches roughly its seventh decade of existence and its electronic counterpart its fourth, the following question may have crossed your mind: is there anything original left? We’ve had noise, we’ve had silence, we’ve had old school, new wave, new rave, and no wave. We’ve even had "sonic cathedrals". What next?

Cannibalise.
Let me take you back to São Paulo, Brazil. It’s 1968. Stay with me, don’t wander. It’s dangerous. A group of artists, under the banner of "Tropicalism", have begun creating music that mashes together traditional Brazilian music, its African roots, and the new rock and psychedelic sounds coming out of London, New York and California. Based on the modernist ideas of the "Cannibal Manifesto", they take the parts of the different sounds that they love, devour them, chew them with their own ideas, and then spit them out as something new, exciting and, importantly, unique.

Now, let’s come home to Croydon, South London. Don’t wander, it’s dangerous. It’s late 2004 and a new sound is creeping out of the dark alley where UK garage lies dying in a pool of its own champagne vomit with its cousin drum and bass. Based loosely on the echoes of 2-step rhythms, the heavy bass lines of dub/jungle, and sharing the moody atmospherics of grime, dubstep pulled up its hood and stepped out into the drizzly urban night.

In short, the sound can be described as being principally instrumental with a focus on sparse beats and heavyweight bass, especially sub-bass frequencies too low to be audible, but more than able to rattle your ribcage coming out of a 50kw sound system.

"It’s bass music built for the sound system and there’s a lot of scope for experimentation"

explains local dubstep DJ and promoter Etidorpha. And experiment they have. Since the scene’s conception, producers like Skream, Digital Mystikz, and Kode9 have cannibalised from almost every source imaginable, taking us from reggae influenced tunes, through fantastically nauseating bass wonk and wobble, to the techno strains that characterized many of 2008’s best releases.

Four years later, and Southampton has finally caught up. Amongst a few dedicated nights, Subset (www.myspace.com/subset1) has emerged as the main contender for a serious dubstep night in the city. Held at city centre venue Soul Cellar on the third Thursday of each month, Subset was established by Etidorpha, fellow DJ/producer Physics and south coast dubstep label Boka Records (www.bokarecords.co.uk) as a way to push the sound and give the struggling Southampton electronic scene a kick up the arse:

"There wasn’t anything that appealed to me, nothing edgy or interesting at all."

"We decided there needed to be a night a couple of years ago, but at that point it never seemed feasible…now is the time and the reaction so far has been real positive."

This has been reflected by both the quality of the recent acts (scene heavyweights The Others and Bristol’s Komonazmuk), as well as the increasing numbers of dubsteppers showing their support for the fledgling night.

As for the future, the Subset guys will be continuing their commitment to the diversity of dubstep with acts like Appleblim (curator of the latest instalment in the Dubstep All Stars series – the definitive techno/dubstep mix) and Boka Record’s own 16-Bit (with a storming release to coincide) lined up for the New Year. With the addition of a visual DJ, the night can only get better:

"We don’t view this as an average night out; this is something a little bit special, something we hope people can get excited about. We have people coming up to us all the time with mix CD’s they’ve done, wanting to get involved…how many nights do you go to where you see that kind of thing happening?"

If you’re new to dubstep, I’d recommend checking out any of the Dubstep All Stars series, as well as www.dubstepforum.com for suggestions but, most importantly, go down to Subset at the Soul Cellar and hear the evolving sound of 21st Century urban Britain it as it was made to be: in a small, dark room with a subwoofer and 100 other like-minded people.