Connecting the dots between Fatboy Slim and Skrillex.

‘When you have huge numbers of people flocking to one spot with the agenda of getting messed up and hearing something crushing and spectacular, the race to please them stands a chance of rushing out on limbs and creating new things. You don’t hear much of that in Skrillex, or among many of his peers; so far, there’s just a lot of collisions and amplifications of sounds we’ve already heard. But that’s what people said about our mess-headed emo and hardcore scenes at the start of the century, and they rapidly became their own weird world.’

“And playing live is a different process to DJing, which is more about getting on a train, arriving, meeting some guy you don't really know and going to a place you don't really know. Actually playing is the best bit because you get to connect with people for the first time in 24 hours. Parts of it are really good, but it's just a lot of time on your own. You can reflect. I write lyrics in those moments when I haven't got anything else to do. Those are probably just the moments when I start being a bit, you know, sad [he smiles].”

A nice abstract followed by and a very nice collection of tracks centered around the recently accelerating trend of breaking down, re-assembling, reinterpreting, and re-imagining the possibility of vocals in music. Every track mentioned here is a gem. I was trying to think of who they missed here. DJ Nate, DJ Roc, and the rest of the Chicago juke scene come to mind, but that is not ‘atmospheric’ music like most of this list. Avey Tare. Aphex Twin.

A good overview and some best-of lists for dubstep and its offshoots in 2010 that I can mine later.