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| Photo credit: Timothy Norris/LA Weekly |
The Dub Police Tour presented by HARD and SMOG made its stop in the LA area at the House of Blues Hollywood off Sunset Boulevard this past Saturday, March 3rd, 2012 with a massive line up that caused people to flock to the venue from everywhere – I saw cars from Maryland and Georgia in the parking lot, just to give you an idea of how far people probably traveled for this completely SOLD OUT event. I saw people who desperately wanted to get in asking everyone in line if they had an extra ticket to the event. The line to get into the event was insane, wrapping around the whole entire House of Blues and extending further down Sunset.
On the decks for the evening were Matty G, a surprise set from The Others, D1, a back-to-back set with Trolley Snatcha and Subscape, and Dub Police label founder Caspa headlining the show. The sound system for the evening was cranked up to floor-rattling volumes and you could tell that mostly everyone that attended the show were pretty huge fans not just of the Dub Police label and artists, but of dubstep and bass music in general – this was apparent as I was standing in the long line and saw people sporting Circus Records, Dub Police, Sub Soldiers, and Rusko shirts as well as blasting their favorite dubstep songs out of their tiny iPhone speakers. While the event did start an hour later than the ticket advertised (the event started at 9pm instead of 8pm), as soon as Matty G started playing, the sonic assault of basslines was just nonstop throughout the whole evening.
Full breakdown of the event after the jump!
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| Photo credit: Media Contender/Oh Dag Yo |
First up on the decks was San Francisco's Matty G who started off the evening with a set of deep, sub heavy tracks. For the heads out there, you might recognize his name from his classic dubstep track "50,000 Watts" off Argon Records and featured on Rusko & Caspa's Fabriclive 37. For those of you who've been keeping up with him lately, not too long ago he released his Back To The Bay EP on Dub Police Records which has his sick hip-hop infused remix of Subscape's "Screw Up" which he played in the middle of his set. His set was definitely the calm before the storm for what would become an explosive evening in the House of Blues.
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| Photo credit: Media Contender/Oh Dag Yo |
The Others (surprise set!)
As Matty G was playing, I couldn't help but notice another guy on stage setting up who happened to look like The Others. I couldn't believe it at first, just because The Others wasn't on the bill initially, but his surprise set made a bit more sense after reading Trolley Snatcha's Facebook post before the event while waiting in line about how he was going to do a b2b set with Subscape, probably to fit The Others into the evening. The Others came on right after Matty G finished up his set and the MC came on stage to announce that The Others flew in all the way from the UK just to do a surprise set for the LA crowd. The Others started out hard and got the crowd moving. One of the highlights for me was when The Others dropped The Prodigy's classic "Smack My Bitch Up" right after his own track, "First Flight," and got a lot of the crowd moving. This was just the first of many times for this to happen in the evening. Some of the crowd got a little too crazy with the moshing to the point where The Others stopped the music and the MC came out to tell the people who were moshing to stop because they were there to "cater to the ladies." After that, the crowd was a bit less fueled by the testosterone rage, but definitely still going wild for The Others.
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| Photo credit: Media Contender/Oh Dag Yo |
After The Others, D1 came onto the stage and started off with a bang and played an almost entirely four on the floor 140 BPM bass music set. Here are some of the tracks that he played in his set: the dubplate/instrumental version of Katy B's "Katy On A Mission", which is called "Man On A Mission" originally by Benga; Caspa's classic banger "Fulham to Waterloo", which I heard several times throughout the evening (both the original mix and the Emalkay remix); Emalkay's breakbeat banger with a deep reese, "Crusader"; and Dr. Gonzo's "Bust Em Up"(can't remember if D1 played out the original or the French Fries remix). When D1 dropped Benga and Coki's classic dubstep anthem, "Night," I was appalled that most of the crowd wasn't going crazy to that track considering how widely known that track is for many long time dubstep listeners. Despite that, I'd have to say that D1 was probably my favorite set of the evening just because his set just sounded completely different and refreshing compared to the other performers; D1's track selection was diverse compared to everyone else who played.
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| Photo credit: Media Contender/Oh Dag Yo |
Trolley Snatcha / Subscape (back-to-back)
Trolley Snatcha and Subscape walked onto the stage after D1 finished his set and Trolley Snatcha announced to the crowd that he and Subscape were going to do a back-to-back set. For the next hour, Trolley Snatcha and Subscape alternated mixing duties every other track, playing one dirty dubstep track after another. My least favorite part of the evening was probably the absurd amount of moshing that went down during this set. I'm not going to go too into detail about my thoughts and musings about the moshing that went on that evening, but let's just say that the moshing got a bit out of hand. I got pushed and sucked into it all the way from the sound guy's booth, which is at the back of the pit, and found myself being elbowed in the stomach by disgruntled fans in front who thought I was purposely shoving and smashing them. Also, among some of the controversial things that went on during that set, when Subscape did a rewind of Skrillex's track "Breakn' A Sweat", Trolley Snatcha grabbed the mic and word-for-word yelled to the crowd, "F*ck all the Skrillex haters, you're all a bunch of f*ggots anyway!" as the track dropped. Trolley Snatcha also played Chasing Shadows' remix of Laid Blak's "Red" and gave a very special shout out to the crowd ("Big ups to everyone in the crowd smokin' that OG kush!") right before the bass dropped. Their whole back-to-back set was very exhausting, and I found myself going outside of the venue just to catch my breath and cool off from the musty crowd. It was still lots of fun despite getting punched in the stomach and face masking my way back out of the pit. Their set was pretty much everything I expected from two DJs that I've always wanted to experience – very loud and very aggressive.
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| Photo credit: Media Contender/Oh Dag Yo |
The headliner of the evening, Dub Police Records founder Caspa, started off with a bang as the entire stage lit up. The visuals – which for most of the evening was just a Dub Police logo visual on the front of the stage – flooded the entire venue with flashing patterns, bright colors, and random videos that happened to go along with the tunes being played. At the start of his set, Caspa played a lot less in-your-face, but still bass-heavy, tracks to calm the crowd down a little bit after Trolley Snatcha and Subscape's rough and rowdy back-to-back set. He started building up the momentum of the crowd with tons of remixes and VIPs of huge dubstep tracks. And yes, of course, if you know what Caspa's mainly known for in the North American audience, he played his remix of TC's "Where's My Money?" When Caspa dropped "Jump Back" by Flux Pavilion and Foreign Beggars, he stopped to tell the audience that it was fine to jump up and down for his stuff, but to quit the moshing; Caspa said, "There's ladies in the venue, don't squash 'em!" Caspa also played a ton of the older dubstep tracks (both of which happen to be featured on Fabriclive 37, like Rusko's dubstep anthem, "Jahova," and The Others' "Africa VIP." Another one of the instances I saw of how desensitized the mainstream American dubstep audience is to the deeper tracks was apparent in the crowd reactions to these tracks. When Caspa dropped the original mix Rusko's "Jahova," the crowd didn't seem to get too crazy – in fact, it almost seemed like they were just standing still. However, when Caspa dropped the VIP of "Jahova," which has a more prominent and piercing midrange bassline, everyone started engaging in mosh pits. Caspa ended his set with the premiere of a metal-influenced track on his forthcoming album. I wasn't a big fan of the new track myself as it was a bit too much for me, but the track did kind of remind me of Cookie Monsta's "Mosh Pit" though, and it seemed to get a really good reaction from the crowd. Caspa seemed to be extremely pleased with selling out the venue, telling the audience that his first show at the venue was in 2009.
Here are some overall comments that I have about the event in general:
(NOTE: For those of you who might take this the wrong way – DON'T take these comments as sh*t talking, because that's not my intent at all; but rather, see it more like constructive criticism)
- I felt that there was way too much moshing and not enough skanking going on. You could definitely see that everyone just trying to skank and nonviolently dance was standing at the back closer to the bars while the moshers were all on the floor in front of the stage. While I do enjoy going to hardcore and metal shows myself, even at those kinds of shows there is some kind of etiquette in the mosh pit. At hardcore and metal shows, if someone falls down in the pit, someone usually picks them up and moves them out of harm's way; at this event, I could see people just trying to show how aggressive they could get in the crowd, ignoring the well-being of the people around them. However, I was pleased at how the artists on stage handled the moshing before it got way too out of hand and anyone got seriously injured.
- There were some pretty interesting characters attending this show. I did notice the immense amount of frat guys there (even in line, I seriously could hear lots of guys talking about their fraternities). It also seemed like raver nation in there, which seems kind of ironic because quite a while ago, the founder of HARD, Gary Richards, wanted to make the move to make his events less like raves and more like concerts. Yes, the event felt like a concert...just with all the ravers there. I was even surprised that there wasn't even a security check for items and paraphernalia on people at this House of Blues; the one in Anaheim at Downtown Disney has multiple security guards checking people with a metal detector and a pat down right before the entrance. Other than that, there were lots of good vibes going around and I saw that many people came together to share their love of dubstep and the music that Dub Police has been famous for these past few years.
- The sound and visuals were just amazing. I caught a glimpse of the sound engineer in charge of mixing the sound, and he was just getting really into it. This was a definite plus because (at least from my perspective as a producer and my experience of playing venues in a band) someone who really likes what is being played through the house speakers will want to make the performer sound better through those speakers. And this sound engineer did a damn good job, even if it meant that I had to step outside several times to rest my ears from the rupturing volume inside. The visuals and lighting of the stage definitely caught my attention, especially during Caspa's set. Big ups to the sound engineer and the visual coordinator(s) and everyone else who worked behind the scenes to make the event a huge success!
- Finally, I know I'm not the only to notice this, and I know this was an event centered around the Dub Police label and artists, but I would have liked to have heard a bit more variety in the track selection from a few of the DJs. I honestly thought that the most diverse sets to me were Matty G's and D1's. The sets of The Others, Subscape, Trolley Snatcha, and Caspa got somewhat redundant as the night went on because I kept hearing a lot of the same tracks being played, even if they played different remixes. For example, I heard Caspa's remix of Buraka Som Sistema's "BaBaBa (Hangover)" as well as Caspa's "Fulham To Waterloo" more than 3 times throughout the evening. This kind of reminds me of a time a few years ago when the Bloody Beetroots had just come out with "Warp 1.9", and I went to a HARD 13 event, I could have sworn every single DJ played that track that evening. But that's not to say I don't like those particular tracks at all – this was a Dub Police event, and one can't simply expect to NOT hear their Dub Police favorites on the huge sound system in the House of Blues. I just wished that there were a wider range of tracks on the spectrum being played (i.e. more deep tracks to expose the American audience to a different side of dubstep, different types/tempos of bass music, etc.)
The event was without a doubt a huge success for everyone involved, from the staff of the House of Blues Hollywood to the artists who performed on stage. The event was definitely a fun and enjoyable one, even with the crowd going over-the-top mental for the music. And finally, speaking on behalf of everyone who attended, I just want to say big ups to the Dub Police crew for coming in from across the Atlantic to bring their infectious basslines to the American audience and making a Dub Police takeover in Los Angeles a reality for the many who came out! I'm sure that I'm not the only who will be looking forward to the next time the Dub Police come into town!
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