Ever since her father suggested she listen to Paul Oakenfold to lose weight as a girl, Robyn Fuller has committed her life to electronic music.
Each Tuesday, the owner of Bass Bunny Productions, a nightlife promotion company based in Raleigh, hosts Covert Bass, a dance music event, from the posh interior of Spy, a popular lounge in downtown Raleigh's otherwise sleepy warehouse district.
"Lately I've had this recurring dream where I'm united with Skrillex only to be carried away by a huge flood," says Fuller, 24, as she pulls on a cigarette outside of Spy.
Such a revelation is not only telling but astute, at least when it comes to Fuller's subconscious. At last week's Grammy awards ceremony, Skrillex, the 24-year-old dubstep wunderkind also known as Sonny Moore, accepted prizes in three categories - Best Dance Recording; Best Dance/Electronica Album; and Best Remixed Recording, Non-Classical.
"This is the most surreal day of my life," Moore announced, in astonished tones, as he accepted his third win for Best Dance Recording. In that moment, Moore received validation for a musical phenomenon whose steady, mounting momentum had been felt for the last year.
Dubstep, which began in underground clubs in London in the early 2000s, is a genre of electronic dance music produced entirely by computers, with a sound both slick and metallic. A disjointed cacophony of swooning bass lines, oscillating at 140 beats per minute, it is deep and dark and rolling. The music is both a startling portrait of sleek production, and a testament to the machinations of technology, proving artists can produce music that spins and moves and sells without the use of instruments or vocals.
The sound acquired a crossover following among the Top 40 oeuvre after versions of pop songs remixed to its distinctive cadence began circulating on the Internet about two years ago. Soon radio stars like Britney Spears began integrating dubstep characteristics into their music, pushing the genre from obscure wavelengths to cultural relevance.
Still, the appeal of dubstep is sometimes met with outsider confusion, if not outright contention.
Computers vs. humans
"It's not about being perfect, it's not about sounding absolutely correct," said Dave Grohl of The Foo Fighters during his acceptance speech for Best Rock Album at the Grammys. "It's not about what goes on in a computer."
In a statement meant to reaffirm the artistic value and authenticity of music's human quality - of instrumentation and vocalism - Grohl seemed to decry the appeal of dubstep (a computer does not a melody make), and perhaps incited a discussion about merit.
No matter. For lifelong lovers of electronic dance music - typically abbreviated to just EDM - Skrillex's Grammy recognition marked a leap for the EDM community.
"It was a huge step for electronica because we've never been outwardly recognized on a national level like that," says Fuller. "It puts us on a map in a way that I don't think would have otherwise been possible."
On a Tuesday night, Spy looks less like a nightclub and more like an art gallery, with its hardwood floors, high industrial ceilings and abstract canvases hanging on the walls. But every week, hundreds fill Spy's close quarters to rage and rave. There are light shows with lasers, whose lapidary rhythm seems to etch a narrative in the fog amid the musical vibrations. There are scantily clad go-go dancers in neon hula hoops, and ravers from varied demographics spinning glow sticks and displaying candy-colored beaded jewelry.
The mosh pit crowd of an earlier era, the kids who embraced metalcore at the now-defunct Brewery, have, in a large way, assimilated into the electronic dance music scene, abandoning one medium of distorted noise (jarring guitar licks and miserable caterwauls) for another (fluttering cadences and heavy bass).
Jon Schnake, co-owner of NoisyDubs, a new record label that signs popular dubstep and drum and bass acts, has been a part of the EDM scene for nine years. While dubstep fervor is holding forth locally and nationally, Schnake, 27, acknowledges a divide between the dedicated and the incidentally infatuated.
"It's like there's a line drawn in the sand," he says. "You have a crew that grew up with drum and bass, who came out to listen to syncopated, logical music, and you have kids out of high school and college who are reverting back to this late '80s, early '90s style of rave culture."
Still there is no harsh sentiment or begrudging condescension. "Peace, love, unity, and respect" (P.L.U.R.) serves as the raver's mantra.
"It doesn't matter what anyone upholds; we're here to have a good time," says Schnake.
No words, just beat
In some ways, dubstep can be seen as symbolic of humanity's fraught relationship with technology; it may signify a progression from the instrumental to the technological, not unlike the way text-based communication and social media has often displaced face-to-face interaction in the last decade. By entering the public consciousness as a pop music trend, dubstep may be Generation Y's response to the watered down hip-hop of the 20-teens, and the rock-and-roll nostalgia of aging generations.
"We're finding dubstep at the beginning of what is out there, at the beginning of our coming of age," says Monica Axelrod, an 18-year-old student. "It doesn't need words, it only needs the bass."
