Album Review: Blow Your Head: Diplo Presents Dubstep by Diplo

The fat, squishy bass blasts on Britney's 2007 "Freakshow" were many listeners' first exposure to the sounds of dubstep, the U.K. style favoring syncopated beats and huge low-end. Now, M.I.A. producer Diplo has put together a dubstep party platter: His jam with Lil Jon ("U Don't Like Me") is positively unhinged, while U.K.

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Kicking off a series of unmixed compilations where Mad Decent-affiliated DJs explore their favorite genres, Blow Your Head: Diplo Presents Dubstep finds the producer, DJ, and label boss picking some of the brightest and most speaker-ripping tracks from the wobbly genre. The Benga cut and James Blake’s remix of Untold come from the genre’s darker side, where folks like Burial practice their craft, but it's no surprise that the man behind the Technicolor dancehall crew known as Major Lazer favors the work of Rusko, DZ, and other producers who work electro beats and sci-fi tones into the mix. With plenty of video game bleeps, Zomby’s great “Strange Fruit” was a shoe-in for Diplo’s set, as it suggests a new, supremely hip and totally meta genre: chipstep.

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After incubating and bubbling as a key strain of London bass culture for much of last decade, dubstep has recently exploded internationally, and done so in largely unique ways. Like most strains of electronic dance music, dubstep was created and cultivated by adventurous DJs and partygoers. Eventually those new electronic sounds tend to become one of two things: a battleground for arguments about purity and definitions, which inevitably stunts growth and inherently creates dead ends; or a once hands-on, dangerous, and visceral sound that intellectualizes itself into something considerably more dull when removed from its utilitarian dancefloor origins.

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I had completely forgotten I drew Diplo’s latest compilation for review until I attended an impromptu dubstep session at a hookah bar last night. And after experiencing the explosive new dance style in person, it quickly became clear to me why that happened. I’m as guilty as anyone of falling into dubstep’s trance in a post-Burial universe. Especially after William Bevan’s second masterpiece, Untrue, I started unconsciously devouring just about any semi-notable single that floated through the blogosphere.

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Blow Your Head proves dubstep’s commercial and underground tribes can still intermingle. Louis Pattison 2010 By now, you surely know Diplo: Philadelphia-born DJ/producer Thomas Wesley Pentz, onetime squeeze of M.I.A. and purveyor of a DJ style that mashes together local genres with an ear for the dancefloor, not the chin-strokers. It should be no surprise, then, that Pentz has locked onto dubstep, which is currently enjoying its moment in the sun as an honestly mainstream UK dance style following several years of incubation and gradual experimentation.

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