Joker’s Vision Does Dubstep Right
By Nee-Sa Lossing | Nov 10th, 2011
Joker's The Vision. | Album cover courtesy of 4AD
Dubbed the “King of Bass Music” by XLR8R Magazine, Joker calls his sound “Purple Music”: a blend of ambient, grimey and unexpected dubstep (a piano even makes an appearance!) that shines on his latest offering, The Vision.
For a full-length first-timer, Joker is no stranger to the scene. He’s had a prolific career for the past four years working with dubstep colleagues like Ginz, Zomby, Flying Lotus and Rustie on various EPs and singles. One of The Vision’s tracks, “Tron,” is even a re-release from his 2010 single. Admittedly, “Tron” proves to be the low point of the album (don’t get me wrong, though, it’s still miles better than most contemporary “dubstep” on the EDM charts).
If anything, the track serves as a marker to gauge how Joker’s artistic development has really taken off while he crafted the rest of the album in the months after “Tron” dropped.
Joker defies what the popular world might consider “dubstep” (think “whomp,” think ear-breaking-bass, think Skrillex). He reels in this skewed vision of what the genre has become and grounds it back to where it came from–and what it is meant to be. I don’t like the exhausted feeling I get after trying to keep up with some of the exaggerated, overdone dubstep drops that are finding their way into mainstream music and rave scenes. Joker doesn’t do that. He pulls off the genre on The Vision without dragging the listener through a gamut of jarring and assaulting clichéd beats.
The Vision features smartly inserted guest vocals, including Jessie Ware on the shining title track and William Cartwright on another stunner, “On My Mind.” Too often, electronic artists let overbearing guest vocals take command of a track, but Joker’s work perfectly melds with the singers, and keeps them in a supporting role–I find myself humming his (literally) electrifying beats rather than singing along to the lyrics.
As a whole, it’s clear that The Vision is deliberately cohesive. If the appropriately titled intro and outro weren’t dead giveaways, the way the songs transition into one another, creating an emotional journey from tracks one to 12, sinks in by album’s end.
Other standouts include “My Trance Girl” and “Back in the Days,” featuring a delightfully bouncy Buggsy, as well as the aforementioned “Outro,” a collab with Ginz, who goes way back with Joker (as on their genre-defining “Purple City.”)
With streaming clients like Spotify so readily-available, The Vision, is definitely worth a listen. However, I urge you to go actually purchase a copy of your very own – it’s that good.
Every so often a new form of music is brought to the masses, in many instances the new music is born from the wider genre title, dance music, electronic beat based music that is played in clubs and predominantly listened to by young people in the nightclubs of the world. This is an article that introduced dubstep as a genre and briefly explains the considerations for audio mastering with the style. Dubstep music is a fairly new form of electronic music which is dance based. It has a focus on deep vibrant bass hooks. Dubstep was originated in London, UK, it is a form of music which has proliferated across the UK and now the rest of the world. It’s a music form which grew from the genre of UK G (predominantly speed garage and two-step). The bass focused mix downs can have connection drawn from D ‘n’ B, a dance music form which appears to have had an impact on some of the dubstep producers.