The US dubstep scene is soooo hot right now
but not for the right reasons !
Note to fans reading this on their e-mail; the blog post is truncated by Gmail so hit the Substack link to read everything !
Episode 213 will introduce you to the dramatic world of US dubstep and the cat fights and allegations between major dubstep and bass DJ’s. Stay tuned because the salt is salty…
But before we get into the real drama drama we had some real scary drama with…you guessed it…a bass US festival. Namely, Bass Canyon 2022. For those of you not in the know Bass Canyon is another festival started by Excision (more on him later) which was established in 2018, and returned this year with the 4th edition. Which almost didn’t happen because…
Police in Grant County, Washington believe they may have stopped a mass shooting on Friday night (August 19th) during the Bass Canyon Music Festival at the Gorge Amphitheatre.
The county sheriff’s department later identified the suspect as 31-year-old Jonathan R. Moody of Ephrata, a town about 100 miles east of Spokane. Witnesses said they saw Moody inhale an unknown substance or gas from a balloon (? laughing gas) inside his car before loading two 9mm pistols. With one pistol concealed in the rear of his waistband and the other in an outside-the-waistband holster, Moody then began approaching concertgoers, asking what time the concert ended and where people would be exiting the venue.
Did he think that no one would notice? He must have been off his trolley. He was detained by security outside of the venue gates and arrested on suspicion of one count of possession of a dangerous weapon and one count of unlawful carrying or handling of a weapon. Authorities booked Moody into Grant County Jail. Moody was not thought to be trying to enter the festival.
The first night of the Bass Canyon festival was sold-out and had a crowd of over 25,000, as the statement notes. Grant County authorities thanked the concertgoers who reported Moody, as well as on-site security for “keeping the man from getting inside the concert venue.” “Remember: if you see something, say something,” Grant County Sheriff’s Office wrote in the post.
“Citizens saw something completely out of place for the circumstances and notified security, who in turn notified deputies. That combination of situational awareness along with noticing ‘something does not fit’ resulted in a possible tragedy being prevented.”
Bass Canyon is a three-day EDM festival that concluded on Sunday, August 21st with no more shenanigans. Its 2022 line-up included headliners Excision, Subtronics, Sudden Death, Dion Timmer, G Jones, and Wooli among many others.
Earlier this month, a Lollapalooza security guard was arrested after allegedly faking a mass shooting threat in hopes of getting off work early.
Obviously, this seems to be a trend in the US but it does not look to me like bass festival have the healthiest of crowds…
Whether this is just pure buddy buddy adrenaline rush or concealed aggression I’ll leave you to be the judges of. In my case, I’d rather groove than body slam…each to his own as they say…
Bass Canyon tweeted the following after the end of day 1…
It almost was…!
Having finished with the scary drama let’s get on to the juicy drama.
This is a story about a well known artist called Getter who came out on Twitter to support Space Laces but this also got Slushii angry and…where is Excision in all of this? Keep on listening.
Have you heard of Getter? Well, if you are a fan of this podcast you may remember that we did a feature on him back in episode 103 Visceral tour cancelled ! that aired on April 2019. We debated whether Getter actually confused his fans who booed him and him ending up cancelling his tour by not rebranding himself despite his rightful change of artistic direction.
Have you heard of Space Laces? 2018 was a monumental year for Ian Slider aka Space Laces, who’s quickly solidified his mark as a leading tastemaker in electronic music. Known for timeless classics like “Digital Gangsta” “Throwin Elbows” and “Fang Banger” with Bro Safari, the bass music prodigy came crashing with his Beatport #1 collaboration with Excision on “Rumble” Space Laces continued gaining traction with the release of Vaultage 001, 002 and finally 003 on March 2021, a mini mix series of years of unreleased material.
Getter seemed to be in a bit of a funk lately judging from his recent tweets
Perhaps this gave an indication of what was about to be unleashed.
At the end of Bass Canyon Excision tweeted out thanking all the artists for their participation. Well, that was it !
and he continued…
Well, that was it. All hell broke loose afterwards…
Half the fans acknowledged this
space laces and dion timmer ghost produce for excision so what youre saying is most definitely true lol
the other half (the X gang) came raging saying stuff like:
Maybe you should start ripping space laces so that people dont boo you off stage
And Getter continues with some evidence for his claims. To make his point, Getter posted this side-by-side video comparing Excision’s Titans with an unreleased or little-known track from Space Laces’ Vaultage 003:
If you are not tuned your ear in to dubstep you may argue they all sound the same; check out this tweet below:
Excision makes a rebuttal:
Excision then wrapped up his multi-thread tweet by posting a video of himself in the studio doing a “deep voice” take down of Getter in which he grumbles, “I heard you want attention on Twitter. Maybe Getter your facts straight before you talk shit. Now go back under that bridge you crawled out from.”
Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan, trash metal never sounded so good !
Whilst Wooli had to say the following:
To which Getter said
Mr Getter perhaps that was not the best of times…
Oops…
Massive respect to Wooli who wants to keep the P.L.U.R. vibe alive !
Do you think that was the end? Well, no !
it is time for Slushii to take the lead…
You know who he is talking about right? Mr Mello himself…Marshmello.
Now, Slushii had some collaborations with Marshmello but this is not what he is talking about here !
As far as we know Marshmello didn’t issue a response. I guess he is above all this drama.
What So Not added some fuel to the fire without blaming any particular artist….
A couple days after the drama started Space Laces gave a formal response
I mean even if he did would he go against the Master of the Dubstep Universe that is Mr X?
Surely, that must be the end, right? After all it is Monday and we are back in office?
Wait…
Getter keeps them mean and says “what happens in the dark, comes out in the light”. Sounds like a line from Batman?
To which @SailorLewdd responded…
Reddit takes the lead !
Remember when Space Laces said he is not doing any ghost producing? For those who do not know what that is you may wish to go wayyyyyyyyyyyyyy back in time and listen to our episode 14 aired in January 2017 (fan spotter what is so special about this episode?). Big shout out to Psykeys…
Well, someone on Twitter goes out and posts a bunch of screenshots from a conversation
A user from reddit u/lapi3dra made a whole analysis of these screenshots. These look like screenshot from a messaging app.
For those who do not know Ian is Space Laces and Jeff is Excision.
So, Excision is paying Space Laces which is fair, but for what purpose?
Oops, he said ghosting. He did say ghosting !
Space Laces does not look like he is making too much, is he?
Damn, Space Laces is grinding hard !
Dion is Dion Timmer. So, what are the technical fixes Space Laces mentions? Edits? Final mixing? Mastering? Post production?
Emma sounds reaaaaaally nice. Cooks, cleans, does the dishes, the whole Monty ! Definitely a keeper…Groupies take notice…
So, these are the facts. Now what is the issue? What caused an outrage initially from Getter and Slushii is whether the work of an artist is credited as it should?
Many, say it depends on the exact role. Here’s where the controversy continues…
yall have to remember excision has had permanent tinnitus for years and from what i understand its very serious. He probably doesnt trust his ears to do the mixdown/mastering on his tracks anymore.
If X is practically deaf I guess it makes sense to have some one else do the mixing for him.
Op says…
I have a few takeaways from this stuff leaking. First, we now have proof that Ian/Space Laces (and likely Dion Timmer and The Frim) did paid, uncredited work for Excision. Not much here suggests that includes production work, but by no means does this post “prove Getter wrong”.
We can also see that Space Laces got paid 20% less than he hoped for mixing & mastering half the songs on Virus, and that he was overworked during the process. While that may have been entirely consented to, we can intuit there was a power imbalance here and Space Laces functioned much more as a employee than an equal.
IMO these two points do not support Excisions’ narrative of always crediting Space Laces and the two of them being best buds.
Lastly, whoever leaked this shit was very careful. These screenshots were clearly selected to include working links and casual conversation to support their legitimacy. If Space Laces does have an NDA on ghosting for X, nothing in here would violate that, which would keep him and the leaker who he sent these screenshots to in the clear. I personally find it likely he has done uncredited production but at this point that is a gut feeling rather than supported by evidence.
Another poster said:
SL’s response also showed, IMO, that he thought the Wooli & X song sounded like him. No reason for him to mention imitators if he didn’t think that was relevant. Also keep in mind that if SL was under an NDA like Getter says, he would legally not be able to say jack shit about ghosting.
And another one…
Is this blatant proof of ghost producing or propf X stealing songs? No. Does this prove X never had SL ghost and never stole songs? Also no.
The debate continues…
getter said that SL wasn't being credited for his work since his days with destroid and that X ripped a song off of high vaultage but it was a house track of his new EP Titans with Wooli for which he took inspiration from his collab with Dion Timmer on Mirror.. Wooli even showed a screenshot of his chat with getter chat with getter admiting the track X and he made was different..
tldr: getter was being a bitch, X, SL and Wooli showed the fucker his place
Sounds the X gang is out to smash Getter…
level 4lapi3draOP
Think you’re a little biased here. Wooli shared a message of Getter acknowledging the updated version of the track sounded nothing like Space Laces. Getter said that if the updated track was in Excision’s video, there would have been no comparison to SL. Getter said he still stands by his original statement that the ID sounds like a SL rip off.
Looking at SL’s statement about imitators and copycats in the game, I’m pretty sure he felt like the ID was ripping off his work too. As a huge SL fan I immediately thought that the Wooli and X ID sounded like an Excalibur knockoff before even seeing that others agreed.
So who should be credited in a song? How many roles are there from a track inception until the track gets released? Well, it depends…
Let’s look at the credits for the latest Excision release called Name Drop.
In this case Adam Puleo is Wooli and Jeff Abel is Excision. The credits show a performer, a writer and a producer. What does each one of them actually do?
How about Throwing Elbows?
Space Laces is mentioned with Excision as performers…
Let’s look at some examples. Bruno Mars - who won every Grammy for which he was nominated for the songs and album 24K Magic, including Grammy for Best Song for the song “That’s What I Like,“ writes mostly in the track-first way.
Take Bruno Mars and “That’s What I Like,” is credited to EIGHT people. This is because Bruno creates his music in the track-first method with his own team of writer-producers known as The Smeezingtons at first, with Bruno, Philip Lawrence & Ari Levine. This became Shampoo Press & Curl, which is Bruno, Lawrence and Christopher Brody Brown.
So “That’s What I Like” has the three members of his team, all of whom receive writing credit. But Bruno wanted a dance record. And he felt some of the tracks were not danceable enough. They needed that “bounce” he knew he could get if he brought in another production team, called The Stereotypes, of which there are four: James Fauntleroy, Jonathan Yip, Ray Romulus, and Ray McCollough II.
They came in to contribute only to the groove of the thing - the rhythm- spelled out by drums mostly. Expert at that, they came up with exactly what Bruno was after. So for that contribution - rhythm only, no words, chords, melody - they all received full credit.
A songwriting copyright is awarded to those who jointly contributed to the song's structure, chord progressions, and lyrics. This can be anyone, even the members of the rhythm section. (In many songs, especially in rock, pop, and dance music, a bass or drum part is so integral to the song that it becomes as important as the melody).
The best way to decide who gets credit is either for the members of the band to determine who wrote the songs, or to ignore the traditional rules and share equally (or by some other formula) in all band-written tunes.
Artists, songwriters, and contributors can be credited in the Details and Songs sections of your release during the upload process. Below are some of the common contributor roles:
Primary Artist - The Primary/Main Artist of the song or album
Featured - The Featured Artist on the song or album. There can be 1 or more Featured Artists. Please note: the featuring artist must be added as a contributor rather than added to the title of the song.
Songwriter - The person (or people) who wrote the lyrics and/or wrote the music for a song. At least one songwriter must be credited on your release, but you may credit as many as you need
Producer - The producer oversees and manages the production of a sound recording
Remixer - This role should be reserved for Remixes and should be credited to the individual who remixed the specific track
Enough with musicology and the music recording industry. What is your take on this?
To wrap all this up with some giggles. Here’s the best comment of a dramatic #edmtwitter weekend
Since slushii already aired out marshmello, just know marshmello doesn’t even make his own music. Dotcom has been ghost producing for marshmello since day 1 and has never been given credit for any of his songs