FUCK MIXING, LET'S DANCE

Best-stuff-of-the-decade coming up soon, so in order to make sure I haven't forgotten anything, I've been searching rock's back pages. This Quietus feature written by Melissa Bradshaw at the end of 08, on the genderedness of dubstep and funky house, especially caught my eye:

Dubstep had become obsessed with it’s own phallus! What linked unimaginative imitation with gestures of solidarity was masculine identification. It was all about who had the biggest ‘bass wobble’ (substitute ‘penis’). Tonally, the music took on an ejaculatory tone. And in the rave all these guys were going mental for each repetitious thrust in succession and adoring the person putting it forth because of the way he stood erect before them like a priapic symbol. (The smoking ban didn’t help me escape this type of thinking, because of the smell of unwashed boys).

Everything that has been most pleasurable about 2008 has contravened masculine music. A couple of years ago hearing tracks like ‘Neverland’ and ‘Mood Dub’ felt like being in a womb, enveloped in spacious rumbling. Or cocooned in some futuristic spaceship with the Rasta guys out of ‘Neuromancer’. Over the year dubstep by the likes of Geiom, TRG, 2562 and Martyn operated on a different kind of femininity, all curved out syncopations and seductive female vocals. Funky house, the genre of the year, was similarly slinky and oriented around a seemingly never ending line-up of star performances by female vocalists - Calista, Sophia, Ny, Katy B, and Clea Soul stand-up - who sang about heartbreak, comfort, escaping it all via the house-rave and shagging all night. Some very specifically female forms of sexual depression also emerged.

Her blog, entitled Decks and the City, is here.