Last Thursday October 18th, I had the pleasure to see one of the Dubstep pioneers live at the Paradise Rock Club: Gary McCann. It’s hard to talk about how dubstep came to be without mentioning his name at all. Many do not know this but London is the birthplace of the genre. The London-based artist and producer played an extensive set. To my surprise the venue was not packed, as I thought he deserved or expected. Nevertheless, there was a very good vibe among the crowd and it seemed to be all people who genuinely were there to hear the set. The lighting of the show was very moderate, allowing people to focus on the music entirely. In addition to his own music, he played a variety of material from other main dubstep artists as Flux Pavilion, Major Lazer, Flosstradamous, Skrillex, Rusko, Noisia, among others.

He started out slow with a classic vocal sample, creating that traditional suspense only to drop the track with fury right from the beginning, from that point on he kept that dynamic of drop after drop with with little rest for a while, keeping the crowd alert and moving, all this time with his game face and the occasional message on the mic. Some of his prominent songs were the critically acclaimed and praised “Where’s my Money?”, a song that completely embodies his early career-launching material, in which you can also hear some of his classic vocal sample and dirty drop. My personal favorite was a slightly sped up “Original Don (Flosstrodamous remix)” by Major Lazer. This one took me completely out of surprise as it was completely unexpected and not even dubstep. “Original Don” is a mind-boggling, swing dirty trap track (Trap is a Hip-Hop and Dubstep-influenced electronic genre). It was nice to see that most people felt the same euphoria during that one. Another number that got the blood flowing was Flux Pavilion’s dubstep classic “Bass Cannon”. All the while, the transition was smooth as can be.

It’s always fun to hear Dubstep artists play songs from other artists, this is something I respect about the genre, and the crowd seemed to agree when he played Skrillex’s “Breakin’ a Sweat”. Even though it was a long set, there was never a feeling of monotony or boredom, quite the opposite actually. To conclude people were in awe of the nastiness of his drops: a perfect start to his awaited US tour.

Federico Beckhoff
(From El Alacran – Fridays 6-7pm)