Here is another tune from
Ed Solo - Egyptian Horns. Nice wobbly dubstep bassline, and I like the sound of this tune too. Lots of bass energy so turn those subs way up!
Interestingly, what can be discerned from those those who know a little bit of history of electronic dance music is this track contains bits of subwoofer candy tunes from years past. The horns are sampled from the classic hardcore breakbeat tune
'The Horn Track' by Egyptian Empire (that is a killer tune, btw), which would have been considered very bass heavy back in the day (very early 90's).
'Hardcore Breakbeat' as a genre was a great pivotal moment in electronic dance music, a heavily derivative genre and a hugely influential one as well. It takes the fast tempo and constant bass of techno and mixes it with the breakbeats of electro and hip hop. Many of the recording artists sampled from other sources very promiscuously and often without even bothering with trivialities like copyright permission in doing so. The tone of the tracks could range from dark and menacing to chirpy and blissful. There was no strict way these tunes were supposed to sound. The people who were making it were very young and most didn't have an education in music or access to high-quality studio equipment. The scene and sound was chaotic, and that's one of the things I loved about it: anything goes. Of course, we didn't call it 'hardcore breakbeat' back then, we just called it 'techno', but nowadays the label 'hardcore breakbeat' serves as a useful distinction since it is clearly more than just techno.
It didn't really last long as a genre, maybe from 1990 to 1993 and was mostly done by UK artists, and dissolved into a bunch of other genres. Of the genres that directly came from hardcore breakbeat are drum'n'bass, jungle, and 'happy hardcore'. Dubstep has a pretty direct line of succession from hardcore breakbeat: hardcore breakbeat -> drum'n'bass. Drum'n'bass + UK Garage = dubstep. Of course, dubstep has evolved as a sound quite a bit since its early days. In fact, I don't know that many current dubstep fans would even recognize its early incarnations.
Ed Solo's 'Egyptian Horns' also samples Egyptian Lover's classic early hiphop recording
'Egypt, Egypt' that I am sure many of you would recognize. It is an old breakbeat tune from 1983 I think, very electro and a hit with breakdancers. Believe it or not, the sound of that tune would have been considered very heavy-duty back in its day, and would have been subwoofer candy in its time, had they had subwoofers back then. It was from music like this early electro that house would emerge, and house begat techno, and techno begat hardcore breakbeat.
When we listen to 'Egypt, Egypt', we hear the melody sampled from the Kraftwerk's '
Trans Europe Express', a huge early electronic music hit back from 1977. The influence of Kraftwerk can not be overstated. If we made an analogy of electronic dance music to western civilization, Kraftwerk would be like Ancient Greece, a central point in history whose influences shaped everything else that came after it. And even back then, I think Kraftwerk would be considered bass heavy because the electronic sound had a lot greater ratio of fundamental to overtones. In the bass line and bass drum, this makes for a much cleaner sound and more of a spectral emphasis on the deeper frequencies.
So 'Egyptian Horns' (dubstep) samples from 'The Horn Track' (hardcore breakbeat), much as dubstep had come from hardcore breakbeat's successor, Drum'n'Bass. 'The Horn track' (harcdcore breakbeat) samples from 'Egypt, Egypt' (electro), much as house and techno comes from electo, and hardcore breakbeat comes from techno and house. And 'Egypt, Egypt' samples Kraftwerk, which is where it all started.
OK, I did not mean to write a treatise on electronic music history, but I couldn't help to note the rich history implicit in Ed Solo's 'Egyptian Horns' when you listen closely. This tune contains all the DNA of electronic dance music going back to its beginnings. I suppose they all do, but it's very clear on this particular recording because of the samples. I was originally only going to say something like "this is a great tune to rock your subs on!"
