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Well, that's a pretty standard ambient-ish soundscape bordering on ‘chill-out’, though thankfully not as cheesy as a whole lot of them.

For me, dub music (not dubstep) was the most astoundingly un-aggressive music. Back in the past, I ran Bill Laswell's compilations two times a day: on the morning subway to doze for twenty minutes, and when falling asleep at night. Not really a surprising quality, since the genre is essentially produced as ganja in musical form. Note that you won't hear half of the music if your speakers don't handle deep bass.

https://billlaswell.bandcamp.com/album/trojan-dub-massive-vo...

(Ever since the name-stealing dubstep occupied the web while having nothing to do with dub, I have to exclude it every time when searching for the latter.)

Even though the genre evolved decently into the 90s–2000s, with British and French bands like Alpha & Omega, Twilight Circus, High Tone, and Laswell & Jah Wobble's productions—I still find myself returning to simpler tunes when looking to drop out of the daily race.

IMO Sun Araw later grokked quite well that dub can be more trippy than ‘psychedelic’ genres. And Hype Williams are excellent bearers of this torch, though not in the sub-bass range.

https://sunaraw.bandcamp.com/track/horse-steppin-3

https://youtube.com/watch?v=YMwsmam5X4Q, https://youtube.com/watch?v=rHCYKkU8jto

Ah, and in regard to ‘classical’ music, I'm a big fan of Swingle Singers' renditions of Mozart, from ‘A Cappella Amadeus’. They're magical for me somehow: I was able to have their songs on both alarm clock and ringtone, for years, without coming to hate them. This is while being cold to both ‘classical music’ and acappella in general.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dLWdHh39p0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e06TWt4jvg




Btw, funny thing: despite dub being basically packaged tune-out, reggae MCs constantly went on about their ‘war’ against the plight of the black man and the Babylon and about how they're more macho than everyone else in the business. So much so that ragga jungle artist names and compilations were full of military terminology, and the MCing fit right in with breakcore as ‘raggacore’.

Consider this example, which I'm even somewhat uncomfortable sharing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEJ6JVBUBmk


> For me, dub music (not dubstep) was the most astoundingly un-aggressive music.

Agreed! I feel myself relaxing every time i hear the opening notes of this track - Harry Mudie and King Tubby's 'Full Dose Of Dub':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcpoD5gmvhY


Sun Araw is great, definitely my favourite on the Hotline Miami soundtrack, which has lots of other awesome tracks.

The other quite famous track of his is https://sunaraw.bandcamp.com/track/deep-cover-2 also from the HM soundtrack


The thing is, pretty much everyone knows the two tracks from ‘Hotline Miami’, but Sun Araw has plenty of other heady stuff on the early EPs.

E.g. ‘Canopy’ here https://sunaraw.bandcamp.com/album/boat-trip

All of ‘Heavy Deeds’: https://sunaraw.bandcamp.com/album/heavy-deeds

and ‘On Patrol’, which is full of this deep sound: https://sunaraw.bandcamp.com/album/on-patrol

‘Off Duty’ and ‘Sun Ark’ too.

Stallones later switched to guitar noodling and more spacey compositions, which aren't so groovy—though also interesting sometimes.

He also made an album ‘Icon Give Thank’ with M. Geddes Gengras and The Congos, which is pretty much Sun Araw plus actual dub: https://youtube.com/watch?v=HWvqL-pbH2U


The sound effects sound like Ross' music (from Friends):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERy-99vXxnM


I mean, Ross just needed to lay down some groove. He was getting the hang of it at the end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUzcKlgy_a4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p3Rx0t0jiw


Perhaps you would prefer Lee Perry's artisanal cow impressions on 'Cow Thief Skank':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alGgaKPaswI


The stereo stuff going on is super distracting for me :v


I mean heck even dubsteps original releases (Skream’s Midnight Request Line for example) retains the non-aggressiveness. Bro-step ruined it all haha


Agreed, the music from the original british dubstep scene had a lot more in common with dub music than what became popular dubstep. It was mostly heavy bass ran through a low pass filter with the frequency cutoff set up to an oscillator giving it that wobbly wubbing sound.

Dub music itself was actually more popular with the british audience than jamaican audience. Producers like Mad Professor and Scientist and even King Tubby made their dub records specifically to release in England.




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