Caspa returns with 4 new tunes of classic dubstep

The “System Failure” EP captures an OG of the scene at his cold and mechanical best

By this point nearly all the first or second generation dubstep artists have long since “progressed” passed the genre they invented and are making house music or whatever they were into before. This isn’t always terrible as Chase & Status’ jungle tracks are worthy of a couple listens (thought not nearly as many listens as tunes like “Eastern Jam” which still rules to this day). I’ve got a theory that the artists that were already into heavy music like metal or mid-tempo beat music such as rap, dub and, of course, grime didn’t need to “progress” because dubstep was already hitting the right buttons for them. It wasn’t this wild detour from dance music.

Caspa would be one of those guys that has mutated the formal qualities of dubstep and grown as an artist but has, happily, never grown up and made boring dance music or disappeared into sound design for film or whatever. That said his new EP is a return to classic circa-2007 dubstep.

“System Failure” is clearly a commentary on the breakdown (track 2 is literally called “Broken System”) of everything in the wake of the Coronovirus lockdowns and political polarization of the US and Europe. “Babylon will fall”-type samples and sirens were used throughout early dubstep but I think they quickly became a stylistic element (similar to how the Griselda wrestling sample has now become a staple of modern hip-hop). Caspa has brought those pieces back with these tunes, abandoned the weirdness of his recent music and what you get is a soundtrack for the defeat that is modern life: cold and mechanical bummer music. Yeah, its rhythmic and funky but it’s also marching music and you know what that accompanies.

That’s probably what this record captures so well about early dubstep. It’s music that is utterly inhumane—fucked up sounds that can only come from machinery but tempered by rhythm. Caspa pushes that by mostly avoiding anything else that made dubstep popular like Skream’s melody or the anthemic build-ups that would lead to Brostep. You can’t even use the term “bassline” to describe the bass. They’re mostly hollowed out burps and grinding notes.

The only real complaint I have about this record is how bad the cover artwork sucks. Yes, I get that the code reveal of the Matrix might be an apt metaphor for 2020 but it’s still corny and overdone. But besides that (and complaining about cover art in the age of streaming is basically nitpickiness) it’s an A+ release.

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