Deep in Marrero, miles away even from the Expressway, inside an otherwise fully domesticated house, through its kitchen, past the laundry room and finally into the walled-in garage, a red “on air” light glows from one of two flat screen monitors, letting the world know that BelowCLevel is broadcasting to the world. Helming the controls is Graham Greenleaf (or simply Greenleaf once he’s on), one member of the small but dedicated crew of drum and bass enthusiasts in New Orleans who operate the radio show (and numerous live events) under the BelowCLevel banner. As a longtime resident of the DJ scene (and ANTIGRAVITY’s monthly columnist specializing on the 1’s and 2’s), Greenleaf has been subject to a lot of thump over the years.
Me, I grew up in the flannel-worship side of the ‘90s, so while I’m fond of my Trainspotting soundtrack and DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing, I can pretty much say that my knowledge of electronic music is, well, lacking. It’s easy for anyone with an untrained ear to lump it all together as rave music with the flashiest, most-hyped aspects of the genre drowning out all the nuance. It’s not a surprising fate, considering electronic music is disco’s child, cursed to suffer the same fate as its parent: denigrated and dismissed as a drug-fueled fad with awful fashion and a permanent time-stamp on the sound. But as it goes for other sub-genres, such as surf, Norwegian black metal or even punk and hardcore, electronic music—and Greenleaf’s particular penchant for drum and bass—has a history that’s very real and still evolving. And though it might be an intimate crowd of people who love this music, especially in New Orleans, they make up for it with their passion and devotion. And because it’s music mid-wifed by circuit boards, the EM culture has taken especially well to the internet. You won’t find a Mac in this garage; instead it’s all custom-built PCs tricked out with blue LEDs.
On this particular Summer night, Greenleaf has about 118 active listeners throughout the world, many of them riffing with each other back and forth on an IRC network. Throughout the show, Greenleaf makes it a point to give shout-outs to the most engaged of the audience, at one point saying “Hello ladies. How are y’all both doing tonight?” It’s the internet at its best, creating a radio show that is more interactive than the old days, where a well-timed phone call was the only way to reach the DJ.
So what a better way to dive in than hang out with Greenleaf for a few hours as he worked through track after track which, coming through the room’s more-than-adequate PA and subwoofer, made me fear that I was going to be struck by the infamous ‘brown note.’ Luckily for me and the couch I had sunk into, it didn’t quite get there. But it was still a trippy experience, like being in a spaceship’s rumpus room, heading fast into the deep unknown.
Afterwards, over a few beers, a few smokes and some classical music washing away the mania of the earlier radio show, I sat down with Greenleaf on the patio, talked some EM 101 and just generally shot the shit. It turned into quite the playlist.
Help me break it down: what is the difference between drum and bass, jungle, electronic, electronica, techno…?
Greenleaf: Electronica is just kind of a generic, broad term that someone in the late ‘90s dreamed up to kind of umbrella all the different styles of electronic music, as far as whether it was house or techno or drum and bass or breakbeat hardcore, whatever. Big beat—
Wait, what is big beat?
Like Fatboy Slim. So probably around ’97 or ’98; It was just kind of a thing that came out of a combination of breakbeat and drum and bass, but more mid-tempo and a little more with like a house kind of vibe to it. And Fatboy Slim is like a perfect example.
So then what is house?
House? I mean, fuck… House is disco, it came out of disco. By the time 1980 hit, House was the shit. It came out of Chicago and it was 4 to the floor, just good fuckin dance music.
That song “What is love…?” What is that?
Ahhh, that’s more club music; but it’s house to a certain extent. It’s like vocal house, like gay house is very similar to that tune.
Is that a genre, gay house?
At the time, in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s I would say yes, gay house was definitely a term. I’m not sure about now but gay house tended to be more vocal, more like Haddaway [“What is Love”]… Not that Haddaway was gay house at all by any means… We could sit and I could break down subgenres of each genre of electronic music for days. And unfortunately, techno got labeled as the same thing, even though it was a completely different genre in itself. It was house and then it was techno. Electronic music, starting as early as 1980—Carl Craig, Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson and those cats—started making techno in the very early ‘80s and it was very similar to house to a certain extent; but it was also a lot darker and it came out of Detroit. And the reason they called it techno was because they didn’t want it to be classified as house, because the sounds were darker and more moody. Detroit and Chicago started house; Detroit started techno and techno is responsible for, I mean, everything.
So drum and bass comes out of that?
Definitely. Drum and bass and see—it’s also part of the evolution of the genre. So techno from Detroit went over to the U.K. and morphed into rave or breakbeat hardcore. They basically took influences of dub and reggae and ragga and even before then, Detroit; you know, the techno sounds, different stabs and the mentasm, which is basically a synthesizer sound that’s been morphed and reversed. And the reason it’s called the mentasm is because it comes from a Detroit techno song by Joey Beltram called “Mentasm” and that was where the sound originated… So out of house came acid house and out of techno came kind of what you would call dub techno; they started putting reggae bass lines in and eventually those things combined and became breakbeat hardcore. And then breakbeat hardcore went on to become jungle and jungle went on to become what is now called drum and bass. Which in itself has become liquid and minimal and drumfunk and clownstep—
Clownstep? What the hell is that?
The thing is, it’s a derogatory term. People that make that kind of drum and bass are not like “Yeah man, I make fuckin clownstep.” They call it jump-up or wobble. But it’s just fucking cheesy. Like Dev Paradox said, it sounds like ringtone music.
Why is dubstep hated on so much these days? First of all, what is it?
Dubstep probably started as a genre of its own around 2003 to 2005. From what I can tell—from people that I know—[for] a lot of the people that started doing dubstep, it was a reaction to higher tempos in drum and bass. So drum and bass at the time was getting very fast, like 180 beats per minute, which is 20 bpm faster than drum and bass two years before that. Once you start speeding up like that, you lose a lot of space in the music to work with, to create atmosphere and all these different vibes you can’t get, especially with drum and bass because the drums typically—
That’s a lot of snare hits to hear.
Exactly. So dubstep came about as kind of a reaction; they were going to slow it down and take it from 180 to 130, 140 so that it gave them space to create atmosphere… With dubstep it’s a lot slower and you get that boom… ka! And I’ll be completely honest, the reason I didn’t really get into it at the time was that… I’ve been playing drum and bass and jungle since I was 15 years old. At the time dubstep started I was 25, 26; I had already invested over 10 years of my life to drum and bass and there was still stuff coming out that I was interested in. I didn’t see a point in switching; I understood why people were doing that from a production standpoint but at that time I had only barely scratched the surface, production-wise, of what I’m doing now.
But why does it get a bad name?
Because of America. And laptop computers and the internet. America has a very good way of ruining things that are good. We as Americans have this very fuck you, we’re America! attitude so that’s what they did to dubstep. Americans took dubstep and made it filthy fucking dirty. It’s like imagine doom metal as electronic music—
That sounds kind of cool, though—
But not quite gloomy, more in-your-face; so I’m going to be completely filthy, dirty, grimy sound in your face and it’s all going to be about the drop. That’s what it’s become.
And the drop is?
When the meat of the track drops. You’ve got a little build up in the intro; and then there’s a drop where everything comes in.
The calm before the storm.
And the drop is the storm. Like Skrillex—and I know a lot of dubstep people are going to say unh, he’s not dubstep; and I understand that, trust me, I do… But there was something on the internet a while back and he posted a link on his Facebook that was an Aphex Twin tune. And Aphex Twin is amazing. He’s ambient but also IDM, and that’s another just shitty label—intelligent dance music—but Aphex Twin is performance art to a certain extent… it’s hard to classify what he does. So the thing was, it had a bunch of responses and they were obviously [Skrillex] fans, and they were like “I kept waiting for the drop. Where’s the drop?” And it’s numerous people, like yeah, it would be all right but it doesn’t have a drop…
Last question: Is Greenleaf what’s on your birth certificate?
Yes, Greenleaf is the family name. It was originally feuille-verte from France and they were Huguenots who moved to England in the late 1600s early, 1700s and changed it to the English, which is Greenleaf.
You can catch BelowCLevel every other Wednesday on jungletrain.net at 8 pm or check out some of Greenleaf’s releases at soundclound.com/greenleafselektah
