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Home Around Town Art & Design Books Clubs Comedy Dance Film Gay & Lesbian Home & Living Kids Music Opera & Classical Restaurants & Bars Sex & Dating Shopping Spas & Gyms Sports & Rec Theater Travel TV Clubs TOC Blog Do you like bass? Toronto International Film For BBC Radio 1 host Mary Anne Hobbs, the answer is a bloody yes! By Festival, day four: The Joshua P. Ferguson Road, George A. Romero’s Survival of the Dead 9:44am More posts

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1. Do you like bass?

CONCRETE JUNGLE Hobbs’s musical tastes have a distinctly urban feel. 2. Say UNKLE Photo: Shaun Bloodworth 3. Felix Da Housecat Radio jock, journalist, festival curator: All apply equally to Mary Anne Hobbs, host of BBC 4. Top ten dance clubs Radio 1’s Experimental Show. Weekly, she champions the best of the world’s bass-heavy 5. No Tell Motel club music, showcasing forward-thinking dubstep, drum ’n’ bass, hip-hop and all those 6. Fun for dancing genres’ tangents. Her latest compilation, Wild Angels, is out this week on Planet Mu Records, and her first U.S. tour kicks off at Smart Bar Thursday 10. We phoned Hobbs at 7. But wait, there’s more… her London home to find out how she’s become a global ambassador for underground 8. Joakim TOC Student sounds. 9. Amanda Blank Guide Of the U.K. electronic genre that’s recently found a foothold in the mainstream, Hobbs says, 10. Burning for you Essential advice for our scholastically minded “My response to dubstep was very much like John Peel’s response to punk.” Referring to the citizens. late BBC radio host and early punk enthusiast, Hobbs continues, “He put punk on this global pedestal, championing it vigorously. I’ve done the same with dubstep.” Time Out Chicago Kids 99 summer outings Hobbs is probably the genre’s most high-profile proponent. A music junkie since she Continuing Find things to do with the dropped out of school and joined a rock band at 19, she left the U.K. for L.A. at 21 and young ones and much Education slowly enmeshed herself in the city’s metal scene. A well-placed friend at NME brought her more in our newest Never stop learning. back to London for a job writing features for the magazine. In 1997, she jumped ship for the publication Time Out There's no excuse not to BBC. Now, at 45, she has a radio show and three compilations dedicated to the low-end- Chicago Kids. Available go back to school. loving genre, as well as a gig curating a dubstep stage at Barcelona’s Sonar Festival. at Borders and Barnes & Over the last four years, dubstep has become one of the biggest musical phenomenons in Noble locations. Sign up today! British DJ culture since drum ’n’ bass (its distant cousin). Dubstep—most of it produced by More Kids Newsletter kids who’ve barely reached 25—draws from the reggae and dub sounds that came to Britain Events, discounts, and the with its Caribbean immigrants, the moody influences of trip-hop, the syncopated shuffle of best of Chicago delivered two-step and, most of all, the breaks and bass heaviness of drum ’n’ bass. More Clubs to your inbox every week. “Just a few years ago, kids like Benga and Skream were playing out to ten people,” Hobbs says. “Now they’re on the brink of global superstardom.” When we point out that Dr. Dre FREE Stuff protégé Eve recently sampled from Benga—one of dubstep’s biggest artists—for her single, “Me N My,” Hobbs excitedly responds, “I just heard yesterday that Pharrell rang Benga, Win prizes and get saying, ‘We should hook up and make some beats together.’” Recently, both Pharrell and discounts, event invites Snoop Dogg have tried mimicking dubstep’s aesthetic. The genre has officially broken free and more. from the underground. Moneypenny The Very Best Songs of Summer TOC Staff “There’s a small collection of heads that will go berserk about this,” Hobbs says of a minor but dedicated fan base that will inevitably be hostile toward dubstep’s rise in popularity, Who does what and why. “[but] if an artist has a shot at mainstream success and that’s what they want, so be it. Best of Chicago clubbing “How do you define the underground anymore, anyway?” she continues. “Unless you stay Top 10 dance clubs TOC Free Flix off the Internet altogether and only perform at underground venues, how can you say you’re Top 5 Sexiest DJ Lounges Get free tickets to hot new still underground?” Fortunately, animosity toward the mainstream can drive producers to movie releases. movie releases. innovation. London’s Floating Points and Brackles have taken the genre in new directions, adding elements of L.A.’s abstract hip-hop scene and two-step’s up-tempo soul.

Subscribe Of her daily intake of new music, Hobb says with a laugh, “It does lead you to the brink of Subscribe now madness. I’m just touching the surface, there’s so much out there right now. ” Give a gift Mary Anne Hobbs headlines Smart Bar Thursday 10. Subscriber services • More Clubs articles

Time Out Chicago / Issue 237 : Sep 10–16, 2009

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