In a recent interview on Roots People , dubstep pioneer and sonic theorist Kode9, in the midst of speaking about the architectures of proliferation in regards to dubstep and its international growth, mentions three cities: London, and the infamous FWD Nightclub where Kode 9 performs and hosts as a resident DJ, New York, where Joe Fresh - Kode9 calls him "the president of dubstep!" - acts as America's ambassador to the sound, and Vancouver, where he played the Konspiracy Group's FWD001 (and yes, they named the concert series separately from the London Club) show back in 2003.

Now, Kode9 has just finished playing again in Vancouver, at DubForms 3, an ongoing collaboration between Lighta! Sound and New Forms Festival, and who have recently hosted dubstep and grime heavyweight Loefah back in April. Lighta! is taking a relative stable partnership with NFF and turning it into a pretty exciting journey for Vancouver audiences; while there are several good reasons to point to that explain why dubstep has and can take hold in this city's psyche, Lighta! is taking no chances, wooing us with all kinds of foreign chocolates and fine wines. Could we be on the cusp of a sonic revolution in Vancouver? Could these be various cartographers we see here, ready to draw vancouver onto the map?

Vancouver has flirted with this kind of thing before; we were always one of the most feverish nodes of activity in the early industrial and punk scenes, but such movements by their very nature eschew Mecca's. The new wave of 'exclaim!-able' party-rock bands are gaining veritable exposure, though in a concurrent fashion as their peers from Toronto and Montreal, so that it seems like some grand national chorus where the Liberals have been re-elected, the BIG 3 metropolises holding hands, walking off into the future of international tours(-ism), DFAIT Funding happily restored, continental art critics pulling down their 20' x 34' Jeff Wall prints in favour of donning a You Say Party! We Say Die! headband with the rest of the eurotrash.

This is the way we are conditioned to think of 'moving forward.' We have known for decades now that progress is marketed like the American Dream, which in and of itself has proliferated like a rhizome, or a virus, melding with other cultural organisms in order to adapt to new habitats. maybe it's time for subcultures to stay nomadic and not be reified.

Lighta! and its advocates are veterans of the electronic music community of Vancouver and its environs... one may - or may not - have slight issue with their tactics - or lack thereof - and with their language, but never their honesty or their resourcefulness. For in this theatre of operations, they seem to have made themselves into a force to be reckoned with, for sure; transcribing the body of the [tribe] onto their own: the most willful and intentional, alongside - or within? - the SpeedTribe, the Nomadic War Machine of a subculture yet to be co-opted, from State-of-the-Art to Art-of-the-State.

Here's to Michael, Max, Keenan, Jeremiah, Jamie, and all the rest pushing it forward... to further horizontal integration with the rest of Vancity and the world, to it 'not blowing up'... and I'm sorry I had to put you on the map in the first place...