Published in the August 2007 issue of DJ Times Magazine
Volume 20 - Number 8
By Justin Hampton

Joe Nice Has Pushed The Dubstep Genre Via His Online Radio Show.

     Mixing the dramatic bass drops of dub-reggae with a dash of soul and the near-frenetic pace of drum-n-bass, Dubstep churns like a low-end rumble from the depths. The South London-born genre has broken out big over the past year and injected a fresh dose of enthusiasm into international EDM scenes.
     Meanwhile, back in the States, Baltimore’s Joe Nice (aka Joe Knights) is being hailed as America’s Dubstep ambassador. Since his fortuitous introduction to the genre at a 2002 rave, Nice has parlayed this inspiration into a global-DJ career. In addition to earning headlining status in American clubs hip to Dubstep, he’s also earned enough respect across the pond to be the only U.S. jock invited to spin at DMZ, the genre’s cornerstone event in the U.K.
     He’s come a long way from spinning Baltimore club tunes and, considering his now-famous definition of Dubstep’s elements as “space, bass and pace,” he’s learned a lot about the unique skills it takes to mix the music’s dark, spare undertones and muted rhythms together. “Sometimes, you might be matching an individual hi-hat on one tune with a snare on the other tune,” he says, “or you might be mixing or trying to match up a synth with a kick drum on the other tune. Sure, you can get all-technical and say, ‘I’m gonna match up a snare with a snare or a bass drum with a bass drum or bassline with a bass line.’ But with Dubstep, those rules kind of get thrown out the window.”
     Nice’s career progression also goes against the grain as well, as he built up his rep not through incessant gigging, but from the success of his online radio show (gourmetbeats.com), which he’s consistently hosted the third Tuesday of every month since September of 2003. Through promoting the show early on at websites like dubplate.net and Dubstep Forum, Joe projected an affable on-air persona that helped spread his name.
     He also took advantage of the bizarre in-joke nature of Internet culture to develop his name: one online radio show found Joe Nice instructing his listeners to “gimme five for the reload” on AIM if they wanted to hear the track again. Instead of getting the word “reload” as he expected, people typed in the word “five,” a gaffe that has turned into a staple of Nice’s live sets where Dubstep fans at his shows will hold up a sheet with the number 5 on it if they want a rewind of the track.
     When it comes to doing his job online or off, Joe’s needs are pretty mimimal: two Technics 1200 MK5 turntables; an Allen & Heath Xone 62 mixer; Shure M44-7 needles; and Sennheiser HD280 headphones. For his radio show, Joe uses a free software program from RealOne called Helix Producer to connect to a remote server through his ISP.
     As a diehard fan of dubplates, Nice has yet to adopt CDs or software programs into his live sets. But he does hope that American clubs beef up their sound systems with the subwoofers necessary to bring this music alive for its growing audience. “I’ve played on a bunch of sound systems in America, and a lot of them don’t compare to what you can hear going on overseas,” he observes. “You can’t [play this] in a big room with a bunch of big speakers and have no subs at all. I mean, the bass is what drives the music.”
     Though Nice says that his current touring schedule has kept him away from further sharpening his own studio skills—he’s attempting to master Propellerhead’s Reason software—he remains enthusiastic about the genre’s current crop of producers. In addition to Dubstep pioneers like Skream, Kode9 and Digital Mystikz, his faves include Sweden’s L-Wiz, Norway’s Even, Canada’s Lo-Tech and America’s DLX.
     “There’s a steady growth of this sound in different places around the world that, two years ago, had nothing to do with Dubstep at all,” he enthuses. “They can have an event, sponsored by such-and-such radio, record store or a magazine or whatever the case may be. We’re seeing more and more of this happen on a frequent basis. And to me, that’s what’s most exciting about Dubstep right now.”