Illustration by Zeloot

The English genre known as dubstep has flourished just as its precursors—garage and drum and bass—did: by letting sounds unfold over the generous course of a d.j.’s evening. Pop songs don’t have that kind of spare time, but they’re always hungry for new sounds, so subcultures do have a way of finding their way into extremely popular songs, or at least versions of them. The British dubstep duo Nero has recently been responsible for a string of brilliant remixes of songs by pop acts like La Roux and the Streets. Nero’s Joe Ray and Dan Stephens met when they were sixteen, began making tracks two years later, and now, eight years after that, they are doing their best to balance the bass overload of dubstep and the melodic narrative of traditional songs. When they appear at (Le) Poisson Rouge, on March 18, you’ll be able to hear one of those glorious, splinter-thin moments when a sound is both free to do whatever it wants and still functioning as a new power source for the deathless form of the song. Someone will object, and that’s how you know it’s a good idea. ♦