Derived from queer expression of ‘the dolls’, the artificial life of a doll, the tension between the human and the machine, DOLLSTEP queers dubstep into something mechanical, camp, and dystopian. The line between social reality and science fiction is an optical illusion.

Dubstep emerged from displaced sounds, pressurised bass, syncopated rhythms out of step, half-time, and double-time coexisting. Drawing on dub, jungle, and the wider hardcore continuum, it was music built on the margins before hardening into a hypermasculine form that shed a deeper intersectional possibility. DOLLSTEP develops those sounds for gender expression and speculative future-making.

The project builds a trans-sonic fiction: a reimagining of genre through femme, queer, and trans artists working at the intersection of low-end electronics and cyber-feminist world-building. The DOLLSTEP curative framework and genre hybridisation is built from the hyper sensibilities of SOPHIE, exploring themes of transhumanism and postmodern feminism; technology as a tool for expression, the self by synthesising the real. 

DOLLSTEP moulds electronic music culture from a site of comfortable displacement, building infrastructure needed to sustain trans spaces in nightlife.

Editions have included hybrid live sets from gyrofield and princess xixi, DJ sets from Introspekt, Karlie Marx, Ifeoluwa, ex.sses and Lyzander. Bristol has been the base, with support from the Arts Council and the PRS Foundation.