Don Rosco

Well-known member
hardcore->jungle->DnB->2step->Grime/dubstep

It's a UK thing like Reggae is Jamaican. Yeah, there's tons of non-Jamaican reggae, but it wouldn't exist without Jamaica.

You know this anyway. Are you trying to make some kind of point?
 

Logos

Ghosts of my life
Also, dubstep to me seems to have as much ties with things like digidub and (nu-skool) breakz as with 2 step. And finally, what about bigbeat and triphop.

Sounding like them in retrospect doesn't really mean anything...if you pay attention to the actual flow of ideas, the club nights, the record shops, early careers of main players you can see (e.g.) that dubstep is largely an evolution out of the jungle/garage context.
 

Don Rosco

Well-known member
It's a rough sketch, not the Gospel. You'd end up with every genre under the sun if you were looking at all influences / directions / cul de sacs. You should probably include Speed Garage, Happy Hardcore, Belgian Hardcore etc etc

Maybe we should get Pete Frame on the job?
 

gek-opel

entered apprentice
I was reminded of Pete Frame's rock family trees recently when looking at the rather excellent insert included with "The Roots Of Dubstep" compilation...
 

Logos

Ghosts of my life
if this is the criterion, i don't think you really can make the step from dnb to 2step. I know garage was played were jungle was played, and that some garage producers did some dnb productions in their youth, but the flow you are talking about was from dnb to techno, and from house to garage to 2step

Not true. There was a big influx of - and this is important - not just producers (usually on the lower rungs of the jungle ladder) but ravers into garage after 95/96.

It was only when house - which was/is effectively a static medium by the standards of UK music - got appropriated by the currents which nurtured jungle that 2-step could emerge so rapidly. Its not gospel, as Rosco points out, but neither is it about linear development at the expense of cross-fertilization. Do you really think we would have 2-step without jungle?
 
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Logos

Ghosts of my life
I was reminded of Pete Frame's rock family trees recently when looking at the rather excellent insert included with "The Roots Of Dubstep" compilation...

Me too - more so when I saw that pen and ink drawing from Sleazenation Martin put up on blackdown.
 
but neither is it about linear development at the expense of cross-fertilization. Do you really think we would have 2-step without jungle?

That's what i wanted to touch on. I've seen the 'nuum' mentioned a bit around here and referenced just recently in the Kode9 interview @the redbull academy. Of course not by kode himself. Only I've never really understood what it was and where it came from, who coined the term and whether it was a linear progression, a direct evolutionary procession type of thing from one genre of UK electronica to the next or whether it's wider global definition included stuff like kraftwerk, detroit/chicago techno, NY miami electro, JA dancehall ? Or if it being strictly a UK thing if it even had a global equivalent ?

For what it's worth, I do think the genre known as UKgarage would have evolved without jungle as the prototypical garage sound which grew out of the US had already developed the twitchy stutter of 2 step before making its way across the Atlantic and had little to do with the double time ragga and sped up hiphop inspired jungle which was in full effect, morphing into the hardshuffle of d'n'b. To my mind UKG had more to do with local soul and r'n'b, which by way of crossfertilization with US r'n'b in the form of remixes sped up the demise of 2step. As UKG became cheesier and more pop orientated it garnered the inevitable underground backlash against all things mainstream and commercial setting the scene for the darker strains of grime and dubstep to emerge.

I was more interested though in seeing or hearing if anyone knows of anyone or had applied some sort of evolutionary theory to global electronica, allowing for stuff like non locality and contemporaneous evolution and could point me in directions worthy of further exploration.

nonlocality being defined by wikipedia- A physical theory is said to exhibit nonlocality if, in that theory, it is not possible to treat widely separated systems as independent.

contemporaneous evolution also from wikipedia being - Parallel evolution is the independent evolution of similar traits, starting from a similar ancestral condition. Frequently this is the situation in more closely related lineages, where several species respond to similar challenges in a similar way...

Evolutionary_trends.jpg


In particular how that fits with Dubstep and it's mutated strains of a musical virus tag with reference to the "ammunition" flowchart highlighted by Blackdown.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Surely London pirate radio is the centrepiece to any discussion about the hardcore continuum? eg Wiley etc moving from playing jungle to garage to grime, but all the time being linked to similar (the same?) radio stations?
 

tate

Brown Sugar
I've seen the 'nuum' mentioned a bit around here and referenced just recently in the Kode9 interview @the redbull academy.
But Kode 9 said perfectly clearly in the red bull interview that the 'hardcore continuum' emerged when acid house collided with afro-carribean music in the UK. He didn't put a date on it, but if you would like one, Simon Reynolds' tome Generation Ecstasy is the locus classicus for any discussion. A veritable year-by-year, genre-by-genre account, beginning in the late 80s, of the continuum's unfolding.
 
Kode9 says a lot of stuff about a lot of things which dont mean what they seem. I find i need more than a grain of salt when listening to or reading his works. Thanks for the pointer to the Reynolds book though. So it was he who defined the term then ? I'll hunt it out at the library.

Is the UK continuum then the equivalent of US hiphop culture ? The acid house meets afro-caribbean thing seems to parallel the genesis of hiphop starting with it's funk meets JA soundsystem culture clash in Kool Herc and seminal electronica meets afro-centrism in Afrika Bam's soulsonic assault.
 

tate

Brown Sugar
@ undisputed. I should probably add that Mr. Reynolds' book also appeared under the title Energy Flash. Generation Ecstasy was the title of a US reprint by Routledge (perhaps it was printed elsewhere under the title, I have no idea). But yes, I can't really recommend the book highly enough, esp for this discussion.
 

Logos

Ghosts of my life
2-step was so jungle it hurt! There was clearly a US influence but thats why it was something new - it incorporated what was happening around it.
 
if that's the case, than funky house is the latest installment of the nuum, not dubstep. And indeed, i rather listen to JME's tropical stuff than read Kode 9 pseudo deep ramblings.

I'd still say dubstep but more from the tradition of nu skool, breakstep and glitchcore via pioneers like si begg, tipper, early botchit and fuel. As d'n'b's influence waned the nu skoolers took up the charge with crews like mechanoise adopting the shut up and dance mentality of pillage, loot and burn. Also quests cyberfunk with mad props to Oris Jay and then on to the dubstep full noise brigade like toasty, boxcutter, search and destroy , protocol X, elemental, luke envoy with more props going out to warlock at rag n bone and stormfield at combat for keeping their eyes on the prize.

I still fail to see the 2 step jungle connection ? How does one compare sonically the works of wookie and MJ cole to congo natty and suburban base ? I can see the parallels in the MC led stuff with skibadee and neutrino but i always tended to make the distinction between 2 step and UKG in much the same way as I now do with dubstep and grime.
 

Logos

Ghosts of my life
My jaw is dropping...how can you listen to 'down on me' or 'sincere' and not hear jungle ghosting away all over them. Ever heard any Tom & Jerry? Or Nookie, or Peshay...

2-step wasn't jungle slowed down to garage tempo, it was something new, an evolution out of jungle and a synthesis of different sources, like US r&b, MAW, MK, blah blah blah. Certain elements and tropes that were maybe less prominient in jungle seemed to find more promience in the garage/2-step structure and culture, and some things were buried just below the surface (like the odder, darkcore influences...but only for so long, then the weird garage of m-dubs and agent x fought its way to the surface again and off we go towards grime and dubstep).

There were definitely people in garage who were not key players in jungle but so what - thats the whole point, it was a different form, but one strongly connected to jungle.

The thing as well with dubstep...if you ask people what influenced them, what they listened to - irrespective of what you think it sounds like now - the tempa/hatcha/kode 9/dark swing branch of dubstep did not emerge out of breaks. I'd be surprised if a lot of dubstep producers had ever heard of half those breaks guys you mention, let alone been influenced by them.
 
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Jungle was the spedup breaks of US hiphop/funk, the amen, the apache, the funky drummer. An altogether distictly UK evolution of the breakbeat continuum combined with the double timed ragga samples of dancehall. The tradition of the breaksteppas combined that with 2step/garage but mostly ditched the ragga stuff although resurrected to sublime effect in aquasky vs masterblasters later stuff with the ragga twins. The breaks in nuskool was in the worst cases slowed down d'n'b even now with breakfastaz and autobots you can hear that but it is still breakbeat culture. 2step was an altogether different beat and more influenced by US r'n'b, club culture and cafe muzak with a particular emphasis on the more soulful side of things. I suppose I can hear a comparison with the liquid styles of d'n'b but jungle to 2step to grime/dubstep is quite a leap that can't be abridged without the breaksteppas and garage MC's hence the continuum progresses.

Of course you'd be hard pressed to find influence of breaks in the halfstep crew of which tempa/hatcha and kode9 represent but it's the fullsteppas like the storming camp and even SLT mob, darqwan, MRK1, toasty and boxcutter that would be foolish to deny influence especially when it's so in your face. In saying that the halfstep which now dominates the dubstep scene predominantly excludes the breakstep influence if you'd listen to blackdown tell the story despite a crying out for more step and less dub that can only be sated by the crossover of dubstep/breakstep in labels like hotflush.

Look to new influences from freq nasty, combat, rag n bone and the nu skool/breakstep crew to reinfuse dubstep and take it back to fullstepping not to the converted d'n'b massive despite their tenuous links to early 90's jungle and the easy conversion of d'n'b to halfstep. Baobinga as skins on the 'Our Sound' destructive/pitch black album is a portent of hopefully things to come. Theyd be better served following that path than the well plodden path of rennie pilgrem, adam freeland and meat katie towards breakbeat oblivion and the inevitable house trained sets for the established clubs. Although from what i can gather, that's where the money is at.

IMHO :eek:

But I still want to hear more about a global evolution of the electronica virus, nonlocality, contemporaneous evolution and in dubstep I'd like to hear interviews with DJ abstract and goldspot about their stuff circe early 00's.
 

Logos

Ghosts of my life
2step was an altogether different beat and more influenced by US r'n'b, club culture and cafe muzak with a particular emphasis on the more soulful side of things. I suppose I can hear a comparison with the liquid styles of d'n'b but jungle to 2step to grime/dubstep is quite a leap that can't be abridged without the breaksteppas and garage MC's hence the continuum progresses.

You obviously listened to fuck all 2-step then.

IMHO :D

Anyway I pretty much disagree with everything you said!
 
heheh...I'm glad you disagree with me. It's so boring when everyone agrees with everyone. You only have to look at the dubstepforum to see the danger in that.
So give me 3 jungle and 2step songs which best exemplify your unique persepective on the natural progression of the continuum from jungle to 2 step.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
The way i see it the nuum started with hardcore and ended with dnb. I didn't like were dnb went either. But to me this nuum idea is something which life got unjustly prolonged by former ravers/junglists, who didn't like where drum and bass was going, so they invented the idea that 2step, and later grime and dubstep were the real heirs of jungle. It seems like people just list all the styles they like (hardcore, jungle, 2step, grime, dubstep) and leave out everything they dislike. That's fine, it just doesnt seem like a solid theory to me
It looks to me like the really 'continuous' continuum is ardkore - jungle - drum and bass. Beyond that the branchings and movements of people, sounds, and infuence seems to get sufficiently complex that trying to impose a model that is basically a linear development of a sound with maybe branches for grime and dubstep gets a bit overly reductionist...
 
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