A few more random selections from the vault:
<b>DND - Pick it Up (DND Mix)</b>
One thing I love in 2-step is that thick percussive xylobass sound pushed right up into the treble, so you get this really odd sensation where what seems to be the bassline is actually really high-pitched and kinda carrying the melody. This was perhaps the best track I ever heard in this vein, I remember hearing it for the first time while at a club and just thinking "<i>what the fuck</i> is going on with that bassline?!?" From 2001, so you get this stiff, almost breakbeaty 2-step groove, and really crude but brilliant hooks - a sly sax riff and the yelpy squeal "pick me up! pick me up!" Before the layered low'n'high bassline comes in and demolishes everything in its path (see also: the Sovereign Remix of "Do You Really Like It?" and The Wideboys' "She's The One")
<b>Zoom & DBX - Coming Again</b>
A bit of a weeper this one, I'm afraid: stealing that sparkly little hook from Adam F's "Colours", adding a tearjerker bassline K Warren would be proud of, synth chords from the Artful Dodger's more ballad-ish tracks and an awesomely springloaded rhythm (with little amen snippets firing off like hidden landmines), it's at once homely and epic, a great end of the night sojourn into outright sentimentality.
<b>Rosie Gaines - I Want You (Bump & Flex Dub)</b>
As with his frankly brilliant Hardstep Dub mix of "Straight From The Heart", on this remix Bump & Flex goes darkside on an anthem tune, except this time I can hardly recognise the original at all apart from an occasional "ooh baby!". A thick, wobbling bassline, blocky live-sounding beats that handily achieve anything people might have wanted from breakbeat garage while retaining 2-step's signature syncopated swing, and a general enticingly viscuous underwater feel - this guy never let me down.
<b>TJ Cases - I Like To Cut, I Like To Play</b>
One of TJ Cases three classics. The others are the classy "Dedicated To Love", which everyone knows, and "One By One", which is one of my favourite 2-step tracks ever but I've talked about it heaps. This one is similar to "One By One", an enormous radioactive junglist bassline, hi-hats bustling overtime and a sassy to the max diva working herself into a fit. "Wanna play now/DJ don't ya stop now!" becomes something of a threat, the too-intense enthusiasm of the all night raver. I always loved these tracks where the massive sonic distance between vocal overground and bassline underground were bridged so audaciously in the one song, and Cases was something of a master at the craft.
<b>Young Offendaz - Flava</b>
There's this idea that goes about that in the year before grime coalesced 2-step got really tired or conservative or uninteresting. I don't have a sufficiently encyclopaedic knowledge of the scene to confirm or deny this categorically but in late 2001/2002 I did hear heaps and heaps of tunes that I loved, lots of them with a really warped and druggy vibe. My favourite was Babu Stormz's "Electricity", which came out around the same time as "I Luv U" and which I've never heard since, but this track from late 2001 is a handy substitute: rough and riffy, with these disconcerting eastern twangs and the James Brown tic from the Think break, cut-up female vox and a slightly unhinged dancehall DJ whose chatter phases in and out, stereopanning unnervingly.