2-step garage is the most potent form of underground dance music to have
developed in the UK since jungle in 1993-94. Mixing elements of US garage
and R&B with ultra-complex drum programming and foundation-shaking
sub-bass, this is house music made by and for a generation which had its
musical synapses rewired by drum & bass. Despite achieving mainstream
chart success in the UK with records like Artful Dodger's 'Rewind', 2-step
has nonetheless remained a comparatively localised scene, confined to
London and a few other major urban centres. It has not yet achieved the
critical mass which enabled jungle to break out onto the world stage.
While it is debatable whether - in any case - this would be a desirable
outcome (jungle's post-1995 plunge into nihilism and irrelevance being one
of the more depressing cultural events of recent years), we at Qubit
Records are convinced that 2-step deserves more widespread exposure, both
within the UK and internationally, than it at present receives. We also
believe that, in the same way drum & bass forced every forward-thinking
recording artist to rethink the way they made music, the manifold
innovations of 2-step demand a coherent response from the wider electronic
music community.
***
Oh spare me. Could this be perhaps instead because 2-step garage is the
most tedious thing since... 2-step jungle? Because it takes the bad
elements of most techno genres and mixes them together? Because it makes
me actively wish I were listening to generihouse?
2-step garage is the hip house of the post 90s.
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