Dubstep was born from producers who loved UK garage's antecedents but were disillusioned by its homogenization

The Croydon producers went through jungle and drum and bass before garage, but by 2000 drum and bass had become ‘homogenized with the liquid sound’ and garage had also stagnated. Loefah describes summer 1997 as the pivot: ‘Before the summer holidays, everyone was into jungle. After the holidays, everyone was into garage. It was that quick.’ The founders’ response was to start writing 138 BPM music independently — meeting up on Fridays to play each other their tracks. The origin of dubstep was therefore a conscious creative rejection of each preceding genre’s commercial degradation, not a planned invention of a new style.

Examples

‘Drum and bass became homogenized with the liquid sound and then suddenly, garage happened.’ The speed of the scene shift between jungle and garage in 1997 illustrates how quickly UK urban music moved.

Assessment

Trace the lineage of genres that the dubstep founders passed through and explain why each genre’s development led them to seek something new.