Progressive house grew as a natural progression of late-1980s North American and European house

Progressive house is a subgenre of house music that emerged in the early 1990s and developed in the United Kingdom as a natural progression of North American and European house of the late 1980s. Its stylistic origins reach beyond four-on-the-floor house into ambient house, tribal house, Italo house, electro house, minimal techno, IDM, and dub — which is why the style sounds both floor-functional and atmospherically spacious, inheriting groove from house and textural depth from ambient and dub. It later spawned derivative forms (dark progressive, melodic house, progressive breaks) and fusion genres (progressive trance, big room house).

Examples

Leftfield’s ‘Not Forgotten’ (Oct 1990) is cited as possibly the first progressive house production, audibly carrying dub and ambient-house texture over a house pulse.

Assessment

Explain the sense in which progressive house is a ‘natural progression’ of late-1980s house, and name two non-house textures (e.g. ambient, dub) that shaped its atmospheric character.