Wookie fused drum and bass's breakbeat sensibility with garage's tempo to create a new sonic direction

Producer Wookie’s emergence in the late 1990s is described as a pivotal moment that ‘changed the garage scene on the whole.’ Wookie came from a drum and bass background and worked at a tempo around 128 BPM — slower than drum and bass (~170), faster than garage’s earlier speed. He brought break-beat sensibility, jazz and R&B harmonic richness, and heavy sub-bass to two-step garage frames. Other accounts describe him as ‘slowing down drum and bass, speeding up R&B.’ His approach opened a new sonic territory within UK garage and influenced everyone else to diversify their sound, ultimately contributing to the fracture that led toward dubstep (via Benny Ill/Horsepower) and grime.

Examples

‘when wookie turned up who just turned up with this crazy drum and bass meets garage… he changed it to that degree and then um it took on another level and went other places.‘

Assessment

Describe the structural elements Wookie combined from drum and bass and R&B/garage, and explain how the resulting sound differed rhythmically and harmonically from typical two-step garage.