Breakstep, or breakbeat garage, is a genre of music that evolved from the

UK garage UK garage, abbreviated as UKG, is a genre of electronic dance music which originated in England in the early to mid-1990s. The genre was most clearly inspired by garage house, but also incorporates elements from dance-pop, R&B, and jungle. It ...

scene and influenced the emergence of

dubstep Dubstep is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in South London in the early 2000s. The style emerged as a UK garage offshoot that blended 2-step rhythms and sparse dub production, as well as incorporating elements of broken be ...

History

Breakstep evolved from the

2-step garage 2-step garage, or simply 2-step, is a genre of electronic music and a subgenre of UK garage.''A transcription of this article is availablhere as a PDF file.'' One of the primary characteristics of the 2-step sound – the term being coined to de ...

sound. Moving away from the more soulful elements of garage, it incorporated downtempo

drum and bass Drum and bass (also written as drum & bass or drum'n'bass and commonly abbreviated as D&B, DnB, or D'n'B) is a genre of electronic dance music characterized by fast breakbeats (typically 165–185 beats per minute) with heavy bass and sub-ba ...

style basslines, trading the shuffle of 2-step for a more straightforward breakbeat drum pattern. The breakthrough for this style came in 1999 from

DJ Dee Kline Deekline is a British producer and DJ of breakbeat, breakstep, drum and bass and garage music. He is the innovator of breakstep music which is bass-heavy, breakbeat-infused 2-step, first characterised in his 1999 hit "I Don't Smoke", which reac ...

's "

I Don't Smoke "I Don't Smoke" is a song by English breakbeat/UK garage musician DJ Dee Kline. Originally released in 1999 on Rat Records, the song became a major underground club hit and was rereleased on 22 May 2000 as a single on EastWest the following yea ...

" selling 15,000 units on Rat Records, until eventually being licensed to EastWest in 2000 and climbing to number 11 in the

UK Singles Chart The UK Singles Chart (currently titled Official Singles Chart, with the upper section more commonly known as the Official UK Top 40) is compiled by the Official Charts Company (OCC), on behalf of the British record industry, listing the top-s ...

. Following this came

DJ Zinc Benjamin Pettit (born 12 March 1972), better known as DJ Zinc, is a British DJ and record producer. Zinc first became known for 1995's "Super Sharp Shooter", a hip hop/jungle fusion, notably one of the pioneering jump-up anthems of its time. ...

's " 138 Trek", an experiment with drum and bass production at

tempo (138 bpm). This instigated a dialog between breaks and garage producers, with Forward>> (a club night at Plastic People, London) playing host to

Zed Bias Dave Jones, better known as Zed Bias, is an English electronic musician based in Manchester, who operates within the UK garage/ 2-step, broken beat and UK funky genres, as a producer and as a DJ. He has also released material under various ps ...

and Oris Jay (a.k.a. Darqwan). They were mirrored in breaks by producers such as

DJ Distance Distance (born Greg Sanders) is a British dubstep producer and DJ. He also founded the record label Chestplate, whose sonic direction followed his style, fusing metal influences with dubstep templates. Distance's involvement in Mary Anne Hobbs ...

References

20th-century music genres UK garage English styles of music Dubstep Electronic dance music genres {{music-genre-stub