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Electro

Electro (short for either electro-funk, or electro-boogie) is a genre of electronic dance music directly influenced by the use of TR-808 drum machines, and funk sampling. Records in the genre typically feature drum machines and heavy electronic sounds, usually without vocals, although if vocals are present they are delivered in a deadpan manner, often through electronic distortion such as vocoding and talkboxing. This is the main distinction between electro and previously prominent genres such as disco, in which the electronic sound was only part of the instrumentation rather than the basis of the whole song.

From its inception, one of the defining characteristics of the electro sound was the use of drum machines, particularly the Roland TR-808, as the rhythmic basis of the track. As the genre evolved, computers and sampling replaced drum machines in electronic music, and are now used by the majority of electro producers. It is important to note, that although the electro of the 1980s and contemporary electro, (electronic dance music) both grew out of the dissolution of disco, they are now different genres.

Classic (1980's) electro drum patterns tend to be electronic emulations of breakbeats, with a syncopated kick drum, and usually a snare or clap accenting the backbeat. The difference between electro drumbeats and breakbeats (or breaks) is that electro tends to be more mechanical, while breakbeats tend to have more of a human-like feel, like that of a live drummer. The definition however is somewhat ambiguous in nature due to the various uses of the term.

The Roland TR-808 drum machine hit the market in 1980, defining early electro with its immediately recognizable sound. Staccato, percussive drumbeats tended to dominate electro, almost exclusively provided by the TR-808. As an inexpensive way of producing a drum sound, the TR-808 caught on quickly with the producers of early electro because of the ability of its bass drum to generate extreme low-frequencies.

This aspect of the Roland TR 808 was especially appealing to producers who would test drive their tracks in nightclubs (like NYC's Funhouse), where the bass drum sound was essential for a record's success. Its unique percussion sounds like handclaps, open and closed high-hat, clave and cowbell became integral to the electro sound. The Roland TR-808 has attained iconic status, eventually being used on more hits than any other drum machine. Through the use of samples, the Roland TR-808 remains popular in electro and other genres to the present day.

Other electro instrumentation was generally electronic, favoring analog synthesis, programmed bass lines, sequenced or arpeggiated synthetic riffs, and atonal sound effects all created with synthesizers. Heavy use of effects such as reverbs, delays, chorus or phasers along with eerie synthetic ensemble strings or pad sounds emphasize the science fiction or futuristic themes of classic (1980's) electro, represented in the lyrics and/or music. Light Years Away (1983), an afrofuturist, sci-fi tale of ancient astronaut visitation, recorded by the electro hip hop group Warp 9, exemplifies the sci-fi aspect of electro in both the lyrics and instrumentation. The imagery of its lyrical refrain space is the place for the human race pays homage to Sun Ra's 1974 film, while its synth lines and sound effects are informed by computer games, video and cartoons, "born of a science-fiction revival."

Most electro is instrumental, but a common element is vocals processed through a vocoder. Additionally, speech synthesis may be used to create robotic or mechanical lyrical content, as in the iconic Planet Rock and the automatous chant in the chorus of Nunk by Warp 9. Early electro features rapping, including female raps such as Warp 9 featuring their female member and solo artists like Roxanne Shante, however that lyrical style became less popular by the 1990s, as rapping became the domain of hip hop music.

About electro-funk origins, Greg Wilson claims: {{Cquote|It was all about stretching the boundaries that had begun to stifle black music, and its influences lay not only with German technopop wizards Kraftwerk, the acknowledged forefathers of pure electro, plus British futurist acts like the Human League and Gary Numan, but also with a number of pioneering black musicians. Major artists like Miles Davis, Sly Stone, Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder, legendary producer Norman Whitfield and, of course, George Clinton and his P Funk brigade, would all play their part in shaping this new sound via their innovative use of electronic instruments during the 70’s (and as early as the late 60’s in Miles Davis’s case).

In 1982, Bronx based producer Afrika Bambaataa released the seminal track "Planet Rock", which contained elements of Kraftwerk's "Trans-Europe Express" (from the album of the same name) and "Numbers" (from Kraftwerk's 1981 Computer World album), as well as Yellow Magic Orchestra songs such as "Riot in Lagos" (from Sakamoto's 1980 album B-2 Unit). "Planet Rock" is widely regarded as a turning point in the electro genre, "like a light being switched on." Another groundbreaking record, released that year, Nunk by Warp 9 utilized "imagery drawn from computer games, video, cartoons, sci-fi and hip hop slanguage." That same year, although remaining unreleased, a pre-Def Jam Russell Simmons produced Bruce Haack's proto hip-hop single "Party Machine" at a studio in Philadelphia. 1982, proved a prolific year in electro with releases by artists including Planet Patrol, Warp 9, Man Parrish, George Clinton (Computer Games), Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Tyrone Brunson, The Jonzun Crew and Whodini.

In 1983, Hashim created the influential electro funk tune "Al-Naafiysh (The Soul)" which became Cutting Record's first release in November 1983. At the time Hashim was influenced by Man Parrish's "Hip Hop, Be Bop", Thomas Dolby's "She Blinded Me With Science" and Afrika Bambaataa's "Planet Rock". "Al-Nafyish" was later included in Playgroup's compilation album Kings of Electro (2007), alongside other electro classics such as Sakamoto's "Riot in Lagos". Also in 1983, Herbie Hancock, in collaboration with Grand Mixer D.ST, released the hit single "Rockit".

With a wealth of experience in club promotion, Morgan Khan launched his Streetwave label in the early 80's. Struggling to get the hits he'd hoped for he began releasing compilation albums, featuring tracks that had been big on import in the specialist clubs. His 'Street Sounds' series proved to be a great success, resulting in no less than six Top 50 albums in 1983. This led to a further series, 'Street Sounds Electro' (first volume released in Oct '83), but this time, rather than it being the normal grouping of separate tracks, Khan decided the album's would be mixed. He approached Mastermind, led by Herbie Laidley, but also including Max LX and Dave VJ (later Max & Dave of Kiss FM), to mix the first release, which proved to be a masterstroke when it went all the way into the Top 20. These LP's (not forgetting the cassettes, regarded as breakdance essentials for crews up and down the country) would become something of an institution, with a run of eighteen consecutive chart entries (the majority of which were mixed by Herbie Laidley) right up until August '87, when 'Electro' was finally phased out of the title and the series continued as 'Street Sounds Hip Hop' (having been re-branded as 'Street Sounds Hip Hop Electro' since March '86). It's a major flaw on the part of UK dance historians that the impact and influence of these albums has been largely underplayed and, more often than not, completely omitted.

electro is the roots of it all and i will never forget what streetsounds meant to music The Street Sounds Electro records were basically what kick-started my life-long love affair with music. This experience completely turned me onto the leftfield music scenes......from Electro to Hip house & House & acid house to Rave... & From Rave to Jungle and so on....

House music

House music is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in the American city of Chicago in the early 1980s. It was initially popularized circa 1984 in Chicago, but beginning in 1985, it fanned out to other major cities such as Detroit, Toronto, Mexico City, New York City, San Francisco, Boston, Montreal, Cancún, Manchester, Miami, London, and Paris. It then began to influence popular music in Europe, with songs such as "House Nation" by House Master Boyz and the Rude Boy of House (1987) and "Doctorin' the House" by Coldcut (1988) in the pop charts. Since the early to mid-1990s, house music has been infused in mainstream pop and dance music worldwide.

Early house music was generally dance-based music characterized by repetitive 4/4 beats, rhythms mainly provided by drum machines, off-beat hi-hat cymbals, and synthesized basslines. While house displayed several characteristics similar to disco music, it was more electronic and minimalistic, and the repetitive rhythm of house was more important than the song itself. House music today, while keeping several of these core elements, notably the prominent kick drum on every beat, varies a lot in style and influence, ranging from the soulful and atmospheric deep house to the more minimalistic microhouse. House music has also fused with several other genres creating fusion subgenres, such as euro house, tech house, and electro house.

House music, after enjoying significant underground and club-based success in Chicago from the early 1980s onwards, emerged into the UK mainstream pop market in the mid-to-late 80s. Popularity quickly followed in the rest of Europe, and it became a global phenomenon from the early-to-mid 90s onwards. It proved to be a commercially successful genre and a more mainstream pop-based variation grew increasingly popular. Artists and groups such as Madonna, Janet Jackson, Björk, Kanye West, and C+C Music Factory incorporated the genre into their work. After enjoying significant success in the early to mid-90s, house music grew even larger during the second wave of progressive house (1999–2001). The genre has remained popular and fused into other popular subgenres, as the DJ Mag Top 100 DJs poll has been dominated by house DJs since the beginning of the polls. Today, house music remains popular in both clubs and in the mainstream pop scene while retaining a strong foothold on underground scenes across the globe.

Acid house

Acid house is a sub-genre of house music developed around the mid-1980s by DJs from Chicago, Illinois. The defining feature of a 'squelching' bass sound was produced using the Roland TB-303 electronic synthesizer-sequencer. Acid house spread to the United Kingdom and continental Europe, where it was played by DJs in the acid house and later rave scenes. By the late 1980s, copycat tracks and acid house remixes brought the style into the British mainstream, where it had some influence on pop and dance styles.

Nicknamed the sound of acid, the influence of acid house can be heard in subsequent styles of music that include trance, Goa trance, psychedelic trance, breakbeat, big beat, and techno.

Acid house's minimalist production aesthetic combined House Music's ubiquitous programed 4/4 beat with the electronic ‘squelch' sound produced by the Roland TB-303 electronic synthesizer-sequencer by constantly modulating its frequency and resonance controls to create 'movement' in otherwise simple bass patterns. Other elements, such as synthetic strings and stabs, were usually minimal. Sometimes tracks were instrumentals such as Phuture's Acid Trax, or contained full vocal performances such as Pierre's Pfantasy Club's Dream Girl, while others were essentially instrumentals complemented by the odd spoken word 'drop-in', such as Phuture's Slam.

The earliest recorded examples of acid house are a matter of debate. At least one historian considers the Phuture's "Acid Trax" to be the genre's earliest example; DJ Pierre says it may have been composed as early as 1985, but it was not released until 1987. Another points out Sleezy D's "I've Lost Control" (1986) was the first to be released on vinyl, and it's impossible to know which track was created first.

London's club Shoom opened in November 1987 and was one of the first clubs to introduce acid house to the clubbing public of the UK. It was opened by Danny Rampling and his wife, Jenny. The club was extremely exclusive and featured thick fog, a dreamy atmosphere and acid house. This period began what some call the Second Summer of Love, a movement credited with a reduction in football hooliganism: instead of fights, football fans were listening to music, taking ecstasy, and joining the other club attendees in a peaceful movement that has been compared to the Summer of Love in San Francisco in 1967

Once the term acid house became more widely used, participants at acid house-themed events in the UK and Ibiza made the psychedelic drug connotations a reality by using club drugs such as ecstasy and LSD. The association of acid house, MDMA, and smiley faces was observed in New York City by late 1988. This coincided with an increasing level of scrutiny and sensationalism in the mainstream press, although conflicting accounts about the degree of connection between acid house music and drugs continued to surface

news media and tabloids devoted an increasing amount of coverage to the hedonistic acid house/rave scene, focusing on its association with psychedelic drugs and club drugs. The sensationalist nature of the coverage may have contributed to the banning of acid house during its heyday from radio, television, and retail outlets in the United Kingdom. The moral panic of the press began in 1988, when the UK tabloid The Sun, which only weeks earlier had promoted Acid House as "cool and groovy" while running an offer on Acid Smiley Face T-Shirts, abruptly turned on the scene. On October 19, the tabloid ran with the headline "Evils of Ecstasy," linking the Acid House scene with the newly popular and relatively unknown drug. The resultant panic incited by the tabloids eventually led to a crackdown on clubs and venues that played Acid House and had a profound negative impact on the scene. UK acid house and rave fans used the yellow smiley face symbol simply as an emblem of the music and scene, a "vapid, anonymous smile" that portrayed the "simplest and gentlest of the Eighties’ youth manifestations" that was non-aggressive, "except in terms of decibels" at the high-volume DJ parties.

Hip house

Hip house, also known as rap house, is a musical genre that mixes elements of house music and hip-hop. The style rose to prominence during the 1980s in Chicago and New York . Hip House originated in Chicago and quickly became popular across the U.S. and in the UK, where it was copied with tracks like Rok Da House by UK producers the Beatmasters featuring British female emcees the Cookie Crew.

Minor controversy ensued in 1989 when a U.S. record called "Turn Up The Bass" by Tyree Cooper featuring Kool Rock Steady claimed it was the "first hip house record on vinyl." The Beatmasters disputed this, pointing out that "Rok da House" had originally been written and pressed to vinyl in 1986. The outfit then released "Who’s in the House?" featuring British emcee Merlin, containing the disc "Watch Out, Tyree—we come faster, this is the sound of the true Beatmasters". More claims to the hip-house crown were subsequently laid down in tracks by Fast Eddie, Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock, and Toni Scott.

After successful releases by the Beatmasters, Deskee, Tyree, Doug Lazy, and Mr. Lee, hip-house became popular in the acid house warehouse scene and nightclubs. Hip House also garnered substantial chart success. The style complemented sample-based records of the period, produced by artists such as S-Express, Bomb the Bass, and M/A/R/R/S.

Jackstreet Records 1989 Release of "Vitamin-C's""The Chicago Way" helped to bring focus to the lyrical prowess of Hip-House rappers. Produced by Reggie R and Dj Bizzy-B. Hip house's further crossover success would come in the form of two ground breaking records: "I'll House You" by the Jungle Brothers and "It Takes Two" by Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock. "I'll House You" is generally seen as a collaboration between New York house-music producer Todd Terry and the Jungle Brothers (an Afrocentric hip-hop group from New York). "It Takes Two" was described by Hip Hop Connection magazine as "...the first palatable form of hip-house for hardcore hip hop fans...

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Breakbeat hardcore

Breakbeat hardcore (a.k.a. oldskool rave hardcore) is a derivative of acid house and techno music, of the late 1980s and early 1990s, that combines four-on-the-floor rhythms with breakbeats, and is associated with the UK rave scene.

Rave music may either refer to the late 1980s/early 1990s genres of house and techno, the first genres of music in the world to be played at raves, or any genre of electronic dance music that may be played at a rave, such as house, trance, techno, jungle, drum & bass, breakbeat, happy hardcore, psychedelic trance, breakbeat hardcore and gabber. Approximately in 1993, the scene fragmented (a. & b.), and forked off into two distinct styles—jungle music (later giving rise to drum and bass) and 4-beat (alternatively known as happy hardcore).

Happy hardcore, also known as happycore, is a genre of music typified by a very fast tempo (usually around 160–180 BPM), often coupled with solo vocals and sentimental lyrics. Its characteristically 4/4 beat "happy" sound distinguishes it from most other forms of hardcore techno, which tend to be "darker". It is typically in a major mode, like Ionian or Lydian. In its original incarnation, it was often characterized by piano riffs, synthetic stabs and spacey effects. This genre of music is closely related to the typically Dutch genre of Gabber. Happy hardcore evolved from Breakbeat Hardcore around 1991–1993, as the original house music-based rave became faster and began to include breakbeats, evolving into  Oldschool jungle, or just simply jungle, is a genre of electronic music that incorporates influences from other genres, including breakbeat hardcore and reggae/dub/dancehall. It is one of several types of music often simply referred to as "jungle music". The fast tempos (150 to 170 bpm), breakbeats and other heavily syncopated percussive loops, samples and synthesized effects make up the easily recognizable form of jungle. Long pitch-shifted snare rolls are common in oldschool jungle.

In the summer of 1992, a Thursday night club in London called "Rage" was changing format in response to the commercialization of the rave scene (see breakbeat hardcore). Resident DJs Fabio and Grooverider, amongst others, began to take the hardcore sound to a new level. The speed of the music increased from 120bpm to 145bpm, while more ragga and dancehall elements were brought in and techno, disco and house influences were decreased.

Eventually, the music became too fast and difficult to be mixed with more traditional rave music, creating a division with the other popular electronic genres. When Hardcore lost the four-on-the-floor beat and created percussive elements solely from "chopped up" breakbeats, people began to use the terms 'jungle', 'junglist' and 'junglism' to describe the music itself. This was reflected in track titles of the era, typically from late 1992 and early 1993. Jungle reached the peak of its popularity between 1994 and 1995

Drum & bass

Drum and bass (also written as drum 'n' bass, and commonly abbreviated to D&B, D+B, DnB or D'n'B) is a type of electronic music which emerged in the mid-1990s. The genre is characterized by fast breakbeats (typically between 160–180 beats per minute, occasional variation is noted in older compositions), with heavy bass and sub-bass lines. Drum and bass began as an offshoot of the United Kingdom rave scene of the early 1990s. Over the first decade of its existence, the incorporation of elements from various musical genres led to many permutations in its overall style. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a growing nightclub and overnight outdoor event culture gave birth to a new electronic music style called rave music, which, much like hip-hop, combined sampled syncopated beats or breakbeats, other samples from a wide range of different musical genres and, occasionally, samples of music, dialogue and effects from films and television programmes. But rave music tended to feature stronger bass sounds and a faster tempo (127 to over 140) beats per minute (BPM) than that of early house music. This subgenre was known as "hardcore" rave but from as early as 1991, some musical tracks made up of these high-tempo break beats, with heavy basslines and samples of older Jamaican music, were referred to as "jungle techno" and later just "jungle", which became recognised as a separate musical genre popular at raves and on pirate radio in Britain. It is important to note when discussing the history of Drum n Bass that prior to Jungle, rave music was getting faster and more experimental. Professional DJ & producer C.K. states, "There was a progression as far as the speed of music is concerned. Anyone buying vinyl every week from 1989 to 1992 noticed this."

By 1994 jungle had begun to gain mainstream popularity and fans of the music (often referred to as junglists) became a more recognisable part of British youth subculture. The genre further developed, incorporating and fusing elements from a wide range of existing musical genres, including the raggamuffin sound, dancehall, MC chants, dub basslines, and increasingly complex, heavily edited breakbeat percussion. Despite the affiliation with the ecstasy-fuelled rave scene, Jungle also inherited some associations with violence and criminal activity, both from the gang culture that had affected the UK's hip-hop scene and as a consequence of jungle's often aggressive or menacing sound and themes of violence (usually reflected in the choice of samples). However, this developed in tandem with the often positive reputation of the music as part of the wider rave scene and dancehall-based Jamaican music culture prevalent in London. By 1995, whether as a reaction to, or independently of this cultural schism, some jungle producers began to move away from the ragga-influenced style and create what would become collectively labelled, for convenience, as drum and bass.

As the genre became generally more polished and sophisticated technically, it began to expand its reach from pirate radio to commercial stations and gain widespread acceptance (circa 1995–1997). It also began to split into recognizable subgenres such as jump-up and Hardstep. As a lighter and often jazz-influenced style of drum and bass gained mainstream appeal, additional subgenres emerged including techstep (circa 1996–1997) which drew greater influence from techno music and the soundscapes of science fiction and anime films.

The popularity of drum and bass at its commercial peak ran parallel to several other homegrown dance styles in the UK including big beat and hard house. But towards the turn of the millennium its popularity was deemed to have dwindled as the UK garage style known as speed garage yielded several hit singles. Speed garage shared high tempos and heavy basslines with drum and bass but otherwise followed the established conventions of "house music", with this and its freshness giving it an advantage commercially. London DJ/producer C.K. says, "It is often forgotten by my students that a type of music called "Garage House" existed in the late 1980s alongside Hip House, Acid House and other forms of House music." He continues, "This new Garage of the mid 90s was not a form of House or a progression of Garage House. The beats and tempo that define House are entirely different. This did cause further confusion in the presence of new House music of the mid-1990s being played alongside what was now being called Garage." Despite this, the emergence of further subgenres and related styles such as liquid funk brought a wave of new artists incorporating new ideas and techniques, supporting continual evolution of the genre. To this day drum and bass makes frequent appearances in mainstream media and popular culture including in television, as well as being a major reference point for subsequent genres such as grime and dubstep and successful artists including Chase & Status and Australia's Pendulum.

'Neurofunk' (also known more simply and informally as just 'Neuro') is a subgenre of drum and bass which emerged between 1997 and 1998 in London, England as a progression of techstep. It was further developed by juxtaposed elements of heavier and harder forms of funk with multiple influences ranging from techno, house and jazz, distinguished by consecutive stabs over the bassline and razor-sharp backbeats. The first sounds of neurofunk's early evolution - when diverging from techstep - can be heard on Ed Rush and Optical's "Funktion" single for V Recordings and on their first album Wormhole LP for Virus Recordings in 1998.

The first mention of the term was in the book Energy Flash: A Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture by Simon Reynolds. This is where the English music critic coined the name as a result of his personal perception of stylistic shifts in techstep - back beats replacing breakbeats, funk harmonies replacing industrial timbres and lack of emphasis on the drop - by referring to them as, "(Neurofunk) is the fun-free culmination of jungle's strategy of cultural resistance: the eroticization of anxiety".

Konflict formatted Optical's style into a harsher, more stripped-down form with a stronger techno influence at the forefront of their tracks such as "The Beckoning" (released on Renegade Hardware in 1999). In 2002, Sinthetix, Cause 4 Concern, and Silent Witness & Break took Konflict's hard edge, minimalist approach with emphasis on colder, precision beat engineering, harder stabs over the bassline, sharper mixdowns and simultaneously, hastening the advancement of the style's sound design between the periods of 2002 and 2005 along with Gridlok, Corrupt Souls, Noisia, Phace, and The Upbeats. Gridlok also worked on sampling big band horn arrangements during his time on Violence Recordings, bridging the gap between the subgenre's techno and jazz influences yet, maintaining the elements of classic neurofunk dissonance and minimalism in his music.

As the subgenre developed, with artists starting as purists and later changing their musical direction into broader musical settings, so new artists have emerged to fill the vacuum, re-energizing the sound by taking production back to its roots.

Between 2007 and 2008, a decade after the pioneering artists first established neurofunk's technical soundscape, the style was enhanced with a series of diverse, forward thinking debut albums set to redefine its concept production with the rough-cut antics of Break The System by Gridlok (Project 51/CD/2007); the minimal techno-funk fueled Psycho by Phace (Subtitles Music/2007); the blending of rhythmic guitar chord progressions on Black Lotus by Mindscape (Citrus Recordings/2007); the melodic experiments of My Light Year by Telemetrik (BSE Recordings/2008), the highly conceptual and intensive Nobody's Out There by The Upbeats (Bad Taste Recordings/2007), and the innovative Black Box singles compilation (Syndrome Audio Recordings/CD/2008), featuring various artists and highlighting remixes by second and third-wave producers, among the second-wave, Phace and Misanthrop contrasting the rhythmic grit of third-wave producers Chook, Dose & Menace.

Silent Witness & Break began producing their groundbreaking tracks when recruited by legendary No U-Turn, label founder/producer Nico who released their first singles "Contact" and "Higher Rates" (No U-Turn Recordings/2002 and 2003) with Silent Witness eventually establishing his own DNAudio imprint with partner, DJ Squire as an outlet for his music alongside Break's and Survival's. UK's DNAUDIO crew have since combined both techstep and neurofunk subgenres as their signature approach to drum and bass with Break often using stark, amen influenced breakbeats in his solo tunes. By mid 2008, Silent Witness, Break & Survival released their first album, Hard Times on DNAudio Recordings composed of powerful breakbeats and back beats, upfront low-end basslines and soaring, futuristic production.

Since then, the subgenre has only further developed, especially in sonical terms as well as when it comes to the utilisation of "cut up sounds" and effects, some neurofunk songs now also incorporate elements familiar to dubstep and liquid drum and bass, as well as other electronic music subgenres. When it comes to dubstep though, that sound already originated out of drum and bass, so it is not surprising this crossover took place. There are also tendencies towards a separation into a harder and a softer style of neurofunk.

Dubstep

Dubstep is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in South London, England. It emerged in the late 1990s as a development within a lineage of related styles such as 2-step garage, broken beat, drum and bass jungle, dub, and reggae. In the UK the origins of the genre can be traced back to the growth of the Jamaican sound system party scene in the early 1980s. The music generally features syncopated drum and percussion patterns with bass lines that contain prominent sub bass frequencies.

The earliest dubstep releases date back to 1998, and were usually featured as B-sides of 2-step garage single releases. These tracks were darker, more experimental remixes with less emphasis on vocals, and attempted to incorporate elements of breakbeat and drum and bass into 2-step. In 2001, this and other strains of dark garage music began to be showcased and promoted at London's night club Plastic People, at the "Forward" night (sometimes stylised as FWD>>), which went on to be considerably influential to the development of dubstep. The term "dubstep" in reference to a genre of music began to be used by around 2002 by labels such as Big Apple, Ammunition, and Tempa, by which time stylistic trends used in creating these remixes started to become more noticeable and distinct from 2-step and grime.

A very early supporter of the sound was BBC Radio 1 DJ John Peel, who started playing it from 2003 onwards. In 2004, the last year of his show, his listeners voted Distance, Digital Mystikz, and Plastician in their top 50 for the year. Dubstep started to spread beyond small local scenes in late 2005 and early 2006; many websites devoted to the genre appeared on the internet and aided the growth of the scene, such as dubstepforum, the download site Barefiles and blogs such as gutterbreakz. Simultaneously, the genre was receiving extensive coverage in music magazines such as The Wire and online publications such as Pitchfork Media, with a regular feature entitled The Month In: Grime/Dubstep. Interest in dubstep grew significantly after BBC Radio 1 DJ Mary Anne Hobbs started championing the genre, beginning with a show devoted to it (entitled "Dubstep Warz") in January 2006.

Towards the end of the decade the genre started to become more commercially successful in the UK, with more singles and remixes entering the music charts. Music journalists and critics also noticed a dubstep influence in several pop artists' work. Around this time, producers also began to fuse elements of the original dubstep sound with other influences, creating fusion genres including future garage, the slower and more experimental post-dubstep, and the harsher electro house and heavy metal influenced brostep, the latter of which greatly contributed to dubstep's rising mainstream popularity in the United States.