Dancefloor

This is drum & bass built for the big room: the hook the whole crowd sings back, the drop that sends a festival field up, the tune that sneaks onto the chart. Dancefloor drum & bass is a loose, editorial grouping rather than a codified genre. It gathers drum & bass made for big rooms and wide audiences, from hook-driven club records to chart singles and festival-stage anthems. Its artists overlap with jump up, liquid funk and drumstep, and the acts placed under it are largely those that took the music out of the specialist clubs, into the pop charts and onto large festival bills.

No set break, just a big-room ambition

The common thread is accessibility, not a fixed rhythmic recipe. Sigma are a duo whose pop crossover tunes, with singalong choruses, were more likely to turn up on the daytime BBC Radio 1 playlist than on Rinse FM. At the rock-leaning end, Pendulum's second album In Silico blended electronica with metal guitars and live drums, with Rob Swire singing on every track.

The melodic, sample-based strand belongs to High Contrast. His signature style is liquid funk drawing on soul, house and hip-hop. He starts from a musical idea, fits the drums and bass around it, and treats the vocals as one texture among others. Then there is the opposite pole. In 2019 a manager of Chase & Status said the duo's album Rtrn II Jungle was made without chart or daytime radio targets and was "rugged, raw, authentic drum & bass". It was partly recorded in Kingston, Jamaica, with local guest vocalists. Different roads, same room-filling ambition.

How the crossover kicked off

Shy FX and Positiva

Shy FX was early to this one. "Original Nuttah" entered the British pop charts in mid-1994, and his work with T Power, which mixed drum and bass with a pop sensibility, had the biggest impact. "Shake Ur Body" followed in 2001 on the EMI subsidiary Positiva. In 2005 he closed his earlier labels to concentrate on Digital Soundboy.

Breakbeat Kaos and the mid-2000s

Breakbeat Kaos was founded in 2003 by Adam F and DJ Fresh. Fresh later said the aim was "to be part of taking drum & bass beyond the underground". The early signings included Pendulum, Chase & Status, Sigma, Nero, Brookes Brothers and Camo & Krooked. Its releases count among the key anthems of the dancefloor drum & bass sound that flourished through the mid to late 2000s. The label wound down in 2012 and later returned.

Pendulum formed in Perth, Western Australia, in 2002. Their first major release, "Vault", came out on 31 Records and was named best single of 2003. Adam F and DJ Fresh invited them to join Breakbeat Kaos, and they moved to the UK in late 2003. "Another Planet" debuted at number one on the UK National Dance Chart, and the debut album Hold Your Colour (2005) reportedly sold more than 300,000 copies and produced their first UK Top 30 hit, "Slam / Out Here". The band headlined the dance stage at Glastonbury.

The group then signed to Warner Bros. / Ear Storm. In Silico debuted at number two on the UK Albums Chart and was certified gold within a month, and the third album Immersion (May 2010) debuted at number one. The band's live activity paused at the end of 2011, with Swire and Gareth McGrillen turning to their side project Knife Party.

RAM Records and the arena acts

Andy C launched RAM Records in early 1992 with a budget of 1,000 pounds. Sub Focus signed to the label in 2003 after a friend passed a CD-R to Andy C. His 2009 self-titled album mixed drum & bass with dubstep, old-school breakbeat, house, electro and rock, and on his 2013 album Torus the singles "Endorphins" and "Turn Back Time" each reached the UK Top 10, with three more tracks in the Top 40. He toured with Pendulum, played Glastonbury and sold out Brixton Academy twice.

Wilkinson passed his tunes to Hospital Records via Cyantific, and his first release was on Hospital's Sick Music 2 compilation; he later signed to RAM / Virgin EMI. "Afterglow" sold 500,000 copies, and his debut album Lazers Not Included reached number one on the iTunes Dance Chart in ten countries. Dimension's "Desire", with Sub Focus, spent nine weeks on the BBC Radio 1 playlist (five of them on the A-list) and is certified silver by the BPI. Dimension has also played Glastonbury, Reading & Leeds, Tomorrowland and EDC Las Vegas.

Hospital Records and the melodic side

Hospital Records was launched in 1996 by Tony Colman, who records as London Elektricity, and Chris Goss. Nu:Tone called the "classic Hospital sound" "soulful, warm, emotional, uplifting". The label signed High Contrast around 2000, after London Elektricity heard his demo, and his album True Colours is the record tied to the label becoming well known. The roster later included Netsky, whose self-titled debut album appeared in 2010, and Camo & Krooked.

The label's club night Hospitality began as a weekly residency at London's Herbal in 2001, played Brixton Academy in 2010 and Finsbury Park in 2016, and in 2018 staged Hospitality on the Beach in Tisno, Croatia, one of the first label-run drum & bass festivals held overseas.

Back in the Top 40

In October 2023 Chase & Status had three tunes in the UK Top 40 at once: "Baddadan" at number five, "Disconnect" with Becky Hill at number six and "Liquor & Cigarettes" with Hedex and ArrDee at number 23. They had last reached the Top 10 a decade earlier, and in May 2023 they played a full drum & bass set to about 60,000 people at EDC Las Vegas. Their team describes the revival as gradual, with young listeners discovering the genre through the band, and says drum & bass had long been a niche in the United States.

Back in 2019 the duo's manager linked the genre's growth in part to the appointment of dance editors at major streaming platforms. Their Tribe album had peaked at number seven in 2017.

Who gets filed here

Artists on the site tagged with this style include Camo & Krooked, High Contrast, Chase & Status, Pendulum, Sub Focus, Sigma, Wilkinson, DJ Fresh, Shy FX, Dimension, Delta Heavy, Metrik, Friction, Danny Byrd and Matrix & Futurebound. Andy C, a founder of RAM, is also tagged.

The labels behind the sound

The labels most closely tied to the sound are RAM Records, Breakbeat Kaos, Hospital Records, Digital Soundboy and Ear Storm. The site additionally tags labels such as Viper Recordings, Shogun Audio and Critical Music.

Related styles

• Jump Up and Drumstep, the nearest neighbours in the site's Dancefloor / Modern and Hybrid groupings.
• Liquid Funk, the melodic strand that Hospital Records championed.
• Halftime and Minimal, the other styles in the same Dancefloor / Modern group.

Further reading on the site

• Pendulum
• Shy FX
• Fresh
• High Contrast
• Interview with Andy C