Half the tempo, all of the weight
Take the rolling pressure of drum & bass, let the beat drop into half time, and you are standing in drumstep. It is a hybrid of drum & bass and dubstep, and it keeps the drum & bass sub-bass and tempo while the drums land slower and wider. The low end gets room to breathe, and a good tune sits on your chest instead of rushing past it. It sits close enough to both parents that the line between them has always been blurry and open to creative interpretation, and heads still argue over where one ends and the other begins.
Drumstep is also one name in a long run of drum & bass sub-styles, sitting alongside jump-up, neuro, liquid, deep, soulful, skullstep and techstep.
The tempo question
The tempo changes with who is answering. The Mumbai producer Ritesh D'Souza said in 2012 that drumstep tracks differ from dubstep "in that it is a slower beat". He put drumstep at 87 to 90, which in his words makes the rhythm smoother and yet darker. Halftime drum & bass more broadly is put at around 80-85 BPM, half the usual drum & bass tempo.
The half-time idea was never new to the music. Sam Binga has said there have always been half-step tunes in drum & bass, and Autonomic worked mainly on a 170/85 bpm axis, the same break at two speeds.
Traffic on a two-way street
Dubstep and drum & bass trade places
There was a stretch when plenty of drum & bass acts got their 140 on and made dubstep. Later the traffic ran the other way, with more dubstep acts turning to 170 BPM. Drumstep is the tune that grew up in the middle of that two-way street.
The 2010 single "Witchcraft" by Pendulum, released digitally on 18 July 2010, included a drumstep mix by Rob Swire. There is a separate article on Pendulum on the site too.
RAM and the bass-music crossover
Delta Heavy, Simon James and Ben Hall, met at university in Nottingham and signed to RAM Records in early 2010. Their track "Abort" appeared on Viper's headroom EP in June 2010, and in 2011 they remixed Example, Avicii and Chase & Status. Their 2012 EP Down the Rabbit Hole was followed by a remix for Nero. The frequent crossover between drum & bass and dubstep gets pegged as one of the key factors behind their success, and their debut album Paradise Lost came out on RAM in 2016.
Dirtyphonics
Dirtyphonics are a Paris group made up of Charly, PitchIn and Pho. Their debut single "French F**k" came out on AudioPorn Records, and they joined Dim Mak Records in 2012. Their styles run across electro, dubstep, drumstep, drum and bass and trap, and their 2013 debut album Irreverence mixes anthemic electro with frenetic drum-step. Monstercat has also put out releases by Dirtyphonics.
Who flies the flag on the site
Seven artists on DROP THE BASS are tagged with the style: Delta Heavy, Dirtyphonics, Feint, MUZZ, Rootkit, 501 and Run DMT. Monstercat carries releases by Feint as well.
Next door
The nearest neighbour is halftime drum & bass, and drumstep and halftime often get named together. The halftime sound has been building momentum in earnest since the Autonomic project was launched in 2009 by dBridge and Instra:mental. From there, drumstep stands in the same family as jump-up, neuro, liquid, skullstep and techstep.
