Jungle with the lights down and the sub up
Darker, lower, rolling harder. Hardstep is the name for the rougher side of mid-1990s jungle and early drum & bass, tunes that sit heavy on the low end and keep the pressure on. The name is closely tied to Grooverider, who is credited with coining it for the rougher sounds he was playing as jungle diverged and he pushed into darker, harder areas.
It belongs to a stretch when the scene was changing fast. Jungle was moving slowly towards darker, harder, more rolling styles at 170 BPM, and MC Navigator says that in 1995 people stopped playing the "ragga shit".
Bass weight, and the tunes that carried the pressure
Bass weight is the thread running through the period. Dead Dread's Dread Bass (Moving Shadow, 1994) showcases the dread bass sound that started to dominate jungle tunes. Dillinja is typically known for his harder take on drum & bass, and his compilation My Sound is where to go for it.
Not every hardstep tune went without ragga. DJ Nut Nut and Top Cat's Special Dedication is counted as one of only a few ragga hardstep tunes, with textured production, soulful sources and the reintroduction of the kick drum. Dillinja's The Angels Fell is a hardstep tune built on Vangelis's Blade Runner Blues, laid over pitched-down film dialogue.
Rage, radio and the push towards harder
Grooverider and Fabio took up a residency at Rage, an event at the London venue Heaven, in 1991. Fabio describes a Thursday-night scene at Heaven that ran from late 1988 until late 1993. Grooverider founded the Prototype label in 1994, which links to the later techstep sound, and his 1997 compilation Prototype Years is described as one of the most influential LPs in drum & bass.
A Sunday session in Hoxton
The Metalheadz night at Blue Note was a Sunday session in Hoxton, London. It started after the club offered Metalheadz a five-week trial slot around 1995. Goldie headed up the night. It was a listening crowd, locked in, and Grooverider's sets were central to the room.
Dillinja's bass got singled out. Justyce says: "Nobody came close to the bass that he brought." Photek said he thought the first use of a lowpass filter on a breakbeat happened at the club, and he credited Dillinja with it. Fabio places the start of "really dark drum & bass", with Ed Rush and others, at Blue Note.
From hardstep towards techstep
Ed Rush is a pivot in this story. His 1993 release Bludclot Artattack with Nico Sykes is linked to hardcore splitting into drum & bass. In 1995 came The Mutant (with DJ Trace); in 1996, the Techsteppin' compilation, the Skylab EP on Metalheadz and Killimanjaro on Prototype. They helped steer the scene towards techstep. Ed Rush later co-founded Virus Recordings with Optical.
The No U-Turn label is credited with honing and perfecting the techstep sound, and the 1997 track Damn Son by Ed Rush, Trace and Nico belongs to that story.
Names to know
- Grooverider - credited with coining the term. He also co-presented a BBC Radio 1 show with Fabio.
- Ray Keith - launched Dread Recordings in 1994. Terrorist is among the label's early releases that brought him to the forefront of the drum & bass and jungle scenes, and it is placed in jump-up.
- Dillinja - over 500 releases since 1991, and the Valve Sound System, a rig built with Lemon D and designed specifically for drum & bass. There is an interview with Dillinja on this site.
- DJ Hype, DJ Zinc and Pascal - Zinc's Super Sharp Shooter was later re-released under the Ganja Cru banner, made up of Zinc and his affiliates Hype and Pascal. Hype's Roll The Beats appeared on Suburban Base in 1994.
- Jumping Jack Frost - co-founded V Recordings with Bryan Gee in 1993, and produced the track Burial as Leviticus.
Labels and nights
Metalheadz, Prototype and Dread Recordings are covered above. V Recordings counted Dillinja, Lemon D and Ray Keith among its artists. Other Zinc releases came out on True Playaz and Frontline, while Playaz Recordings is among Hype's labels; there was a 150th Playaz night in 2012 and a 30 Years of Playaz event. Valve Recordings was founded by Dillinja and Lemon D.
Still rinsing it out
The hardstep name is still in circulation. Temp-Illusion's Failsafe EP takes hardstep/darkstep drum'n'bass as its main aesthetic reference. Fabio says he loves "a lot of hard Drum & bass" and names Dillinja as a favourite.
Next to hardstep
- Jungle - the parent tradition from which hardstep grew.
- Ragga - the ragga-influenced jungle that gets linked to the term.
- Techstep - the harder, more technical style that Ed Rush's 1996 releases helped to define.
- Darkstep - paired with hardstep in recent usage.
- Jump Up - the category in which Ray Keith's Terrorist is placed.
