From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Breakstep, or breakbeat garage, is a genre of music that evolved from the UK garage scene and influenced the emergence of dubstep. [1]

History

Breakstep evolved from the 2-step garage sound. Moving away from the more soulful elements of garage, it incorporated downtempo drum and bass 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's " I Don't Smoke" selling 15,000 units on Rat Records, until eventually being licensed to EastWest in 2000 and climbing to number 11 on the UK Singles Chart. Following this came DJ Zinc's " 138 Trek", an experiment with drum and bass production at UK garage 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 and Oris Jay (a.k.a. Darqwan). They were mirrored in breaks by producers such as DJ Distance.

References

  1. ^ McDonnell, John (10 November 2008). "Scene and heard: Bring breakstep back". The Guardian. Long before dubstep became the popular fare of weed-addled students around the country, there was a genre that helped the transition from the sickly sweet sound of UK garage to the bass-drenched south London sound. That genre was breakbeat garage, now more popularly known as breakstep.