Drum and bass

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A drum funk- style piece : Level 99 boss by Noraus.

Drum and bass ( drum 'n' bass , shortly D'n'B ) is a direction of electronic music , which in England arose early 1990s and accelerated radio - breakbeats at a speed of about 160 to 190 BPM based . Drum and bass can be seen as an evolution of jungle music with simpler, more minimalistic beats.

Just like jungle, drum and bass is a somewhat mass-compatible underground music style that developed away from the commercial musical mainstream . While in Germany it remained an underground music style with little commercial relevance, and only a few titles made it into the commercial sales charts , songs in England regularly make it into the top 100, some even reached top positions. In the German-speaking area, on the other hand, apart from a rather small fan base and the scene itself, distribution is mainly limited to background music for advertising clips or use as background music in TV productions. Only a few artists are under contract with large music labels (major labels) in the music industry . Drum and bass continues to develop in the DJ and club scene , and many artists publish on their own, sometimes very small, independent labels . A variety of sub-styles emerged over time.

designation

According to the expression jungle , drum & bass as a musical name probably goes back to the Kingston reggae scene. There she first appeared in the early 1970s, for example on two early split singles by John Holt ( Drum & Bass Ecstasy , 1970) and The Now Generation ( Drum & Bass Version , 1971) as well as that by the Jamaican DJ Peter Metro ( under the pseudonym Peter Rankin) in 1978 released single Drum & Bass Style . The term drum & bass was most frequently used up to then on Tristan Palmer's 1982 album Show Case (In a Roots Radics Drum and Bass) , on which each of the six songs was given a drum & bass motto as a title addition.

The earliest mentions of the term Drum & Bass in connection with a style variant of electronic dance music developed from the breakbeat can be found in Great Britain since 1992 ( inter alia Brooklyn - Drum & Bass Psykho ). Significantly supported by compilation series such as Jungle Tekno (from 1992) and The Dark Side - Hardcore Drum & Bass Style (from 1993) it was used there synonymously with jungle, breakbeat and hardcore.

development

The beginnings

The waveform of what is known as the Amen Break , which has been used in a variety of drum and bass titles. It is a sample of a short drum solo from the piece Amen, Brother of the soul band The Winstons from 1969.

After the English breakbeat scene repeatedly used other music genres such as hip-hop , ragga , techno and house between 1989 and 1994 in order to enrich their own beats with their samples , the attitude developed in 1995 to focus more on the Focus on essentials.

Music labels like V Recordings (sub-label Philly Blunt ), Moving Shadow , Formation , Reinforced and Suburban Base played a key role in the jungle's dark sound. This was expressed by leaving out the samples in the main part of the music pieces and using old synthesizers such as Juno 106 and TR-606 from Roland to give the sound an electric and dark character. Voice samples from Raggatunes or horror films were also preferred during this period. Certain drum loops such as the characteristic amen break and certain basses such as B. Wobble Basslines from now on set guidelines that were decisive for the further course. Hard beats and hard basses became more and more fashion, danceability and better structures for mixing were further developed.

British artist Goldie created some style-defining tracks and founded the influential Metalheadz label.

With his track "Terminator" on the Reinforced label, Goldie created the blueprint for drum and bass and gave impetus to the development of an own drum and bass youth culture . Goldie was later to found one of the most important and influential drum and bass labels with Metalheadz together with the DJanes Kemistry & Storm .

From the mid-1990s, drum and bass developed various sub-genres, which were often characterized by step in their name, which stems from the designation of the reduced drum and bass beats as two step .

Since then it has been a matter of subjecting the raw beats, that is, the standard breaks that are used over and over , to a complicated digital makeover. This goes hand in hand with the availability of better samplers and sequencer programs. Since then, the core elements of the tracks, i.e. the beats and the bass lines, have been experimented with more and more and these are nested more and more into each other, resulting in the typical sound of today's drum and bass. In general, in the drum and bass scene, great importance is attached to the constant further development of the sound. Some of the artists who have been with the hardcore and jungle scene since the beginning, produce completely different music today than they did a few years ago. Today drum-and-bass grooves often no longer consist of sampled drum loops, but are often programmed from scratch, with the typical rhythmic character of the cut loops being imitated or taken up.

Drum and bass has been gaining popularity outside of England since 1996. Independent scenes emerged, for example in Germany , the USA and South America . Yet the center of the movement remained in the great English cities, especially London and Bristol .

Distribution in Germany

The Mannheimer Milk! -Club was probably the first place in Germany that was only dedicated to this music. Greats of the British scene came here first. Bassface Sascha , one of the resident DJs next to “Groover Klein”, later founded the first major German drum and bass labels and also put together the first widely used samplers such as Jungle Fever and Hardstep Upfront . The milk! was voted Club of the Year by Groove Magazine in 1992, and Milk! was presented as Love Pirates. and the Milk! poses at the Love Parade in Berlin . In addition, the Milk! -Posse established a new club in Frankfurt am Main - the XS. The Milk! Club's environment also gave rise to the major events of the legendary Euphoria and the Future events, which, along with the newer Kings of the Jungle, are still the largest in Germany today. The also legendary Vibration Club (in Forst near Bruchsal), where UK DJs and MCs arrived in Germany for the first time from 1994 onwards, resulted in the most famous major event, the Meditation series , from overbooking by chance .

At the same time, a drum and bass scene developed in Berlin, which, like the city itself, assumed an island position in Germany. Here the “underground” idea was always in the foreground, which is why big events like in Mannheim did not take place, although drum and bass could be heard in many small clubs.

Distribution in Austria

Flex in Vienna plays an important role for the Austrian scene .

The very active drum and bass scene in Austria has its main focus on Vienna , as well as Linz , Graz , Salzburg , Sankt Pölten , Innsbruck and in the Tyrolean Lower Inn Valley, Kufstein and the surrounding area, as well as in Dornbirn . These include clubs like Flex , Arena , WUK , “Roxy” or “Fluc” in Vienna, “Q-West” in Kufstein, the Stadtwerkstatt in Linz, “Hafen” Innsbruck, “Die Kantine” in Salzburg, “ppc” and “ Postgarage ”in Graz, the“ Warehouse ”in St. Pölten, or the Conrad Sohm in Dornbirn. The most important fixed event series include "Beat It" and "Future Beatz" in Flex, as well as "Therapy Sessions" and "Mainframe" in the Vienna Arena, as well as "Vollkontakt" in Fluc, "Audio Cortex" in Q-west Kufstein and “Low-Cut” in Conrad Sohm. With the Urban Art Forms Festival , first in Wiesen, then on Schwarzlsee near Graz, one of the largest European drum and bass festivals took place in Austria from 2005 to 2015 . It has been called Nu Forms Festival since 2016 and has returned to its place of origin in Burgenland. The most important representative is D.Kay , who was nominated as "Best Breakthrough Producer" by British Knowledge Magazine in 2003 . The German-language drum and bass magazine was also published resident in Vienna . In recent years the duo Camo & Krooked has also celebrated international success and won the title of Best Producer of the Year at the Drum and Bass Arena Awards in 2011.

Influence on other styles

Drum and bass influenced many later experimental styles of electronic music. These include digital hardcore , which was introduced by the band Atari Teenage Riot in the mid-1990s . The group combined drum and bass with hardcore punk and gabber influences. Noise elements and soundscapes are also used in digital hardcore . Examples of digital hardcore are “Deutschland has gotta die” by Atari Teenage Riot and “Kiss of Death” by Alec Empire (the former track is very D'n'B-heavy, the latter very punk-rock-heavy).

Atari Teenage Riot combined D'n'B with other influences to create digital hardcore .

A very unique interpretation of drum and bass was developed in the second half of the 1990s by artists such as Squarepusher , Aphex Twin , and Tim Exile . In these tracks the beats are extremely “chopped up” and transformed into very complex rhythms. The tempo is often even higher than with the usual drum and bass and the tracks no longer have a repetitive structure. Instead, the beats change at a rapid pace and are deconstructed, reassembled and varied in a matter of seconds. This style of music is often referred to as " drill 'n' bass ", although this term is difficult to grasp the music. The artists mentioned often interpret a wide range of styles and there are also numerous songs that are more in the field of techno , jazz or ambient . A relatively typical "Drill'n'Bass" track is Menelec on the Squarepusher album Ultravisitor .

Based on these two developments, Breakcore came about through the work of Alec Empire through his solo projects alongside ATR. The most famous breakcore artist is Venetian Snares . The cybergrind group The Berzerker is also heavily influenced by D&B.

Subgenres

LTJ Bukem , who became known for ambient or intelligent drum and bass with a hypnotic , trance-like vibe, in 2006.
  • Jump Up is the name of a fast, driving variant of drum and bass that has been reduced to the essential elements (beats and bassline) and which has developed into one of the most popular variants. Jump-up tracks are often accompanied by an MC . Jump Up was very popular from 1995 to 1998.
  • Hardstep is a sub-genre of drum and bass that emerged in 1994 and the original form of the so-called step variants. It is characterized by fast, sometimes distorted beats and a reduction in rhythm. The tracks are dominated by hard beats and basslines. The best-known representatives of this genre are Dieselboy, Evol Intent, Technical Itch, Phace , Limewax, Current Value , Ram Trilogy ( Andy C and Ant Miles), Dylan Hisley and Ed Rush & Optical.
  • The so-called Techstep established itself in 1997, its elements are even more reduced than the classic drum and bass, but also shows influences from techno (especially synth sounds). It has a very dark, hypnotic mood, similar to the jungle subgenre Darkside. The rolling basslines appear threatening, aggressive and barking .
  • Darkstep emerged from Techstep at the end of the 1990s, but was initially even more oriented towards Darkside. "Rolling" breakbeats and characteristic basslines such as the Reese bass are used. Some well-known representatives can also be found in the sub-genres Hardstep, Techstep or Neurofunk.
  • Jazzstep was characterized by the inclusion of jazz samples and typically jazzy harmonies. The style later evolved into Liquid Funk .
The typical sound of certain synthesizers , such as the analog TB-303 from Roland , influenced the sound of entire sub-styles like
neurofunk, as in techno .
  • Atmospheric Drum and Bass (or Ambient Drum and Bass / Intelligent Drum and Bass) was a quieter variant in which flat pad sounds were combined with beats that are relatively slow for drum and bass (140-160 bpm) and ethnic elements, and one of those created a hypnotic , trance-like mood. The best known representative is LTJ Bukem . At the beginning of the 2000s, the style was expanded to include lead sounds and a more impulsive basic character and so further developed, the trance step was created .
  • Neurofunk was created in the late 1990s by combining drum and bass with techno and acid influences, such as the widespread use of the sound of the Roland TB-303 synthesizer .
  • Drumfunk , also known as edits or choppage , came into being in the beginning of 2000. The focus of drum radio is mainly on the drums. Classic funk breaks are often used and arranged into complex beats. The main representatives are Paradox, Equinox, Fanu, Seba and Chris Inperspective. The most important labels would be Inperspective Rec., Breakin and Paradox Music - in the net label area Exegene and Plainaudio.
  • Sambass is called the mixture of drum and bass and samba. The genre can be assigned to both Samba and D'n'B, as it is used by DJs such as B. DJ Marky and Samba groups is played.
  • Liquid funk melodic drum and bass
  • Drumstep is a combination of drum and bass and dubstep .

Rhythm scheme

The basis of most drum patterns in drum and bass looks like this (in this case it's a simple 2-step beat):

Hi-Hat   . . x . . . x . x . . . . . x .
Snare    . . . . o . . . . . . . o . . .
Bassdrum o . . . . . . . . . o . . . . .

or

Hi-Hat   x . x . x . x x x . x . x . x .
Snare    . . . . o . . . . . . . o . . .
Bassdrum o . . . . . . o . . o . . . . .

or (based on the Amen Break )

Hi-Hat   x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x .
Snare    . . . . O . . o . o . . O . . .
Bassdrum O . O . . . . . . . O . . . . .

In the darker sub-genres (Darkstep etc.) this jungle drum pattern often appears in a few variations:

Hi-Hat   . . x . . . . . x . . . . . x .
Snare    . . . . O . . . . . O . . . . .
Bassdrum O . . . . . O . . . . . O . . .

literature

  • Johnny Rabb: Jungle / Drum and Bass - A Guide to Applying Today's Electronic Music to the Drum Set . International Music Publ., 2001, ISBN 0-7579-9025-8

Web links

Commons : Drum and Bass  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Knowledge Awards 2003 - The winners. future-music.net, November 21, 2003, accessed on July 14, 2017 .
  2. volume.at: Nu Forms Festival 2016, June 30th, 2016 - 1467410400, Wiesen, Festival area Wiesen. Retrieved February 9, 2017 .