| UK garage | |
|---|---|
| Stylistic origins | US garage Contemporary R&B Hip house Electro hop |
| Cultural origins | Early-mid 1990s, United Kingdom |
| Typical instruments | Synthesizer - Drum machine - Sequencer - Keyboard - Sampler |
| Mainstream popularity | 2-step went mainstream |
| Subgenres | |
| Speed garage 2-step New dark swing Breakstep Dubstep Bassline Grime UK funky |
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UK garage (also known as UKG or simply garage) is a genre of electronic dance music originating from the United Kingdom in the early-1990s. UK garage is a descendant of house music which originated in Chicago and New York US by African Americans. UK garage usually features a distinctive syncopated 4-4 percussive rhythm with 'shuffling' hi-hats and beat-skipping kick drums. Garage tracks also commonly feature 'chopped up' and time-shifted or pitch-shifted vocal samples complementing the underlying rhythmic structure. UK garage was largely subsumed into other styles of music and production in the mid-2000s, notably within hip-hop and urban music. It also spawned multiple off-shoots including Grime, UK Funky, Dubstep, and Bassline.
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The evolution of house music in the UK in the mid 1990s led to the term, as previously coined by the Paradise Garage DJs, being applied to a new form of music also known as speed garage. In the late nineties the term UK garage was settled upon by the scene. This style is now frequently combined with other forms of music like hip hop, rap and R&B, all broadly filed under the description urban music. The pronunciation of UK garage is /ˈɡærɨdʒ/ GARR-ij, rather than American /ɡəˈrɑːʒ/ gə-rahzh, as this is the most common pronunciation of the word in the British Isles.
Artists like M.J. Cole, The Artful Dodger, Jaimeson, Stonecold GX, So Solid Crew, Heartless Crew, The Streets, Shanks & Bigfoot, DJ Thrill, DJ Luck and MC Neat-produced by Shy Cookie, Sunship (Ceri Evans), Oxide and Neutrino and numerous others have made garage music mainstream in the UK, whilst Dizzee Rascal and Wiley's arrival raised the profile of grime, an offshoot of garage. However on the east London underground scene garage is distinctly different, it has a much more raw sound, placing a greater emphasis on electronic beats and rhythms.
Female garage artists include Lisa Maffia, Ms. Dynamite, Gemma Fox, Kele Le Roc, Shola Ama, Sweet Female Attitude, Mis-Teeq and Ladies First.
"'Garage' is one of the most mangled terms in dance music. The term derives from the Paradise Garage itself, but it has meant so many different things to so many different people that unless you're talking about a specific time and place, it is virtually meaningless. Part of the reason for this confusion (aside from various journalistic misunderstandings and industry misappropriations) is that the range of music played at the garage was so broad. The music we now call 'garage' has evolved from only a small part of the club's wildly eclectic soundtrack." -- Frank Broughton/Bill Brewster in Last Night A DJ Saved My Life
In the UK, where jungle was very popular at the time, garage was played in a second room at jungle events. DJs started to speed up garage tracks to make them more suitable for the jungle audience in the UK. The media started to call this tempo-altered type of garage music "speed garage", 4x4 and 2-step's predecessor. DJs would usually play dub versions (arrangements without vocals) of garage tracks, because pitch-shifting vocals could sometimes render the music unrecognizable (although sped up and time stretched vocals were an important part of the early jungle sound, and later played a key role in speed garage). The absence of vocals left space in the music for MCs, who started rhyming to the records. Since then MCs have become one of the vital aspects of Speed and UK garage parties and records. Early promoters of speed garage included the Dreem Team and Tuff Jam and pirate radio stations like London Underground, Ice FM, Magic Fm, Mac Fm, Upfront Fm, and Freek Fm. During its initial phase, the speed garage scene was also known as "the Sunday scene", as initially speed garage promoters could only hire venues on Sunday evenings (venue owners preferred to save Friday and Saturday nights for more popular musical styles). Labels whose outputs would become synonymous with the emerging speed garage sound included Confetti, Public Demand, 500 Rekords, Spread Love and VIP. Debate continues to rage over the first true speed garage record; contenders include "So More (I Refuse)" by Industry Standard, "Love Bug" by Ramsey and Fen, 'RIP Groove' by Double-99, and Armand van Helden's remix of Tori Amos's "Professional Widow" . Speed garage tracks were characterised by a sped-up house-style beat, complimented by the rolling snares and reverse-warped basslines that were popular with the drum & bass producers of the time. Speed garage already incorporated many aspects of today's UK garage sound like sub-bass lines, ragga vocals, spin backs and reversed drums. What changed over time, until the so called 2-step sound emerged, was the addition of further funky elements like R&B vocals, more shuffled beats and a different drum pattern. The most radical change from speed garage to 2-step was the removal of the 2nd and 4th bass kick from each bar (see "Characteristics" for more details). Although tracks with only two kick drum beats to a bar are perceived as being slower than the traditional four-to-the-floor beat, the listener's interest is maintained by the introduction of syncopating bass lines and the percussive use of other instruments such as pads and strings.
Among those credited with honing the speed garage sound, Todd Edwards, is often cited as a seminal influence on the UK garage sound. The producer from New Jersey introduced a new way of working with vocals. Instead of having full verses and choruses, he picked out vocal phrases and played them like an instrument, using sampling technology . Often, individual syllables were reversed or pitch-shifted. This type of vocal treatment is still a key characteristic of the UK garage style.
The UK's counterpart to Todd Edwards was MJ Cole, a classically trained oboe and piano player, who had a string of chart and underground hits in the late 1990s and early 2000s, most notably with "Sincere" and "Crazy Love". MJ Cole won a BBC Young Musician of the year.
Arguably one of the earliest examples of a 2-step track is 'Never Gonna Let You Go' by Tina Moore. Jess Jackson was responsible for many garage records but one which stood out was "Hobsons Choice". The B Side of this record changed the UK garage scene from funky and soulful to dark and bassy.
Another example of the evolution in 2 step was the release of "Troublesome" by Shy Cookie and DJ Luck, in which non sampled 2 step beats were merged with a full ragga vocal (performed by ragga artist Troublesome).
The producer duos Shanks & Bigfoot with Sweet Like Chocolate and The Artful Dodger, aka Pete Devereux and Mark Hill, who (together with Craig David) were very successful with the track "Re-rewind", which became an anthem for the 2-step scene, and got onto BBC Top Of The Pops. After the platinum-selling success of Shanks & Bigfoot's Sweet Like Chocolate released the year before, the floodgates had been opened. Although Re-rewind was denied a #1 position by Cliff Richard, it was also a platinum seller, one of the garage scene's first and last.
2002 saw an evolution into two main directions: the first being that, 2-step was moving away from its funky and soul-oriented sound into a darker direction called grime (now a genre in its own right - generally no longer considered or classified as UK garage but retaining BPMs which usually range from 138-143 beats per minute, a common element in modern garage). During this period traditional UK garage was pushed back underground amongst the bad publicity emanating from the tougher side of the genre, and publicised violence surrounding members of the So Solid Crew.
Notable early grime artists around 2001-2003 include So Solid Crew, More Fire Crew, Dizzee Rascal's debut album Boy In Da Corner, Roll Deep's mixtapes Volume 1 and 2 which were never released commercially and Wiley.
In 2007, DJs such as DJ Nabstar, DJ Charma, DJ Elski, MistaPlum and Matt Farley have been involved in the promoting and revival of UK garage's popularity, with producers like Delinquent, Ayklogic, Control-S, Wideboys, DJ Ade, Marvel, Solution, Duncan Powell and Danny Dubz producing fresh new UK garage, also known as "new skool" UK garage.
So called "old skool" UK garage producers MJ Cole, Sunship, Wideboys- to name a few, have produced new UK garage to give the scene a huge push, which also provides a nostalgic link to the "old skool" UK garage scene.
The end of 2007 saw "new skool" UK garage push to the mainstream again with notable tracks like Delinqent's "My Destiny", T2's "Heartbroken" (which some class as Bassline rather than UK garage) and Wideboys' "Snowflake", reaching the mainstream charts. This was topped by DJ EZ releasing "Pure Garage Rewind Back to the Old Skool", which contained three CD's of "old skool" UK garage and a fourth CD with fresh "new skool" UK garage.
The end of 2007 and beginning of 2008 has seen the rising popularity of an off-shoot of UK garage, called bassline. Artists like DJ Q, Riplash and Sus, DJ BDM & Ender MC, MC Bones, Northern Line Records, Brett Maverick, T2, Delinquent have been producing fresh new bassline, and currently the UK garage scene contains a significant number of bassline producers, who are strongly promoting and pushing this sub genre of UK garage.
For more information on bassline, which started out in Niche Nightclub, access the bassline house article.
2009 See's the revival sounds of "old skool" UK Garage with a track by DJ Oxide (So Solid) releasing his new single "You Know" Featuring Spencer which is taking the old "publicized violence" and any bad taste out of the mouth of any Uk Garage fan and giving life back to the scene.
One popular mutation of UK Garage is Dubstep, originally a dark take on the 2step Garage sound, according to Kode9, the bass used takes influence from Jamaican music such as reggae music. It is now the sound of underground bass music in many UK towns and cities. Dubstep was originated by Garage producers such as Wookie, Zed Bias, Shy Cookie, El-b and Artwork (Arthur Smith of DND), who inspired a new generation of producers such as Skream, Benga, Kode9 and Digital Mystikz to create what is now known as Dubstep.
A current scene of people offshotting from Dubstep, taking it back to its UK Garage roots and fusing it with futuristic and often very off kilter modern production styles and more is often called Future Garage. The term was coined by Sub.FM boss Whistla, and proves to be very contraversial with a lot of producers given the tag. Some notable innovators include Whistla, Submerse, Sully, Littlefoot, Erra, Kingthing as well established artists from other areas such as Duncan Powell, Falty DL, Monz etc.
Some UK Garage/Grime/Bassline/Dubstep producers are leaning towards a newer evolution called UK Funky, often misnamed Funky House, a term for commercial House music. UK Funky takes production values from many different shades of UK Garage music and blends them, at a standard House Music tempo, with tribal style percussion. There are many different takes on Funky, including producers such as Apple, Lil Silva, Roska and Scratcha DVA, who have a harder, more syncopated sound, and other producers aiming for a more commercial, RNB friendly audience, such as Crazy Cousinz.
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