UKG Pt 2

I'm on some sort of Kafkaesque infinite deferral tip here, where any step forward towards my actual goal only results in additional ancillary work that, while entirely relevant and necessary to the task at hand, nevertheless succeeds only in making my final target appear even further away. Thus we have here my personal, not overly definitive take on the roughly 20 year history of Garage music right up to the beginning of UK Garage proper.


K, so: Garage the genre was named after the Paradise Garage, a legendary disco club in New York helmed by Larry Levan, one of the greatest disco DJs and a key figure in the development of the Garage sound. One way of looking at Garage is that when people starting making House music in Chicago in the mid '80s, the same disco kids in New York took the Chicago House sound, added more swing and a lot of disco to it, and called it Garage. Or they added more House production techniques and sound to the Disco they were making. Either way they started producing tracks that would get a lot of play by Levan in the Paradise Garage, which would in turn lend its name to this new style, in a similar way that tunes played at the Warehouse in Chicago were given the name House. House, Garage...yeah, building fetish or something...





I have this wicked LP called Garage Trax - The Sound of New York Garage from 1987, a compilation of tracks released all in that year. I would post some except they're only on the record and I can't find any of them online (and people ask me why I buy records! ;-) ).The sound has lots of disco diva vocals, horns, pianos and fat basslines. In short, its awesome, one of the real jewels in my (admittedly rather small) record collection. The thing to note is that even at this early stage in development the low-slung Garage bassline was already in effect, giving the trax swing and a more live feel, especially in contrast to the more rigid, minimal Chicago House trax. Don't have any samples from that early in the game, but I do have some tunes from a few years down the line when Garage House had matured a bit and would probably fall under the general heading of Deep House (which is a whole 'nother story, which actually I'm not all that well versed in). At this point a good chunk of House made in New York (and New Jersey too) would probably fall into the Garage category, and labels like Nu Groove and artists like Todd "the god" Edwards had been representing the sound with pride to the outside world. This particular track is from 94, and seems to exhibit all the signs I would associate with Garage House, including divas, pianos, and of course a bouncing bassline working its way alongside the obligatory 4/4 kick.


Indo - Are U Sleeping (original Stonebridge Mix)


Garage House is still around really, or certainly it can show up now and then, and people like Todd Edwards are still releasing Garage tracks today. Interestingly, Todd is even still included amongst the present-day practitioners of UK Garage (where the style is termed 4x4 Garage, which I'll get to later). But while Garage House was merrily making its way along in New York, a bunch of crazy kids in England began making a hybrid of Garage House and the Jungle/Drum and Bass sounds that were so dominant in London around the middle of 90s. Jungle of course originally came from House music anyway (from Acid House through Oldskool Hardcore). Essentially Garage House sped up to around 130-140 beats per minute (as opposed to the standard House 120 bpm), with greater emphasis on the breakbeats and bassline, Speed Garage was the direct precursor to UK Garage, and there is in fact a rather large overlap between the two genres such that it gets kinda damn confusing sometimes trying to fit it all together. The Electronic Dance Music Consistency in Genre Name Usage Council is a bunch of unorganized stoners, as far as I can tell. Apparently Speed Garage very quickly went mainstream in England, having a huge breakout year in 97. I actually wish I had more Speed Garage, and may end up downloading some soon, but until then I'll just toss up this beaut from 97 which in addition to having that big dumb (and I mean that in the best way possible) Speed Garage bassline that I love (though some people hate) it also samples Enio Morricone's soundtrack to For a Few Dollars More one of the classic Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns.


187 Lockdown - Gunman


While Speed Garage was some sort of maximized house + bass equation, there remained a host of producers who had moved into Garage from Jungle, and were thus far more interested in intricate drum programming and the creation of a more "urban" (read "black") vibe. If you want a very detailed analysis of Speed Garage's metamorphosis into UKG/2-Step and a thorough description of the UKG culture around the turn of the century, you would do well to read Simon Reynolds' epic think piece on UKG from 1999. But to save you all from an extended reading session (as this post is already long enough!) the real key change that moved Speed Garage to UKG was producers dropping the second and fourth beat from their tunes, abandoning the steady "4 to the floor" beat of House, leaving considerably more room for Jungle-inspired rhythmic trickery. A tune mentioned in that Reynolds piece as one of the first definitive UKG tracks, Dem 2's "Destiny," is a pretty clean illustration of the space opened up by dropping half of the downbeats in favour of twitchy snares and high-hats, basslines, and--importantly--vocals, used here half as textural percussive elements (in this case, the female vox) and half as poppy melodic hooks (the male vox).


Dem 2 - Destiny


What's this then? Several thousand words later, are we actually going to *gasp* TALK ABOUT UK GARAGE???? Tune in next time when I actually get around to talking about the topic that I originally set out to cover. Unless something else comes up.

(PS to Dan and anyone else who cares, here are the Loefah and Hot Chip tracks that I talked about in my last Garage post, but won't be talking about again. I'll re-up the other UKG tracks when I finally get into them in Part 3 of my UKG series, which I should be done with in the next few days).