Dubstep
Dubstep is a genre of electronic dance music that originated in South London, England. It emerged in the late 1990s as a development within a lineage of related styles such as 2- step garage, broken beat, drum and bass, jungle, dub and reggae.
In the UK the origins of the genre can be traced back to the growth of the Jamaican sound system party scene in the early 1980s. The music generally features syncopated drum and percussion patterns with bass lines that contain prominent sub bass frequencies.
The earliest dubstep releases date back to 1998, and were usually featured as B-sides of 2-step garage single releases. These tracks were darker, more experimental remixes with less emphasis on vocals, and attempted to incorporate elements of breakbeat and drum and bass into 2-step. In 2001, this and other strains of dark garage music began to be showcased and promoted at London's night clubs.
xKore
19 year-old xKore (pronounced as ex-core), diverse productions and already brimming cannon of exquisitely produced music is deserving of a wide spread and eclectic bracket – if you must choose to include him in one, that is. If it’s frenetic, sharply tweaked drum beats and musically reinforced, melodic bass lines you’re after, you can be safe in the knowledge that xKore’s etched his name into uniquely heavy slabs of futurism soaked, contemporary dance floor music. Just ask the likes of Skream & Benga, Dillon Francis, Borgore and many more household names from across electronic music’s leading lights, all of whom have cottoned on to his mean, lean experimental sound.
xKore first burst onto the scene with a free track entitled 'Hello' last
October (which has now broken the one million mark on UKF). Ever since then (and in the space of just a year and a half) he’s notched up a selection of evolving releases, etching his name into some of the underground’s leading
stables and avoiding the’ dubstep-by-numbers’ template that plagues the scene; turning his hand to a range of styles, from his blistering debut EP Domination on Cognition to the Full Russian EP on Buygore, Lazershark EP for GAWA and recent EP Stabs for Inspected.
Things have really started to blossom for the young xKore when his remix of Sub Focus’ 'Falling Down' smashed its way to No.1 on the Dubstep Top 100 Chart, and has propelled him to the forefront of the current musical explosion. With
forthcoming remixes for the likes of drum and bass veteran Metrik on Viper
Recordings, UK urban collective The Foreign Beggars and a full, second release coming up on Inspected, xKore’s grabbing the bull by the horns with intense vigor and galvanized spirit.
As xKore’s sound progresses alongside his formative years, his growing
trajectory shows no sign of letting up, as he continues to fuse together the
best of all contemporary dancefloor music into his own brand of heavyweight
destroyers. The future holds no limits for this titan of ‘bass culture’ – so
make sure you don’t sleep on him for one second
