So drums and bass ended up in phase with modern pop

It does not matter how deep into the soil a seed is planted, sooner or later it finds it up to the surface and becomes something else. The hip jump went from the street’s music in the late 80s and early 90s to each other hit maker hired a guest rapper. At the beginning of the 1990s, Triphop went from being an extremely local and marginal phenomenon to becoming something the world’s greatest artists, Madonna, for example, sought out in search of credibility.

Drum’n’bass, to take a more current example, has been about to make a similar trip. Although it has taken a very long time.

When British pop star Pink Pantheress released his mix tape « Fancy That », which contained at least traces of Drum’n’bass, just over a month ago, it was another natural part of a slow, but clear, development where the genre had a more obvious place in the broad and general pop music consciousness than ever before. For the last ten to fifteen years, British Tiktokpopstars, raised in a UK club culture that American and more Disney Channel-Poped pop artists have never even nosed, seen what it is quite natural to add rattling drums to the list pop. Pink Pantheress has been driving, along with Kenya Grace and the ubiquitous Charli XCX, who has talked widely about his love for the genre. Closest to a perfect meeting between the genres, between the underground and the top list, maybe nia Archives joined last year’s « Silence is loud ».

It is not difficult to Understand the allure from the Pop Stars. In its constant hunt for new sound, commercial pop music has always had a good and bad parasitic relationship with dance music. In constant hunting for new nutrition, it is happy to suck on more obscure host animals. As the drum’n’bass, who few other genres, still sounds before, and outside, it obviously becomes an easy host animal to attach to. In addition, its contrasts, with the deep dark base and the one -way drums, are perfectly adapted for a modern pop music that often focuses on that type of interaction between heavy and light, light and dark, hard and soft.

The alloy of brutal bass and fast breakbeats, like many other dance music genres, often lives their own lives alongside the more traditional pop music

The original drum’n’bass has simultaneously and in parallel branched itself and widened. It was born far down in the darkest and smokiest basement rooms of the 90s where bass liked corners, the stroboscope smashed and the condensation ran off the walls. It spread and grew via pirate radio stations and through White Label twoves in the hole-in-wall-disc stores.

In a way, it has stayed there too. The alloy of brutal bass and fast breakbeats, like many other dance music genres, often lives their own lives alongside the more traditional pop music. Many of the genre’s obvious fix stars are the same as in the late 90s and early 00s, from Goldie and Grooverids to the recently Sweden current LTJ Bukeem and Roni size. Veterans such as Storm, Doc Scott, MC Fats, DRS, Swedish Seba and Fox are still active and in fine form, while the pioneer Shy FX has in recent years an impressive new ignition. The genre has been revitalized by, for example, record companies such as Thirty One Recordings and artists such as brilliant Heron Flow and Dbridge.

At the same time has a certain Commercialization also took place in the original drum’n’bassen. With artists who messy chase & status and poppy sub Focus, the genre has made a similar journey that Techno and House did with EDM: become a little simpler and more straightforward. However – again – without very much attention outside the inner circles.

The increased breadth of the drum’n’bass as such has also infected itself on what types of music it influences. Not least, it becomes clear here at home, where club pop veterans like Little Jinder and Fricky see it as obvious to use Drum’n’bass as newer artists as DECI Alem and Raghd. Or take the dough’s closest radical integration of drum’n’bass in his folk pop.

Like so much else in the development of contemporary pop music, the drum’n’bass trip is driven from the underground to the top lists, mainly by female Gen Z artists, preferably with a natural and open-minded connection to, above all, British dance culture. When Pitchfork noticed the phenomenon in an Article 2021, Ronny Ho, Spotify’s responsible for dance music and electronic music, noted that a majority of the artists in the new genre were women. According to Ho, this also applied among the listeners.

Read More texts by Mattias Dahlström