Music
Booyaka! Here's The Proof Speed Garage Isn't Dead
Here's why the rude, raw '90s UK sound is the secret influence on everything you love.
Speed Garage and more Speed Garage
© [unknown]
For a brief but heady time in the late-‘90s, speed garage was the biggest sound in UK clubland. But did it die - or did it just go back underground? Let's take a journey back to the days of Moschino shirts and Sunday raves to find out why this raw, rude, distinctly British dance sound isn't just a fondly remembered scene, but a huge influence on the club music today.
RAW, RUDE – AND NEW
An unruly, distinctly British take on four-to-the-floor US house and garage, the sound took swinging house beats and added to them time-stretched vocals, enormous basslines and gunshots – an echo of the demented, futuristic energy of drum’n’bass. It began as an after-hours scene, but in 1997 speed garage went overground.
Double 99’s Ripgroove – perhaps the first UK garage tune – entered the charts at No 14, and in its wake followed a wave of domestic bass rollers. From the roughshod underground vibe of G.O.D’s Watch Your Bassbins to 187 Lockdown’s Gunman – which sampled Ennio Morricone’s score from the Sergio Leone spaghetti western A Few Dollars More and took it into the UK Top 20 – speed garage sounded raw, rude and new.
Sunday clubbers celebrate garage going overground
© Dave Swindells
Then, like so many other UK dance movements, it appeared to burn itself out. As 2-step blew up, getting the ladies locked on with its sweet feminine pressure, speed garage gradually became associated with a certain suburban milieu: low suspension cars, skunk-infused teenage bedrooms, Fubu tracksuits, Ali G.
SPEED: THE SECRET INGREDIENT
But did speed garage really die? Bristol’s Dan Pearce, aka Eats Everything, reckons otherwise. No stranger to dropping gunshots throughout his tracks, Pearce is a fan of the original speed garage sound and reckons the genre hasn’t so much died as shape-shifted.
In a recent tweet, he pointed out how everything from bassline to deep house to future house has its roots in the speed garage sound. Pearce pokes fun at “the modern-day ridiculousness of trying to change the name of something to make it 'new’,” but his point about speed garage’s longevity feels sound. Not only can you hear its influence everywhere from deep house to EDM, but it might even have changed the course of house history.
Armand Van Helden
© [unknown]
BACK TO THE OLD-SKOOL
But first, let's remember where it all began. While a UK sound, a blueprint to speed garage was laid by a New York-based producer, Armand Van Helden, whose shuffling 1997 “Dark Garage Mix” of Sneaker Pimps’ Spin Spin Sugarbecame a massive club crossover hit. But it was an earlier Van Helden remix, a so-called “Drum ‘n’ bass” remix of CJ Bolland’s Sugar is Sweeter, which set the ball rolling.
Having grown up with both house and rave, Van Helden wanted to make drum'n'bass, but couldn't crack the tight knit UK scene, despite being friendly with DJ SS, Grooverider, Hype and Goldie. “So it was necessity,” he recalls today. “I thought, if I can't make drum'n'bass then I'll put drum'n'bass into house.”
Tim Deluxe, one half of Double 99, shared these split loyalties. It was while selling house, US garage and drum and bass records at the Islington record store Time Is Right that he met his production partner, Omar Adimora. Together they started Ice Cream Records, originally putting out home-grown records influenced by US house. The term speed garage was a media invention, Deluxe recalls, never used by any DJs themselves. But the reputation for pitching records up may have stemmed from The Sunday Scene after-parties held around 1994 and 1995 at The Frog and Nightgown, a pub on London's Old Kent Road that kicked off after Ministry of Sound's Saturday night party Ruling.
“They were just playing the records faster to keep people awake at that time in the morning and to meld in with whatever substances were going around,” Tim recalls, name checking DJs like Matt ‘Jam’ Lamont, as well as DJ Hermit and Dominic Spreadlove from another Sunday night party, Gass Club. Around this time, American tracks like Kenlou’s Gimme Groove and particularly Kenny Dope's remix of Johnik’s Magicwere anthems for their rawer, bass-led sound, precipitating the kind of drop that speed garage went on to accentuate.
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For the 10th release of their label, Tim and Omar planned a special double 12”. The track Ripgroove, with its distinctive Tina Moore vocal loop and time stretched ragga shouts, came together in just a few hours.
DJ Spoony, then a pirate DJ who later helped aided UK garage's chart assault as part of Kiss FM's Dreem Teem, was the first to hear it. “He looked at us like we were mad, but in a good way,” laughs Tim. Ripgroove subsequently sold over a million copies on various licensed compilations. “That to me was the quintessential peak of this new thing,” says Van Helden.
DJ Q
© [unknown]
SPEED GARAGE HITS THE NORTH
As it was fading in London, Sheffield club Niche began transforming speed garage into bassline. “When garage split into sub genres, south of Birmingham it seemed like everyone followed the grime sound and north of Birmingham it was the speed garage and more vocal garage stuff,” says 1Xtra’s DJ Q, whose productions are credited with helping to forge the niche sound. If anything, niche only emphasised speed garage’s twisted bass sounds, but at the same time it toned down the screwface vibe with the addition of some sweet R&B vocals.
Following a controversial police raid in 2005, Niche was closed down. But the sound did not die with it, with many producers simply slowing bassline down to create jacking house. The sound was adopted by figures like Chris Lorenzo, whose Cause & Effect project adds a grimy, industrial edge. And the evolution continues, says DJ Q, who recalls experimenting with a 137bpm bassline track. “I slowed the tempo down to 125bpm and released it… everyone was calling it deep house,” he recalls. But it clearly bears strong traces of speed garage, with its skipping '90s-style drums and deadly bassline. Encouraged by this, Q’s forthcoming track 99 Gunshots is an out-and-out homage to the era when speed garage and bassline were beginning to blur.
My Digital Enemy
© [unknown]
THE NEW WAVE OF SPEED GARAGE
Meanwhile, Brighton duo My Digital Enemy are one of the UK's newest and most globally popular purveyors of bass-led house music, with three Beatport number ones to their name. Though they call this sound tech house, track titled like Bassline Soundz belie their love for speed garage. “I think it has come back around,” says the group’s Keiron McTernan, “but with a new feel and better production due to the advances in technology nowadays.”
And then there’s ‘future house’. Coined by the Dutch DJ Laidback Luke last year, it’s a blend of deep house and EDM epitomised by Luke’s fresh-faced countryman Oliver Heldens, who has already scored a UK No.1 with Gecko (Overdrive). But Heldens’ recent Zeds Dead collaboration You Know, with its bouncing subs and squeaky female vocal, is pure spirit of ‘97. “I really like old UK garage,” Heldens admits, citing Disclosure as a huge influence.
THE NEED FOR SPEED
Armand Van Helden was instrumental in building the speed garage sound, but he isn't waiting for recognition “The kids now don't care about the history,” he says without bitterness. “It doesn't bother me one bit. They just go hey, those are cool sounds.” What they should acknowledge, he believes, is how speed garage changed the architecture of 4/4 music. “The important thing for the younger generation to remember is that there was a timeframe where you didn’t wait for this big bass drop.”
Van Helden’s bold claim is that by introducing the dynamics of drum'n'bass to house music's ceaseless groove he altered the expectations of today's clubbers. It sounds far-fetched. But from underground clubs to festival main stages, it’s the speed garage template they keep returning to. UK garage might be best remembered for the chart successes of 2-step, but it's speed garage's often unspoken influence that's still shaping clubland.
Joe Roberts has an intimidatingly vast knowledge of all things that blip and bleep. He's on Twitter @joerobots
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