I hate to stop someone when they’re in their groove, but really, I find myself compelled. The guy must be in his late 40s, a dapper gentleman with a tasteful gold necklace around his neck and gold watch around his wrist, and he’s shuffling – imagine an urban Charleston and you’re close – in the corner of the dancefloor, totally in the zone. “Easy mate, sorry to bother you but I’ve got to ask – is that an original Moschino shirt from, like, back in garage days?”
He stops dancing for a second and smiles. “Nah mate, jungle.”
Then he gets back to his shuffling. It’s not just him, though – London is dancing. On buses, in youth centres, in car parks and on the streets, London’s dancing. To someone of an older generation that might seem like a curious statement to make. Of course one of the world’s great clubbing cities, the birthplace of rave, jungle, garage and more is dancing. That’s what London does.
But in recent years something had changed. It may have been the music: grime was too headbangy, dubstep was too headnoddy and the non-genre that was UK bass was just too plain heady to dance to. It likely had something to do with demographics, as a new breed of clubber – more interested in being seen than breaking a sweat – infiltrated the previously working-class, hedonistic clubland of east London. Either way, clubbing in the capital had become a perilous affair, with too many nights out ruined by scenesters, sleaze, and sideways scowls.
Then a dance craze that had been bubbling on the underground for a hot minute swept over London, and has since spread all across the UK. Shuffling is a type of dancing involving fancy footwork on the balls of your feet with your arms “cutting shapes” in the air, locking into the percussive ticks of a house beat. Its roots certainly go as far back as the UK’s very first house wave, but arguably all the way back to jazz dancing and, ultimately, the Charleston.
Some nights, more than 90% of the crowd in a club will be shuffling. It has spawned a mini DIY scene of people recording themselves dancing in their living rooms and front gardens and uploading the videos to YouTube and Instagram, with the bigger shuffling channels drawing in tens of thousands of followers and views, and the dancers themselves gaining a level of celebrity that challenges the traditional duopoly of DJ and MC in UK rave culture.
Shuffling has, in fact, received a fair amount of media coverage, a lot of which focused on beef between the anti-shufflers – older, whiter house-heads – and the shufflers – younger, blacker, coming to house via garage, grime and UK funky – who the anti-shufflers said were lowering the tone and causing trouble at their events. Some equated this to a barely coded racism, but I reckon it was as much a case of an older generation waving a stick and yelling “get these damn kids off my lawn”. In any case, anti-shuffle Facebook groups all seem to have disappeared or gone quiet, while the shufflers are evidently not going anywhere soon.
What nobody in mainstream or music media seems to have picked up on, though, is the music that people are shuffling to. For this is not good-times UK deep house (though this sound was hugely influential on the new scene), nor has it anything to do with the daytime-radio, chart-topping house of Disclosure and Duke Dumont. Rather, the shufflers’ music is an urban, decidedly UK take on house music, a house easily more influenced by garage, grime and jungle than disco and soul.
The scene has tried to avoid pigeonholing by nomenclature, either using the older names “tech house” and “deep house”, or unsatisfactory compromise terms such as “urban house”, and “underground house”. By far the most evocative of the music itself is the outsider term “low-tech”, offered up by the tiny Strange Static label, with its suggestion of the music’s techy, space-age noises and echoes of “sub-lo” (one of the early names for what would later be called grime), lo-fi (or the nearest equivalent with today’s technology – badly mastered) and low-end frequencies. But the name that has gained most traction is “deep tech”, a terribly insipid name for an incredibly powerful music.
This is music with a certain rudeness – like D’Vinci’s cocaine anthem Columbia – which doesn’t jive with deep house. As deep tech evolved, it began to incorporate sonic bells and whistles from UK rave; chopped-up ragga, hip-hop and diva vocals, shuffling syncopations winding around the 4x4 beat, build-drop song structures, and most importantly, floor-rumbling, chest-rattling sub-bass. Here were the characteristic features of every great UK rave music, made strange and sexy by being slowed way, way down to 120-124bpm. This was house music that had been scientifically engineered to hit all of London clubbers’ raving erogenous zones, and it was wicked.
The ties to the UK rave tradition are reconfirmed with every hook sampled from an old garage track, and every bleep, warp, wobble and siren from grime, jungle, hardcore and even bleep’n’bass. Indeed, this music seem to have a special affinity with bleep’n’bass – the Sheffield genre that gave us LFO and Warp records and set the basic parameters of all the UK rave music to come with its fusion of house with hip-hop and dub reggae.
But if it is a return to first principles, it is also the most futuristic music around. Though many of the sounds may be familiar, modern production technology allows them to be sculpted down to the finest detail, notably in the psychedelic panning effects, basslines echoing and drums pitter-pattering from ear to ear, giving it the feel of a three-dimensional soundscape unthinkable to bedroom producers even half a decade ago. To this technological modernism is added the other meaning of deep tech’s “tech” , referring to the space-aged and the sci-fi, producers trying to outdo each other in their own race for space.
Deep tech evolved out of a general turn towards house music in predominantly black clubs following the death of UK funky around 2009. A number of DJs can claim to have been there at the start, pushing deep house to an urban crowd, and the deep tech scene today is likewise multipolar. Many labels are putting out top-quality music and a huge number of promoters are staging lock-off parties. The story of deep tech is the story of a sprawling, growing subculture, but the single most influential label in building the scene and sound into what it is today has to be Audio Rehab.
With its debut release in July 2012, Luke Larrell and Victor Reid’s Serious People, Audio Rehab can lay claim to the first homegrown UK deep tech track. The man behind the label is Mark Radford, whose journey through dance music maps to the capital’s own near-perfectly: he got into rave through acid house, and followed it through hardcore, jungle, drum’n’bass and garage, diverging from the dark turn towards grime and dubstep in the early years of the last decade to push soulful house for a few years. The origins of the Audio Rehab sound, however, begin in 2008 when Radford’s mates began dragging him to deep house nights.
“I’d go to these events and listen to the music,” he says, “and out of the night I probably heard three or four tracks that I just thought to myself, ‘If someone was to string together a whole set of that sort of music, it would just kill it.’ I’d hear one wicked tune and then it’d go back to monotonous, droney, deep, rolling tech. But I started digging deeper in the sound, and finding tunes with bigger basslines that had the groove in still. I started putting sets together like that at the little parties that I was doing and I started killing it, people were just going nuts.”
Over the next few years, Radford built a name for himself DJing this bassline-driven take on deep house that appealed to those who had grown up with all the sounds of the London pirates, from older ravers, like himself from the garage and jungle days, to younger ravers seeking something new after the implosion of UK funky. As his club nights went from strength to strength, he caught Rinse FM’s attention and was given his own radio show there in April 2011, whereupon it was only a matter of time until UK producers such as Luke Larrell started sending him tracks inspired by his radio shows. With new tunes rolling into his inbox and nowhere to release them, Radford launched the label Audio Rehab to showcase UK talent. And he unearthed some serious talent, from Carnao Beats’ caustic bassline polyrhythms on H.o.u.s.e and Know My Name, to Playtime Productions’ bittersweet anthem Heading My Way; from Nightshift, with his ragga-house romper Memories, to the techy psychedelia of Adam Cotier and Riaz Dhanani’s Lost Planet and Cotier’s Move Harder.
Some of the producers had been making music for years under different aliases and in different genres, others were newcomers for whom Radford’s Rinse show had provided an introduction to house music, but if they didn’t share one specific background or sound palette, Radford saw a common thread in their roughed-up UK take on house.
Two producers who deserve special mention for the sheer class of their music and for representing the new and old school of producers are Hugo Massien, a young Bristolian whose career started with deep tech, and Sheffield’s RS4, also known as pioneering breakbeat garage/dubstep producer Darqwan/Oris Jay, who represents for the older producers from the dubstep, grime, garage and jungle days finding a new groove and new lease of life in the scene. Massien specialises in a cold, militant sound, hard-hitting basslines that come like percussion: Metalheadz gone house. His remix of Nightshift’s Made You Look is the scene’s declaration of independence, the single track to shut up critics who say that deep tech is “just house”.
RS4’s sound is defined by his 15 years’ experience making music, showing his roots with remixes of classic bleep’n’bass, garage and dubstep. His version of Soulstar’s Locked On You is his baddest tune, bursting with micro-detail: drums that dance around the threshold of perception, modulated basslines that squelch like swamp monsters, and a vibe that resembles nothing more than early jungle, the hollowed-out euphoria left when the hardcore ravers’ Es stopped working and rave music first got scary.
Nearly every producer Audio Rehab has worked with has become a major figure in the scene, and a many of the tracks have become anthems. Owing to the quality of music – and the organisational feat of maintaining a release schedule of two EPs a month, every month – the label grew in two short years into the biggest name in underground UK house, with every release hotly anticipated. It also boasts a packed-out bimonthly Saturday-night residency at Ministry of Sound, and an acclaimed full-length compilation album, Audio Rehab, Vol 1. However, the core of Audio Rehab, and the best way to hear the new tracks and suss out the overall vibe, remains Radford’s weekly Rinse show from 9pm to 11pm on Saturdays.
For a while, club nights and promoters were at the forefront of the scene, with Audio Rehab largely unrivalled as a record label. Then, starting at the end of 2013, a new batch of labels exploded into life, led by House Entertainment Records. House ENT is the brainchild of Jason Dudley, whose musical journey took him through hip-hop, garage, grime and UK funky before reaching what he calls “deep house and minimal tech”. Though he insists he wouldn’t have enjoyed this music back in his grime days, he says its appeal now is simple.
“A lot of people go through that phase in their life when they might wake up listening to D-Block or some serious hardcore rap music, and that’s influencing their whole day. Once I discovered house music, which I believe is the same for a lot of people, I discovered that the message is a lot different, which will evolve your vibe and your aura. When I woke up in the early morning, instead of starting my journeys with rap – feeling so aggressive, like if anybody pushes me on a train I’m gonna get mad – it was like, ‘I’m jolly, I’m happy, I’m in a good mood, you can’t kill my vibe,’ you know?”
House ENT began as a club night in 2009, when UK funky was still ruling London’s pirate radio and black club scene. The transitional figure from the tribal sounds of funky to the current deep tech wave was Lee “B3” Edwards, whom Dudley credits with being one of the first DJs to bring deep house and minimal techno to a black audience in London. At first, the raves primarily played UK funky and funky house, with B3 and his deep house strategically given the closing set when ravers were more open-minded and mashed. B3 was playing European and US imports, with tracks such as Nina Kraviz’s I’m Gonna Get You as the scene anthems, but as UK funky died out, the proportion of imported house increased. In 2012, with funky dead and the early stirrings of UK deep tech in motion, House ENT switched to a strictly house music policy, and then, inspired by Audio Rehab and the increasing numbers of UK producers making house music, it expanded the club night into a record label and released its first EP in December 2013.
One of House ENT’s big guns, in terms of recognition, bookings and billings, is Lance Morgan, probably the single best DJ in the scene technically and the producer of ice-cold tracks such as Backbone, a slinky, stripped-down roller that sounds as though it should be played with the car roof down while cruising through Miami by night. The other is Arun Verone. He has traded in the disgustingly dark bassline he used to make for a sound a lot more sleek and sexy: the darkness in tracks such as Guilty and Hate is more film noir than horror flick.
On the rock-hard edge of the label and the scene is Wolverhampton’s X5 Dubs whose Something Good EP, one of the first House ENT releases, came as a statement of intent with its massive, gelatinous basslines, spooky space noises and robotic owl hoots. His biggest tune, however, is an unsigned free download, his blistering Beyoncé bootleg Drunk in Love, a club anthem and soundtrack to a thousand bedroom shuffling videos.
On the weirder end of the spectrum are grime veteran Paul Robinson and house newcomer Theo Nasa. Ghosts of 1988 pervade Robinson’s work, with his Twist of Acid EP on his own Mokujin Records even going straight acid, albeit with a 2014 polish and sheen. Nasa’s vibe, as his name suggests, is more spacey than subterranean, with track titles such as Area 51, which sounds like being abducted by aliens, and UFOs in Ibiza, which sounds like UFOs in Ibiza. It’s Galaxy Jungle, however, that best manages to take the dancefloor with him on his journey beyond the stars, by fusing his trademark alien noises with a honking great bassline and a techy-tribal beat that rolls from ear to ear.
Audio Rehab and House ENT are undoubtedly at the top of the game at the moment. However, the scene is fiercely competitive, with new labels and club nights launching constantly, and there are forces pulling deep tech in different directions. The future of the scene is both exciting and unknown. First there are demographic changes. What was a primarily black and slightly older dance scene has got more racially mixed and younger. Then there are the siren calls of different musical paths. On the one hand you have both Radford and Dudley speaking of their desire to put out tracks with original vocals and music videos to see if they could bother the charts. (Though from the evidence of the scene’s first deep-tech-pop banger – Carnao Beats’ and garage/funky veteran Donae’O’s Gone in the Morning – this may well just result in some big tunes, some terrible videos and the charts unbothered.)
Then there is the impulse to merge deep tech with other, bigger house scenes. That’s seen in the trend for booking massive European and US house DJs to headline parties such as DJ Majesty’s Siesta and Audiowhore – the single biggest events in the deep tech calendar. And it’s seen in the love-in with the hip-hop influenced G-house sound of French mega-DJs Amine Edge & Dance and their Cuff Recordings label.
Then there is the opposing current of those seeking to purge deep tech of many of its more overtly housey elements, bringing to the forefront the elements that tie this music to grime, garage, jungle and the whole history of UK rave music. Throughout the year, Storm and B3’s Eastside Records have been pushing this angle with their utterly distinctive sound and their hard-graft release schedule of two or three EPs a month.
But looking forward, it’s the Strange Static label taking the sound furthest. Formed in 2013, the label hosts a tiny roster of producers making some of the strangest, rawest, least housey house around. Though the productions are top class, it’s the radio shows and mixtapes, with Perch MC hosting over Aaron Vybe or long-time collaborator Jay Power, which really capture the label’s essence and explode all the scene conventions. Tracks are bashed out at 130bpm, mixed at light speed with long house blends replaced by jungle-style chopping, an “all-banger” selection policy and Perch’s pirate-style MCing. If you’re looking for the next mutation in UK rave music, you could do worse than watch this spot.
For the time being these conflicting impulses – between the mainstream and the underground, between the international house scene and UK rave – are in a state of creative tension. It seems the deep-tech coalition has legs on it yet. But were the scene to disintegrate, disappear or turn into something entirely different tomorrow, it would have still have had a positive impact on the UK club music scene.
“For years, I’ve been in raves and I’ve seen certain people and thought, ‘Woah, what are these people doing in here?’” Mark Radford says. “But if you see them in a house rave now, all they’re doing is getting out of their head and dancing their face off all night long. You see the biggest, toughest geezer you might see in the road, in there, hugging everyone – it’s gone back to the 88 acid house days.”
But it’s more than even that. For what deep tech has managed to do is create the most integrated dance scene in the UK since garage, if not rave itself. Since the late 90s, when UK garage split between 4x4 speed garage in the north and two-step in the south, the rave scene has been divided. Deep tech is the first UK genre since garage to be equally popular all over the country. It also attracts the widest age span of any scene in UK dance history, both in terms of the labels – where the likes of 17-year-old Nathan Dolton brush shoulders with veterans such as Radford and RS4 on Audio Rehab – and the clubs, where you have fortysomethings cutting shapes and sharing water with teenagers.
Gay-straight relations are vastly improved, too, as house’s message of tolerance replaces the homophobia of grime, and gay and straight ravers increasingly find themselves in the same club owing to the emergence of Vauxhall in south London – traditionally the gay party epicentre of the capital – as a deep-tech hub.
Here’s a reason to be cheerful: a thriving musical subculture that is bubbling all over the country, churning out wicked tunes daily and every weekend bringing tens of thousands of people from all walks of life together to dance. Practise your footwork, put on your shufflin’ shoes, and join the party.
