Drum and Bass

Drum and bass — usually shortened to DnB or D&B — runs at 160-180 BPM, almost always built on a chopped breakbeat rather than a four-on-the-floor kick. The classic engine is the Amen break, a six-second drum solo from a 1969 Winstons B-side that producers have sliced and re-sequenced into thousands of patterns. Underneath the drums sits a deep sub-bass line, often pitched low enough that on small speakers you feel it more than hear it. Tracks tend to be structured around two halves — an intro plus a 'drop' where the bass and the chopped break enter at full intensity — and run five to seven minutes for DJ use.

DnB grew directly out of UK jungle around 1994-1995, as producers like Goldie, LTJ Bukem, Roni Size, and Dillinja moved the sound away from raggamuffin samples toward cleaner production, jazz-fusion textures, and more elaborate bass design. Goldie's 'Timeless' (1995) and Roni Size & Reprazent's Mercury Prize-winning 'New Forms' (1997) are the genre's two most-cited albums. A more aggressive 'neurofunk' branch emerged in the late 1990s through Ed Rush & Optical, Bad Company, and later Noisia, while a softer 'liquid funk' branch came up through High Contrast and the Hospital Records label. The scene has remained healthy in the UK ever since and has strong outposts in Austria, Czechia, and Japan.

The drum chops are the genre's signature — try to follow the kick and snare pattern and you will hear that no two bars are quite identical, because producers cut and re-arrange the source break. The bass is usually the second voice: not a continuous pulse, but a melodic line played on a sub-heavy patch. Most modern DnB tracks have a long intro of around 32 to 48 bars before the drop, with the full break and bass only landing once.

For a defining single, Goldie featuring Diane Charlemagne, 'Inner City Life' (1994). For an album, Roni Size & Reprazent, 'New Forms' (1997). For modern neurofunk, Noisia, 'Machine Gun' (2010).

The Amen break, sampled in tens of thousands of DnB and jungle tracks, was played by drummer Gregory Coleman of the Winstons in 1969. Coleman died in poverty in 2006 without receiving any royalties for the sample's use; a UK crowdfunding campaign in 2015 finally paid around twenty-four thousand pounds to his estate.