Drum And Bass

'Drum And Bass (also abbreviated to Drum 'N' Bass or D&B) is a style of electronic dance music played at speeds of 150-180 bpm. As the name suggests, the outstanding features are: the use of looped drum solos, usually bearing the names of the tracks from which they are sampled, such as Amen Break and Funky Drummer, and the samples are used to create new rhythms; and a heavy bassline normally created using sampled sources or synthesizers It evolved from jungle in the early 1990s and the two are often confused: artists frequently work in both genres. Likewise, attempting to pinpoint the earliest drum and bass track is akin to trying to identify the first rock 'n' roll record. However, Meat Beat Manifesto's 1989 track 'Radio Babylon' (which featured in their one and only Peel session) has a reasonable claim to being one of the earliest with an identifiable d&b sound.

The genre's popularity peaked around 1995, when Goldie broke into the album charts with Timeless, which Peel was eager to play, and cracked the UK top 40 chart with a remix of 'Inner City Life.' It is significant that the Ministry Of Sound's Anthems compilation began with this track, although Wikipedia dates the first flood of material at around 1992. >>work ongoing