A distinctly British take on house music liberates the genre from its soul-disco roots
In a darkly lit club, a mass of dancers skip and bounce to an off-beat cymbal, synthesized bassline, and pitch-shifted vocal repeatedly beckoning “Let’s get together.” This isn’t Chicago 1985, but London 2015, and the dance isn’t the Jack but rather the shuffle. The track is “Let’s Get 2gether,” by DJ Haus, and an example of Deep Tech – a new distinctly British strain of house music which shifts away from the genre’s disco roots, while incorporating elements of dubstep, grime, and jungle.
The origins of Deep Tech trace back to around 2009, when DJs at London clubs had returned to spinning Deep House records after clubbers had grown tired of the then-heavily in rotation genre of UK funky. With labels like the influential Audio Rehab emerging around 2012, DJs began to spin a new style of House which departed from the genre’s soul-disco roots and had a more heavy and bass-centric sound. In the few years since, the genre has grown out of its original Afro-British milieu to become the dominant sound of London’s underground dance music scene.
Though still in its infancy, the scene has already had some flirtations with the mainstream. In January 2013, hipster media conglomerate Vice published a piece on shuffle dancing, and, at the end of 2014, Manchester-based newspaper The Guardian wrote a lengthy piece spotlighting the scene and looking at its origins. Deep Tech remixes of popular songs have even started to get lots of traffic on the internet, one example being X5 Dubs’ “Drunk in Love” – which samples the “Woke up in the kitchen sayin’ how the hell did this shit happen” refrain from the Beyonce hit, and stretches it into a tantric eternity complete with cascading drums and wobbling bass.
As a cultural center, London has long positioned itself at the forefront of dance music. From the DIY electro-disco of early House, to the reggae-tinged rush of Jungle, to the party-hearty bass drops of Dubstep, the English capital has both popularized and originated many once-vanguard electronica genres. Now with the advent of Deep Tech, the city once again finds itself on clubbing’s cutting edge.