Oh man, how do I even begin this post. Well, first off this post is to accompany a brand new two part mix focused only on some of favorite UK Garage classics of all time. Part 1 is all about the classic 2step and early dubstep tracks and will be available soon on my good friends’ NightTracking‘s website.

I thought I’d share a little bit on where i’m coming from with this mix and my history and deep love of the UK Garage family tree. So if anything, take this as a good side story to my two mixes.

I started DJ-ing in 2000-ish and even though my background pretty much revolved around hip-hop I also loved electronic music like jungle, stuff on Ninja Tune, trip-hop and so on. I think the first time I ever heard a Garage track was the video to “RIP Groove” by Double 99, I only saw it once but let’s just say it left a lasting impression. Then I heard a mix by Artful Dodger with some of the current classics of the time and I was just hooked. I listened to that CD so much it pretty much just died on me at some point.

Garage for me was just the perfect mash-up of electronic music with a very urban perspective. It had MC’s, vocalists, hooks. Ohh and then there was that thing that I couldn’t quite understand but also couldn’t deny… Those skippy beats and tough basslines. It sounded like some Timbaland productions of the time, just twice as fast.

In my first year of DJing I met up with was Senyo, a student from Washington and a Concordia student and we ended up being a team for about 4 years. We met in a record store on Prince Arthur street and our first conversation was about the fact that I was looking for a copy of “Rip Groove” on 12′. Needless to say we kind of hit things off! Then that same year I met François aka Dr.Love who was a couple years older than me, was working at Inbeat Records and had already been into UKG a few years before me. Shiit, the dude had Tuff Jam tapes recorded straight from Pirate radios in London. That’s the real shit. As the manager of Inbeat, Dr. Love was crucial to stocking some of the dopest UKG 12′s in the city. And for all you younger cats, when you find a used Garage jam somewhere, you can be pretty close to 90% sure it came from Inbeat.

My first real UK Garage experience was when me and Senyo started this Internet Radio show in 2001 called Steady Vibe’n on a Montreal web radio called Sweet-ting.com. We did the show every week for 2-3 years I think and although the numbers were small at first the love was definitely there! (keeping in mind there was no facebook, myspace or anything). Every week me and Senyo would come in and play some of the dopest 2step and 4/4 Garage, we had a webcam and talked to listeners on MSN. To this day, we’ve never bragged about it but we basically did the first EVER UK Garage-only radio in North America, or at the very least Canada.

Then there was the club part of things… From 2000 to 2003, 2step made some progress and reached some diehard heads but never really found its scene. We would sometimes be booked with house bills, sometimes with Drum and Bass bills. Every week we played Tokyo, Saphire, Blizzarts and a bunch of clubs that have changed names 14 times since. There was some love for the sound but it was just a very different time for one big reason. In 2000-2001-2002 the internet wasn’t a very “social” platform yet, the musical subgenres that nowadays take 2 weeks to travel from London to Montreal took years. 2step never really had the time to become the trendy genre that dubstep became in America… that and the fact that people didn’t know how the fuck to dance to that stuff! I can’t count the number of times that I had to explain what the hell 2step was.

The UK Garage family tree has been a really interesting musical phenomenon to follow and be part of these past 10 years. A bunch of microgenres all lasting about 3-4 years and all influencing each other. Obviously from the very start Garage was a kind of hybrid between the influence of US Garage productions like Masters at Work and Kerri Chandler played at faster speeds and the bass heritage of the UK culture with jungle and drum and bass behing so huge in the 90′s. Then, what started out as a 4 to the floor culture for the first few years (1997 and on) with people like Tuff Jam, Grant Nelson, Jeremy Sylvester quickly morphed into the syncopaded drums and tough basslines we know today. It then achieved commercial success for a few years with Speed Garage tracks and remixes like Rip Groove and some classics from Armand Van Helden, 187 Lockdown, etc. Then from the speed garage era came a track like the Kelly G remix of Tina Moore‘s “Never gonna let you go“, arguably the first 2step track ever…

Then around 2001 at the height of the 2step commercial success in the UK, it went back to the underground and morphed into either MC-led tracks (grime) or more minimalistic and tougher bass tracks with producers like El-B and Horsepower Productions (early dubstep). Then you have the birth of Dubstep, Post-Dubstep, Bassline, UK Funky, Future Garage (whatever that means) and so on!

So yes. Take my word for it: Dubstep will die at some point. Just like 2step, speed garage, trip-hop; every micro genre that crosses over into mainstream eventually redefines itself back in the underground… BUT, Dubstep won’t just die into nothingness, it’ll morph into something else and its influence will still be there in whatever the new thing is. Mala and Coki tracks will still sound as awesome in 10 years!

Obviously those of you who are in Montreal know that I’m still very much involved in the scene and motivated by the genuine love for good Garage-influenced music in Montreal has been outstanding these past few years. We have tons of amazing DJ crews like ESL, Night Trackin, Bass Drive, Rilly Guilty and me playing the good shit and  people like Bowly, Jacques Greene and the Swing & Skip boys are also repping Montreal on the production front too. For me it is such a thrill to pull out some of the old classics I have and for people 5-6 years younger than me say that they’ve been looking for that record forever!

When I finished the part 1 of my mix one of the first people I tested the mix with was my longtime homie A-Rock. We used to DJ together at Blue Dog in Montreal every tuesday for about 2 years and we always had fun whether we had 100 or 5 people on some cold winter tuesday night. When I showed him the track listing for part 1 he totally lost it… “Diaaamond Rings! Ms. Dynamite! Wookie! wowwww…. I haven’t heard these in sooo long” And he was saying how for a period of about 4 years thats all he wanted to listen to… ever.

As of this moment, this is how i’m feeling too… Rewind all day!

Montreal Big Ups:
Senyo, Dr.Love, A-Rock, Jacob Asher, Ethikal Crew, Scott C, Drum and Bass djs Sase One and Corey K. Breaks djs Somesay and Bliss. All the promoters who had enough UKG love to book us to shows back inna day!

Massive Big ups to my favorite UKG producers from back in the day:
Zed Bias, MJ Cole, Tuff Jam, Todd Edwards, Dem2, Qualifide, Booker T, Horsepower Productions, New Horizons, El-B, Jeremy Sylvester, Wookie, Stanton Warriors, Bump & Flex and to anyone I forgot.