logoMelodigging
drill and bass

Drill And Bass

United Kingdom · 1990s
IntenseDarkDancingHappy
Your level
0/5
🏆
Listen to this genre to level up
Description

Drill and bass is a hyperkinetic, experimental offshoot of drum and bass that pushes breakbeat programming to virtuosic extremes. It retains jungle and drum and bass tempos and break sources but treats them as malleable material: chopped into millisecond slices, re-sequenced into labyrinthine patterns, and processed with time-stretching, pitch-shifting, and digital artifacts.

Emerging in the UK in the mid-to-late 1990s, the style overlaps with IDM in its producer-forward, studio-as-instrument mindset. Rapid, dazzling drum edits, elastic bass lines (often acidic or Reece-like), and sudden left turns in texture or meter are hallmarks. Rather than dancefloor functionality, drill and bass prioritizes audacious programming, restless variation, and an often playful, zany sense of sonic mischief.

History
Origins (mid-1990s)

Drill and bass took shape in the United Kingdom during the mid-1990s as an experimental response to jungle and early drum and bass. Producers associated with IDM labels (notably Rephlex, Warp, and later Planet Mu) applied avant-garde editing and DSP to classic breaks, pushing rhythmic density and unpredictability far beyond club norms.

Key Recordings and Canon

Seminal releases include AFX (Aphex Twin)’s "Hangable Auto Bulb" (1995), Plug (Luke Vibert)’s "Drum 'n' Bass for Papa" (1996), µ-Ziq’s "Lunatic Harness" (1997), and Squarepusher’s "Hard Normal Daddy" (1997) and "Go Plastic" (2001). These records codified the genre’s traits: micro-sliced Amen/Think breaks, breakneck fills and rolls, rubbery or acidic bass, and abrupt, often humorous structural feints.

Aesthetic and Techniques

The style borrowed jungle’s source material and tempo (roughly 160–180+ BPM) but remapped it through IDM’s lens: extreme quantization shifts, micro-edits, buffer repeats, and pitch/time experimentation became central. Jazz fusion vocabulary and virtuoso bass playing (most famously by Squarepusher) intertwined with rave-era sound design, setting drill and bass apart from straighter, dancefloor-focused drum and bass strains.

Legacy and Influence

By the early 2000s, drill and bass’s maximalist edit culture helped pave the way for breakcore’s ferocity and for an IDM lineage of glitch-oriented beat design. Its ethos—precision slicing, creative destruction of breaks, and fearless structural play—echoes in later experimental drum programming across breakcore, glitch, glitch hop, and detail-obsessed drumfunk.

How to make a track in this genre
Tempo and Groove
•   Work in the 160–190 BPM range. Start from a 4/4 pulse but expect to undermine it with fills, rolls, and polymetric accents. •   Embrace swing and off-grid feel; vary microtiming to keep patterns animated rather than perfectly quantized.
Drums and Editing
•   Source classic breaks (Amen, Think, Apache) and slice them into fine grains (1/32–1/128 notes). Use trackers or DAW slice-to-grid tools for surgical edits. •   Build phrases with constant variation: flams, stutters, reverse hits, micro-rolls, and ghost-note clusters. Automate pitch, start time, and time-stretch artifacts for motion. •   Layer additional one-shots (tight snares, rimshots, jungle hats) to emphasize accents and give transient clarity.
Bass and Harmony
•   Alternate between Reece-style basses, FM subs, and squelchy 303/acid lines. Use filter modulation, glide, and distortion/saturation to make basslines rubbery and expressive. •   Color progressions with jazz-fusion harmony (extensions, modal shifts) or keep it sparse and percussive; both approaches are idiomatic.
Sound Design and Processing
•   Employ granular processing, bit reduction, sample-rate shifts, and buffer/looper effects for dramatic edits. •   Aggressive dynamics shaping (fast compression, transient design) helps keep micro-edits punchy. Parallel compression and multiband saturation can glue dense drums.
Arrangement and Structure
•   Favor through-composed or A–B–A′ structures with frequent left turns. Introduce sudden breakdowns, fake drops, and surprise textures to sustain interest. •   Use motifs (a distinctive fill or bass lick) that recur in mutated forms so the chaos feels intentional, not random.
Tools and Workflow
•   DAWs like Ableton Live or Bitwig (slice-to-MIDI, warping), trackers like Renoise, and modular/sample manglers are well-suited. •   Build personal break packs, label slices by function (kick ghost, snare flam, hat rush), and sketch rhythmic cells you can permute across sections.
Main artists
Influenced by
Jungle
Jungle is a fast, breakbeat-driven electronic music genre that emerged in the UK in the early 1990s. It is characterized by heavily chopped and re-sequenced funk drum breaks (most famously the Amen, Think, and Apache breaks), deep sub-bass rooted in reggae and dub, and frequent use of ragga and dancehall vocals. Typically around 160–175 BPM, jungle emphasizes syncopation, polyrhythms, ghost-note snare articulations, and swung grooves. Production often features time‑stretching artifacts, pitch‑shifting, rewinds, sirens, and dub‑style effects, creating a kinetic, raw, and rhythmic sound world. While closely related to drum and bass, jungle retains a distinct identity through its reggae/dancehall influence, looser and more chopped breakbeats, rough-and-ready sample aesthetics, and sound system culture sensibility.
Drum And Bass
Drum and bass (DnB) is a fast, rhythmically intricate form of electronic dance music centered on breakbeats at roughly 160–180 BPM and powerful, sub‑heavy basslines. It grew out of the UK’s early ’90s rave and jungle scenes, combining chopped funk breaks (most famously the Amen break), dub and reggae sound‑system aesthetics, hip‑hop sampling, and techno’s futurist sound design. Across its many substyles—liquid funk’s soulful harmonies, techstep and neurofunk’s cold, machine‑like bass engineering, jump‑up’s hooky bass riffs, atmospheric DnB’s pads and space—drum and bass remains a DJ‑oriented, dancefloor‑driven genre that prizes tight drum programming, deep low end, and precise arrangement for mixing.
Breakbeat Hardcore
Breakbeat hardcore is an early-1990s UK rave style that fuses hip hop-derived breakbeats with the tempo, intensity, and synth aesthetics of acid house and early techno. Typically between 140–155 BPM, it emphasizes chopped and layered drum breaks, booming sub-bass, pitch-shifted or timestretched vocals, and euphoric rave stabs. Signature sounds include the Amen/Think/Apache breaks, hoover leads from the Roland Alpha Juno, Korg M1 house pianos, orchestral hits, airhorns, and crowd‑pleasing sampled hooks. The music was designed for all-night warehouse parties and pirate radio, foregrounding ecstatic breakdowns and explosive drops that captured the hedonistic energy of the UK rave era.
Breakbeat
Breakbeat is an electronic dance music style built around syncopated, sampled drum "breaks" rather than a straight four-on-the-floor kick. Producers chop, loop, and rearrange classic drum breaks (such as the Amen, Apache, and Think breaks) to create swung, shuffling rhythms with strong backbeat accents. Emerging from the UK rave continuum, breakbeat draws heavily on hip hop’s sampling culture and electro’s machine-funk, while adopting house/acid-house sound design and club-focused arrangements. Tempos most commonly sit between 125–140 BPM (though broader ranges occur), featuring heavy sub-bass, crunchy snares, and edits/fills that propel dancefloors without relying on a 4/4 kick. As a scene, "breaks" spans everything from big-room, party-leaning grooves to techy, nu skool textures and regional variants like Florida breaks. It also functions as a foundational rhythmic vocabulary that informed jungle and drum and bass, and it underpins much of modern bass music.
Idm
IDM (often expanded as "Intelligent Dance Music") is a strand of experimental electronic music that applies the sound palette and production methods of club genres to listening-focused, often home-oriented works. It favors intricate rhythm programming, unusual time signatures, and richly textured sound design, blending ambient atmospheres with techno’s pulse, electro’s syncopation, and breakbeat’s fragmentation. The music often de-emphasizes the dancefloor in favor of headphone detail, algorithmic structure, and timbral exploration. The term itself is contentious—many artists rejected the "intelligent" label—yet it became a convenient tag for the early- to mid‑1990s cluster of Warp, Rephlex, and related scenes that foregrounded complexity, abstraction, and emotional ambiguity.
Acid House
Acid house is a subgenre of house music defined by the squelching, resonant basslines of the Roland TB-303 and the stark, machine-driven grooves of classic drum machines like the TR-808 and TR-909. It typically runs around 120–130 BPM, features a four-on-the-floor kick, offbeat hi-hats, and minimal, hypnotic arrangements designed for extended club mixing. Emerging in mid-1980s Chicago, acid house became synonymous with underground warehouse culture and later the UK’s “Second Summer of Love” (1988–1989). Its iconic smiley imagery, trance-inducing filter sweeps, and endlessly evolving 16-step sequences established a sonic and visual language that reshaped dance music across Europe and beyond.
Jazz Fusion
Jazz fusion (often simply called "fusion") blends the improvisational language and harmonic richness of jazz with the amplified instruments, grooves, and song forms of rock, funk, and R&B. It typically features electric guitars, electric bass or fretless bass, Rhodes electric piano, clavinet, analog and digital synthesizers, and a drum kit playing backbeat- and syncopation-heavy patterns. Hallmarks include extended chords and modal harmony, complex and shifting meters, brisk unison lines, virtuosic improvisation, and a production aesthetic that embraces effects processing and studio craft. The style ranges from fiery, aggressive workouts to polished, atmospheric textures, often within the same piece. Emerging in the late 1960s and flourishing through the 1970s, jazz fusion became a bridge between jazz audiences and rock/funk listeners, shaping later styles such as jazz-funk, smooth jazz, nu jazz, and parts of progressive and technical rock/metal.
Has influenced
No genres found
© 2025 Melodigging
Legal
Melodding was created as a tribute to Every Noise at Once, which inspired us to help curious minds keep digging into music's ever-evolving genres.