The 9 best Dubstep tracks of all time
Dubstep
UK garage stripped of its vocals, its swing and its optimism, rebuilt around a half-time beat and a sub-bass you feel before you hear. Made in South London from around 2002 for rooms with the right sound system.
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Skream / Midnight Request Line
The crossover record, made by a teenager in his bedroom. A synth riff simple enough to hum and a bassline that only fully exists on a large rig, which is exactly why it converted so many people at once.
Digital Mystikz / Anti-War Dub
Mala's meditative half of the genre. Almost nothing happens for long stretches, and the record is entirely dependent on the room — heard properly, the restraint is the payload.
Kode9 & The Spaceape / Sine of the Dub
A Prince cover reduced to a sine wave and a monotone recitation. The founding statement of a label, and the clearest demonstration that this music was a set of ideas before it was a sound.
Benga & Coki / Night
The other pole from Mala: a bassline that lurches sideways with a physical violence nobody had got out of a synthesiser before. The record that gave the American mutation its permission slip.
Horsepower Productions / Forgive
Before the genre had a name or a tempo convention, Horsepower were making garage records soaked in dub and Middle Eastern strings. Proto-dubstep, and still the eeriest thing in the catalogue.
The Bug featuring Killa P & Flowdan / Skeng
Kevin Martin welds dancehall toasting to a bassline that sounds actively corroded. The point where dubstep stops being polite about its Jamaican inheritance and states it outright.
Joy Orbison / Hyph Mngo
Euphoric, vocal, and unmistakably not dubstep any more. The record that ended the genre as a coherent thing by showing everyone what came after it.
Skrillex / Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites
Included because pretending otherwise is dishonest: this is what the word came to mean for most of the planet. The London original and the American mutation share a tempo and almost nothing else.