What is UK garage?

UK garage is a swung, soulful London dance sound: shuffled 2-step rhythms and four-to-the-floor grooves around 130 BPM, built from New York garage house with jungle, ragga, and R&B pulled through it.

It came up in London in the early-to-mid 1990s, first as speed garage when DJs pushed Todd Edwards’ remixes faster, then as 2-step. In the early 2000s the Sheffield club Niche drove a heavier northern offshoot, bassline, which stripped the vocals back and pumped up the low end. T2’s “Heartbroken” carried bassline into the charts in 2007.

UK garage is the parent of a lot of UK bass. Grime and dubstep both trace back to it.