What is neurofunk?

Neurofunk is the dark, technical, sci-fi end of drum & bass. Heavily processed basslines, often called metallic or robotic, sit under precise, intricate drum patterns and cold atmospheric textures. Sound design carries it, not melody.

It grew out of techstep in the late 1990s. Ed Rush & Optical are widely credited with defining the sound, and their 1998 album Wormhole is a landmark. Optical’s brother Matrix was an early pioneer, and Virus Recordings, the label Ed Rush and Optical founded in 1998, became its home. The critic Simon Reynolds named the sound in The Wire in December 1997, in a piece called “2 Steps Back”. Nobody in the scene had settled on a word for it, so he made one up: “Since discourse abhors a vacuum, I’m pitching in with my own genre designation: neurofunk.” It reached a wider audience the following year, when he used it again in his book Energy Flash.

Neurofunk is where drum & bass grows teeth. It runs straight out of techstep.