What is techstep?

Techstep is the cold, machine-built strain of drum & bass. Synthetic and sampled sounds, hardstep kicks and snares, and a clinical, sci-fi mood pulled from industrial and hard Belgian techno. It’s dnb with the pretty parts stripped out.

Nobody has documented who coined the word. The earliest dated use anyone can point to is the compilation Tech Steppin’, out on Emotif Recordings in April 1996, and when Simon Reynolds wrote about the sound in The Wire that June he used the phrase only as that record’s title. Ed Rush and Trace are widely credited with the name, but the credit traces back to an uncited encyclopedia entry rather than to anything either of them said. What is documented is the room it came out of: Nico, real name Nicholas Sykes, ran No U-Turn from a third-floor studio in Acton, West London, and the distorted bassline that defines the sound came out of his mixdowns. DJ Trace’s 1995 remix of “Mutant Jazz” is the usual starting point, cut at No U Turn with Nico at the desk; the original was by T.Power and MK-Ultra on SOUR. Ed Rush’s “Killamanjaro”, out on Grooverider’s Prototype Recordings in 1996, set the template alongside it. It was a reaction against the jazzier, more virtuosic turn dnb had taken, and it became the dominant sound of the late 1990s.

Techstep is the root of neurofunk, the harder side of the family.