Clubland chronologies and genealogies are fiercely debated local scenes burn brilliantly for a season before fading into obscurity or merging imperceptibly into their successors. Plotting the fractal trajectories of contemporary British dance music’s myriad subgenres is a task at once fascinating (at least to a certain geekish type) and forbidding. You’re listening�ideally via a towering sound system piloted by Hatcha, Youngsta, or Kode 9 at the London club night Forward> or DMZ�to Skream’s “Midnight Request Line,” the 2005 track that broke dubstep. Then there’s the bass, a heart-stopping low-end throb that seizes you in the chest and stomach like a sudden elevator descent. Moments later the beat kicks in, a lurching, half-time skank that seems perpetually on the verge of climax or collapse, a vertiginous instant of suspense (one hesitates to call it dread only in order to avoid the obvious pun) accentuated and repeated, never quite allowed to dissipate. A WHISTLE of telephonic feedback, then a woman’s voice: “Are we on the air?” A DJ: “Yes, you are.” “Hello, Mom! Uh, I’d like to hear a new beat on the request line.” “OK, you got it, comin’ up.” The exchange fades out in a stutter of reverb, displaced by an ascending synth arpeggio that loops over and over, spiraling off into space.
