Deep Dubstep
mid 2000s · Brixton and Croydon, South London, United Kingdom
The DMZ and Deep Medi sound that kept dubstep's original sub-bass weight alive while brostep took the name overseas. Original-era UK dubstep lives under the parent Dubstep node; this satellite is specifically the Mala, Coki, and Loefah lineage that stayed deep (Red Bull, Bandcamp Daily).
The sound
The same 140 BPM half-time dubstep skeleton, but stripped back further: cavernous sub-bass, minimal drums, dread-heavy space, and almost no mid-range noise or metallic distortion.
Listen for: How much empty space is left between the hits. The bass is the whole conversation, not a wobble competing with a synth lead.
Things to know
Mala, Coki, and Loefah founded the DMZ label in Brixton, South London, in 2004, then started the DMZ club night the next year because, as Mala put it, once they had the label there was nowhere to play the music.
Coki finished Haunted just before it was first played at a DMZ night, and the crowd reaction was so intense that Mala had to stop and restart the track several times before it could play all the way through.
Mala founded his Deep Medi Musik label in 2006, building on DMZ, specifically to give a platform to the unreleased music other producers were sending him, rather than to control or own it.
Key tracks
Family tree
- Dubstep: Deep dubstep is dubstep that never left home. When the sound crossed the Atlantic around 2010 and mutated into brostep's mid-range scream and festival drops, the DMZ and Deep Medi side of the scene kept the original template: half-time drums, cavernous sub-bass, minimal arrangements. Mala, Coki, and Loefah's DMZ label and club night, founded in Brixton in 2004 and 2005, are the clearest continuation of dubstep's founding sound.
- Jungle / Drum & Bass: Mala has traced his own lineage back through jungle as well as garage. His 2008 Red Bull Music Academy lecture retraced his path joining dots from dub to jungle before he landed on dubstep. Deep Medi and DMZ-era tracks regularly borrow jungle's breakbeat chops and sub-bass pressure inside an otherwise half-time dubstep frame.