Drum and bass, also known as drum ’n’ bass and D&B, is a subgenre of
electronic dance music, or EDM, known for its fast breakbeats and heavy
basslines. An outgrowth of the rave music scene in the United Kingdom
during the 1990s, drum and bass anchored its sound around its rhythm
section while folding in samples from other musical styles and
synthesizer lines.
The dominant EDM sound during the early ’90s was breakbeat hardcore,
which mixed hip-hop beats with musical samples and pop-culture
soundbites. Breakbeat hardcore splintered into various factions in the
early 1990s, including hardcore jungle (later known simply as jungle),
which drew on Jamaican musical sources, and darkcore, which, as its name
suggests, mixed sinister-sounding elements like synth lines, into the
formula. Jungle eventually rose to prominence, but some artists began
moving away from the Jamaican influence and reliance on samples to focus
their tracks on smoothly integrated basslines and breakbeats.
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