UK Garage Essentials

UK Garage Essentials

Bubbly as champagne and sweet as a young crush, UK garage rewired pop and dance music in the late ‘90s. The rhythms of East Coast house tunes like Roy Davis Jr.'s “Gabriel” set the groove, while sped-up R&B hooks supplied irresistible appeal. The heart of UKG is its snapping, syncopated cadence—the rushing hi-hats, shuffling kicks, and crisp, insistent snares—that overtook UK charts with Craig David's “Rewind” and decades later returned with artists like Disclosure. Garage's vocal focus has yielded scores of classic reworks, too, like Basement Jaxx's “Red Alert (Steve Gurley Mix)”—spacious, kinetic, and above all, soulful.

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