[sneak]

Dubstep proper is a near direct descendant of dub techno, pioneered in Berlin in the early 90s, following in the footsteps of Detroit techno from the 80s and the 2-step and acid house coming out of the UK and Chicago.

I live down the street from Hardwax, for fuck's sake.

[JonnieCache]

As much as there is an aesthetic link between the berlin sound and early dubstep, the croydon lot weren't listening to lots of basic channel and stuff at the time.

The UK scene has its own independent subbass heritage. People in the london scene at least aren't generally that aware of what comes out of europe, especially back in the web 1.0 era we're talking about.

Check out this from 2000: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doMX6su9Ue0

And this from 95: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjQZxMoF8Kc

Both pure london sounds.

Burial in particular was already doing that sound without having ever having heard of basic channel, until kode9 showed it to him.

http://blackdownsoundboy.blogspot.co.uk/2006/03/soundboy-bur...

Also living next to hardwax doesn't qualify you to know about tunes. My mum used to live near blackmarket and she hasn't got any dubs at all.

EDIT: Also technically the R&S lot took that sound from english people like Mad Professor in the 80s :P