Just started listening to the Garage section on Juno Download, WOW
So i have always been aware of Garage as a genre but havent ever listened to it until today. I must have been under a rock. I just started listening to the Garage section on Juno Download section and its great. Just wondering what characterizes garage?
BPM?
Typical snares placement (ex 5 & 13’s)
Signature sounds (ex arpeggiated synths, wobbly base)
It’s one of those things that’s been around for a while. Any attempt to describe it simply is doomed to fail.
Yea its been around for ages but its definitely making a comeback right now. Garage is turning into Jackin house or breakbeat without the breakbeat style drums. Its interesting none the less.
Definitely. I like the moody deep stuff at the moment - “future garage”, as it’s rubbishly called.
who would be some producers and labels that DJTT folks listen to in the garage or future garage genre
Gonna have to go with Burial on this one.
Mike Delinquent, straight up!
There have been a few incarnations of Garage, and I don’t really like the UK speed garage that came later.
Garage first came about with the Paradise Garage club, with Larry Levan being the main DJ in the 80’s. He would spin disco and rare groove.
Something like Hamilton Bohannon’s ‘Let’s Start The Dance’ from 1981 is the type of track that would have likely been dropped
The New York guys took House and made the Garage variant. Typically, many have been vocal tracks with real songs, but you still get instrumental Garage tracks. Often vocal samples were taken from the old rare groove tracks and put to the Garage Housey beats. Todd Terry, Masters at Work, Frankie Knuckles, Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley, Tony Humphries were the legends of their time; many of which are still around today. This kind of Garage was awesome between 1990 - 1992, for me. Some amazing Garage tracks came through. UK acts didn’t get a look in, so much so that Joey Negro, who is still around today too, made some Garage tracks and made up his name to initially disguise the fact he was actually a white guy from the UK…
That sound was not a heavy sound. Very snappy snares, and often rim-shots. I would say typically 120-126bpm; some piano, but nothing cheesy; hammond organ sometimes; bass drums often were quite real sounding samples. Vocalists tended to be black, with great voices.
I didn’t like the UK ‘speed’ garage that came later, aside from a handful of tracks. The tempos were increased, hence the ‘speed’ name. Vocals became rather Mickey Mouse like because of the speed. i didn’t think any of these tracks came close to the real quality original Garage House of the early 90’s. Ministry of Sound was originally a Garage club when it opened in the early 90’s in London and they brought the best sound system UK clubs had seen. It was based on the original Paradise Garage sound system. They got all the New York Garage DJ’s over, and the way those US Garage tracks sounded on that system was AMAZING. Crisp clear hi-hats and snares, with deep clear bass that went through you, and not an ounce of distortion. I last heard the Ministry Sound system in the late 90’s and it was not what it was. They used to get guys over from the States to set it up. It was a different club then.
Jackin’ house is quite close to the original House garage sound, in terms of the sounds used, but the syncopation is different. I’m very happy to hear Juno has got a Garage genre. I was surprised that it disappeared when I recently got back into House stuff after a very long sabbatical.
Anyway, here’s some mixes:
classic garage you need to look at R.I.P Productions, MJ Cole, Todd Edwards. the darker stuff towards the end of garages life cycle influenced dubstep a lot, hell el b basically created dubstep. for that check out el b, wookie and zed bias.
Zed bias is making house influenced bass music now, swamp 81 shit. for the newer ‘bass music’ which takes loads of influence from garage check out the swamp 81 and lobster boy labels. mosca is making some very garagey shit! i’m seriously into garage and bass music atm!
Perfectly summed up 
A lot of the bumpier, UKG-esque sound can fall under the jackin’ house/souful house genres, worth having a look at Scott Diaz’s Connect:d label, also Grant Nelson’s ‘Swing City’ still going strong, also some of the Random Soul dub remixes, Freeze Dried, Beatdown (Sonny Fodera), Dale Howard, Argy all worth a look for that bumpier type sound.
I was a fan of the earlier disco inspired garage. This however bridged the gap for me.
Once again the Deep House/Bass Music thread contains all sorts of stuff with garage influences. Scene is very healthy right now!
Went to a party with deep dubstep DJs playing all night, party was actually directed to broader audience, the DJs taught garage was a nice compromise. Holy shitballs I was blown away.
This is the garage bit from my Bass music playlist (containing Deep House, Garage and non-brostep, non-dungeon dubstep)
Just a start, but I would definitely recommend these tunes.
EDIT:Seems like that plezier track is some deep house that snuck in, I arranged my itunes according to BPM
That Plezier track is huge, loving it atm! can we turn this into a ‘post garage tunes’ thread? there’s one on here for most other dance music genres! 
try this for size!
