Dubstep Today

Dubstep is another crucial cog in the great unseen machine of UK underground dance music . . . and even though the fluid genre has probably already re-redefined itself in the time you've taken to read this sentence, here's what's happening as the 2010s get underway. Home-based beat queen Ikonika — who has remarked that dubstep is perfect for the iPod generation because "everyone shuffles" — steers us through the beguiling digital maze of "Yoshimitshu", JOE generates a sweet percussive groove from the clicks and sighs of claptrap, and Katy B coaxes dubstep into the mainstream with "Katy on a Mission".

Big up your chest — and head over to Next Steps for more high-grade dubstep.

Paradoxical by nature, dubstep is the global phenomenon that's also a best-kept secret, which is probably why many dubstep artists lurk behind hard-to-penetrate monikers . . . like Caspa, who's grinding up a storm with "Geordie Racer", and Shortstuff, impressive here with his own stuttering "See Ya" as well as a fascinating remix (or "refix") of Oriol's "Memories". Terror Danjah, who bridges the mutually sustaining universes of grime and dubstep, finds method in the layered chaos of "Bipolar" and Scandinavian experimentalist Gremino churns up a tub full of soulful vocal wails, digital scratches and electronic twitchery on "Hyper".

Plunge yourself into the radioactive core the dubstep's maelstrom, in Deep Cuts.

The inner dubstep lair has been breached, opened up to the world's gaze, and it may never be the same again. Dubstep supergroup, Magnetic Man — a mighty union of lynchpin artists Skream, Artwork and Benga — has signed to a major label (Columbia) and here we've included the Redlight remix of "I Need Air", the first single from 2010's self-titled debut album. Manchester's MRK1 — known for his close association with grime collective Virus Syndicate — sets the bpm to Uzi levels on "Sick Tonight", style blender Lil Silva ("Perfussion") innovates around a UK funky core, and DJ Nate creates a pattern of looped Steve Reich-like sibilance on "Hatas Our Motivation".

There's a big, swirling fog of opinion surrounding the very nature of dubstep: where and when it started, who best exemplifies the genre, what it is. That none of these issues can be definitively settled tells you all you need to know, really, because dubstep is an organic state of sonic creativity, part fractal/digital, part human/analogue, intrinsically fluid and constantly evolving, impossible to pin-down. Dubstep, if we have to somehow roll it into an easily grasped ball, exists where prog and jazz rock meets house and drum n' bass. And hip-hop. And techno. Conceptually, it can be high-minded in a modern classical sense (think Karlheinz Stockhausen); rhythmically, it can shake your bones in ways they've never been shaken before. Dive in, contemplate, shape-shift, mutate, glimpse the future, enjoy . . . for this is dubstep.