El-B

El-B (real name Lewis Beadle) is a British electronic music producer, who produces mainly hip hop, 2 step and UK garage. He is also noted as a pioneer of the dubstep genre.

The roots of dubstep were sown in a shed at the end of a winding garden path in Streatham. Paid for by the funds of a failed album deal, overgrown with blackberry bushes and built by hand by the crew themselves, the shed contained Ghost studios, where during the night hours, El-B and the camp built a sound all of their own. Edgier than UK garage but sexier than the cold onslaught drum & bass was moving into, the Ghost sound was unique. “I try and marry the beautiful with the ugly,” explained El-B in an interview at the time.

The effect of this sound was apparent, as producer after local producer, from Skream to Kode9, Slaughter Mob and later Burial, became influenced by it. Eight years later, as dubstep blossoms into an international phenomenon, it remains peerless. Burial, undoubtedly the genre’s largest act, was quick to pay homage to El-B’s indivisible sense of rhythm in interviews. “The thing about those drums: they’re still the future” he insisted before his first album. “It’s not a lost art – people still don’t know how to do those drums. It’s an unknown thing. It’s like the last fucking secret left in music: how you do those drums. I’ve tried...”