I had producers coming over to me asking about it, and so I went back and finished it a couple days later. That night we went out and DJed, I was on before him but didn’t play it because I thought it was shit, and then Lee played it and the place went crazy. But the game-changing track sat on his desktop for ages, “until one day Lee came over and asked about it, I played it and he thought it was wicked. When I made it I didn’t think ‘oh that’s a horn,’ that’s not what I was going for.” He had made similar sounds before, “like this tune called ‘ Nightmares ’ that sounded similar but the bass wasn’t as extended,” he recalls. Tyke tells me that “Buzzards” was “definitely” the first foghorn track, but that it “wasn’t supposed to be a foghorn or any of that stuff. A high-resonance, drawn-out bass sound with a distinct horn, “Buzzards” not only sounds the part but can be directly linked to the onset of the foghorn era in 2015 and beyond. The best candidate for the honour (or dishonour, depending on your opinion) of the first true foghorn is Tyke’s “ Buzzards ,” released in 2012 on Twisted Individual’s Grid Recordings. Not only is “Shadow Boxing” a far cry from the twisted, snarling feeling of the modern foghorn, there’s very little direct linkage between its production in the mid-1990s and the foghorn era of the late 2010s. Some trace this wave’s origins all the way back to Doc Scott’s “ Shadow Boxing ” in 1996, which, following a video by Stranjah, was rumoured to have been based on an actual foghorn sample until Doc Scott issued a correction in a thread on Dogs on Acid. For the purposes of this article, the word “foghorn” refers to not only the signature drawn-out bass notes of Serum and Benny L, but the accompanying wave of jump-up they inspired - a necessarily broad definition if we’re to fully appreciate the stylistic shift over the last three or four years. Where this story begins depends on whom you ask, since it’s impossible for the foghorn to be precisely defined. That it came on Hospital Records, the biggest label in drum & bass and one not exactly known for its nods to jump-up, shows the sound’s pervasiveness.īut where did the foghorn come from? And how did it take over drum & bass? Perhaps more significantly, Best Track went to Urbandawn’s “ Come Together ,” a Beatles cover that drew heavily from the foghorn’s trademark drawn-out bass notes. Fast forward to 2019 and Best Newcomer went to Kanine, whose breakthrough hit “ The Shadows ” landed in 2017 on long-time jump-up imprint Subway Soundz. Back in 2015, the winner for Best Newcomer was Cartoon, a synth-heavy producer who leaned towards the mainstream, whilst Best Track went to Noisia & The Upbeats’ “ Dead Limit ,” a dance floor anthem that in hindsight was the high watermark of neurofunk. You only have to look at the Drum & Bass Arena Awards to see how influential the sound has become.
Exemplified by Serum’s “ Black Metal ” or Benny L’s ‘“ Vanta Black ,” the foghorn has bled into the whole genre, with tracks like Enei’s “ Sinking ” or Waeys “ Objection ” offering dynamic fusions of jump-up, rolling tech, and biting minimal beats. Rather than the traditionally flat, wide-angled drums of jump-up past, the foghorn saw movement towards small, tapping percussion which left ample space for honks of ever-larger size.
It removes the four-four stabs previously dominant in jump-up, replacing them with long, distorted tendrils that ripple with reverb and move through the air in fits and screams. It takes the grating textures of jump-up and pulls them in all directions. Steeped in the long history of jump-up’s tendency to ruffle feathers, and birthed from an in-your-face mentality, the foghorn is unashamed, unabashed, and unbowed. Loud, rough, and garish, the foghorn has been as polarising as it has popular. The last five years of drum & bass have been dominated by the foghorn.
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