Who killed 2-Step? MJ Cole and UKG’s second album syndrome
Plus Barker, Asra3, Sparks, TOKiMONSTA and more
UK Garage was, at least for a few months in 2000, a far bigger deal in the British charts than jungle had ever been. But UKG never really had the same global impact as its older brother genre did - or indeed, its bratty younger cousin grime. In fact, you could argue that UKG didn’t make a proper international breakthrough until very recently, with the likes of NewJeans and Jungkook taking the 2-Step sound into the global charts. I’ve thought long and hard about the reasons for this stubborn inertia - which seems a harsh word but I can’t think of any other way to put it - and I think it comes down to two factors, separate but intertwined.
Firstly, UK Garage never really had that one figurehead - like Goldie in jungle - who would embody the genre in the public imagination. That’s no slight on UKG stars like Wookie and MJ Cole. (I’m leaving So Solid Crew, much as I love them, out of this, as they feel to me more like proto grime.) Very few people anywhere have the same force of personality as Goldie, who seemed to drag the whole jungle world into the public sphere by his sheer determination to be heard.
Craig David, I suppose, had a couple of global hits. But he had pretty much abandoned UKG in favour of straight-up R&B by the time his first album was released. And it was the same for Ms. Dynamite, Daniel Bedingfield, Mis-Teeq, The Streets and more. They all made music that was in some way close to UK Garage. But they never really committed to the field, veering off instead into pure pop, R&B, UK hip hop and more.
And this, perhaps, is linked to the other reason for UKG’s global non-invasion. Musical fashions in the UK were, at this point of the early 2000s, moving so incredibly quickly that Garage was out on its ear before it could really get a foothold in the charts, as grime, dubstep and more made their way in. This isn’t a criticism, more a statement of fact. The result was that few UK Garage stars got to make one album, let alone two. Wookie, for example, never followed up his stunning 2000 debut album; Artful Dodger still only have one studio album to their name; and The Dreem Teem only ever released mixes and compilation albums. (In a way, the fate of 2-Step - briefly fashionable, then run out of town, only to be revived two decades on - reminds me of what happened to shoegazing.)
Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to MJ Cole, unquestionably a figurehead on the UKG scene and a producer who many people expected to lead Garage as a global pop force. Cole did at least get to release a second album, 2003’s Cut to the Chase, but it flopped commercially, only reaching 81 in the UK charts, three years after his debut album Sincere made the top 20. (He even got to make a third album, kind of, with the semi-classical tinklings of Madrugada coming out in 2020.)
MJ Cole came into the Garage scene by an interestingly circuitous route. Classically trained on oboe and piano, Cole started out as a tape operator at drum & bass label SOUR; working on Ramsey and Fenn’s 1997 remixes of Kym Mazelle’s Quality introduced him to Garage; and Cole was quickly hooked, spending a couple of years as engineer and lead producer for UKG label V.I.P.
Cole really hit pay dirt with Sincere, his debut single proper, in 1998. With its eerie backwards vocal samples, tumbling pianos and Nova Casper’s yearning vocal, Sincere sounded almost too ethereal for the clubs that it went on to dominate, although allied to this sophistication was a tight drum shuffle and heavy bass line, like Massive Attack’s Unfinished Sympathy strapped to a Garage rocket. The song made 38 in the UK charts and has been an anthem ever since.
Cole soon signed to a major label, via Gilles Peterson’s Talkin’ Loud imprint and its deal with Mercury records, and his debut album, also called Sincere, was released in August 2000. It is undeniably one of the strongest artist albums in Garage - and yes, I know there isn’t that much competition - showcasing both Cole’s incredible musicality, all string rushes and piano runs, and his ability to gnarl out a bass line with the best of them. (Attitude, for example, hits the perfect mid point between sweet and sour.)
The album has a lot of what we know Cole does well. Crazy Love, with Elizabeth Troy, shows the work of a brilliant songwriting partnership, creating a disco-ball gorgeous work of pop perfection. But Cole also pushes the boat out into fascinating new territory. Strung Out is a violin ode to a Garage beat that reminds me of label mate 4-Hero’s orchestral experiments; Bandolero Desperado and Slum King place MC Danny Vicious at the slightly rough heart of proceedings, the former being a particularly moving piece of Spaghetti Western Garage; and I See (again with Elizabeth Troy) reinvents Garage’s 2-Step strut as a kind of haunting Broken Beat slink.
I think of Sincere as a bit like UKG’s Timeless, partly because of the importance that the two albums hold to their respective genres (Sincere beat Wookie’s eponymous debut album to the stores by about three months). But also because the two albums show how new musical genres, formed at the club and the rave, can embrace songwriting and emotional depth, without betraying their experimental, somewhat twisted roots, like new British takes on classic soul music.
Sincere - the album - made number 14 in the UK charts in August 2000, after Crazy Love had scraped the top 10 three months earlier. It should, perhaps, have been Garage’s international calling card, considering its strength and the fact that Cole formed a live band to take the album to the stage; but neither the album nor UKG as a whole really seemed to take root outside of the UK.
The temptation is to say that UK Garage - with its roots in a very British mixture of rave, reggae, house, jungle, R&B and more - was simply too country-specific for international audiences. The later success of UKG, two decades on, makes me think that international audiences would have warmed to it, if given the chance. But the gatekeepers of the time - the still powerful TV, radio stations and magazines - weren’t to be moved.
And, to be fair to them, it wasn't long before UKG had fallen out of favour with British audiences too, as they moved towards the grittier sounds of grime and dubstep. This shift can perhaps best be summed up in a Guardian review of Cole’s second album, 2003’s Cut To The Chase, which kicks off by arguing that UK Garage “has changed beyond recognition in the three years since Matt Coleman, aka MJ Cole, released his debut album”.
“While his glorious 1998 single Sincere demonstrated the benefits of classical training and a passion for vintage soul, Cut to the Chase betrays the drawbacks,” journalist Dorian Lynskey continues. “Impeccably tasteful and overproduced, if this album were any more polite it would offer to take your coat.”
It’s a brutal assessment and one that doesn’t read well today. And yet you can kind of see Lynskey’s point. 2003 was the year that Dizzee Rascal released I Luv You, Hinzy D gave us Target and Wiley unleashed frozen classics like Ground Zero and Igloo. Compared to those, at least, Cut to the Chase does sound a touch polite and overly tasteful. But, then again, what wouldn’t? Just three years after his debut album, MJ Cole found himself out of fashion in the modish UK.
Listening back now, though, things seem very different. Cut to the Chase isn’t as strong an album as Sincere. The songwriting isn’t quite as sharp and there is the occasional feel that the producer is consciously leaning on the classic MJ Cole sound - those pizzicato strings and piano riffs, mainly - because he thinks it is the right thing to do (see Live My life, with Fallacy). And, yes, the album is occasionally a bit too smooth, even for MJ Cole. I could definitely have lived without treacle-y slow jam Nice & Slow (featuring Shaun Escoffery).
But Cut to the Chase has some fascinating guests in Jill Scott, dancehall star Elephant Man and British rappers Lyric L, Rodney P and Fallacy, who help to contribute to Cole’s efforts to push the sound of UK Garage into new territories, without abandoning the genre’s precision targeted drum programming.
Caught You Out, with the ever excellent Vula Malinga, is a kind of Garage / R&B hybrid that Timbaland would have been proud of; while Mad Man, with Elephant Man (the only song that Guardian reviewer actually liked), draws the Meridian line between dancehall production and UKG, with a kind of dembow / 2-Step rhythmical mix.
Nice & Slow, for all its velvet curtain-ness, has a fascinating beat, simultaneously fast and slow, light and heavy, that shows serious programming skills. Honesty, with Niara Scarlett, sounds like a thought experiment in which a Garage producer attempts to go as close as possible to a straight rock beat without losing their Garage chops; Ruff Like Me is 2-Step reggae; and All Out (I’m Over You) is exactly half way between Broken Beat and Garage, which proves a very fruitful place to be.
To these production marvels, the invited guests add wonders. Lyric L and Fallacy bring hip hop flavours to the mix, while Elephant Man makes a very convincing case for UKG and dancehall being kissing cousins, by, essentially, doing his Elephant Man thing all over Cole’s hybrid beat, his energy making the song fly out the window. Fans of more traditional Garage, meanwhile, find their wishes granted in the excellent Perfect Pitch (with Jill Scott) and Wondering Why, with Vula, two songs that would not only have fit on Sincere but would have been among the best songs there.
Cut to the Chase is frustratingly excellent. In many ways, it does exactly what a second record should do, pushing on the artist’s sound into new directions, without abandoning what we loved about them in the first place. That makes its failure to connect all the more annoying. I almost feel like shaking The Guardian reviewer violently over the historical void to make them wake up and just listen to the music; although A) at least The Guardian covered the album and B) there is a pretty good chance I would have written exactly the same thing at the time. (And Dorian Lynskey is a very good journalist, obviously, and deserves respect not shakes.)
What, I can’t help but wonder, would have happened in a more supportive environment? If, say, Wookie had got the chance to make a second album and MJ Cole a proper third, away from vicious commercial pressure? And then a fourth, fifth, sixth album, with Garage evolving with them? Goldie’s second album, Saturnz Return, was slated at the time and it did look for a while, at the end of the 90s, that drum & bass might shuffle off into history, only for the genre to re-group and go from strength to strength to strength. Saturnz Return has also been critically re-evaluated and is now seen as a (somewhat indulgent) work of huge ambition and emotional release.
But, no. Garage crashed, MJ Cole left Talkin’ Loud and he didn’t make another album until 2020; Wookie also went underground, embracing songwriting, production and the occasional Old-Skool revival gig. He’s making a comeback now and I can only wish him well.
MJ Cole is still around, too, collaborating, DJing, songwriting and producing, as well as making music for the occasional TV ad campaign. Stand Up, his 2024 single with K-Lone, is absolutely fantastic, Cole’s classically inclined piano slinking over the mix like a panther on expensive martinis. The song shows that Cole could make a brilliant UK Garage album in 2025, an old master returning to his easel to show the young upstarts how it should be done.
Maybe his experience with Cut to the Chase, casting pearls to the swine of musical fortune, means this will never happen. And I can understand that. But I would urge him, instead, to think of a world where UK Garage wasn’t supplanted by grime, Todd Edwards never had to retire and Cut to the Chase was the second step on a path of UK Garage adventure, rather than the brutal final word on the demise of a genre.
Some listening
Well, this seems pretty relevant to the above. For all the 2-Step revivalists out there in 2025, it’s not clear if the genre has moved on much from the glory days of 2001. YU QT make the argument that it might have done, marrying 2-Step beats to a synth pattern that screams progressive trance. This is a genre I liberally detest, on the whole, but they make it work here, thanks to the melancholia poking through the mix. There are distinct hints of Overmono to You Know What I Want, too, albeit with more rave-y candy and less of the fraternal duo’s industrial grit.
Asra3 - MANS ENLAIRE (feat. Sarigueyax)
The latest release from brilliantly idiosyncratic Catalan producer Asra3 is - but of course - a 33-track mixtape celebrating swell-headed and slightly unsettling figurines Funko Pops: FUNKO POP MUSIC. It’s an incredible release, simultaneously all over the place and surprisingly focused, the sound of a producer with far too many ideas but a very good notion of what to do with them, taking in everything from reggae to rave to Rick Astley. (No really.) MANS ENLAIRE - “hands in the air” in Catalan - is what probably passes for pop music in Asra3’s world, with a doleful, but very sticky, vocal, a blattering breakbeat and the kind of spoken-word / rap that used to adorn dance pop hits in the early 1990s, like a one-man Catalan KLF.
Jeff Mills - Theme from Star Child
Jeff Mills’ Axis Expressionist Series aims to explore the complexity and simplicity of life, using music that tends more towards the thoughtful side of the producer’s dance music output, rather than screeching techno or full-on jazz. “It’s not Jazz, Experimental, Ambient / Chill Out, House or Techno music, but it does use all of these influences and more,” Mills said on Instagram, when introducing the series, which seems fair enough. As such, Axis Expressionist releases tend to include some of my favourite Mills’ music and Theme from Star Child, taken from the First Child EP, is no exception, underpinned by a rollicking piano riff that reminds me a little of Strings of Life and a deliciously simple drum and bass shuffle. It is a track that doesn’t so much build and release as gently ripple, like a stiff summer breeze on a vast mountain lake. Mills really is a master.
TOKiMONSTA - Corazón / Death by Disco
You know why so many people in France decided to make filter house at the end of the 90s? Because it is gloriously fun, utterly funky and sounds like a piece of piss to do. Except, of course, it isn’t, which makes all the successes somehow all the more magical, an alchemy of samples and filters. TOKiMONSTA has absolutely nailed the art here, on Corazón / Death by Disco, a song that could have fit on Cassius’s 1999 alongside Feeling For You, so effortlessly brilliant it is. The right sample; the right drums; the right feel; the right everything.
Jean-Claude Vannier - Il y avait des éléphants
Jean-Claude Vannier is an unsung titan of French music. He was responsible for orchestral arrangements on Serge Gainsbourg’s classic Melody Nelson album, as well as Jane Birkin’s Di Doo Dah; and he has worked with everyone from Françoise Hardy to Juliette Gréco. His own 1972 record L'Enfant Assassin des Mouches is totally essential, too. Il y avait des éléphants - “there were elephants” - is taken from a new mandolin album, created as a music score for a non-existent silent film. Generally I find the whole “soundtrack for a non-existent film” thing a bit of a drag but when you’re talking about Vannier - who has worked on a large number of actual films - I can forgive it. And it helps that the song is totally charming, an über-French stroll through Left-Bank melody and style that threatens to make the mandolin into your new favourite instrument.
“Our mantra since 1972, amplified in 2025.” Well quite. Is there any band in the history of music that has followed their individual muse, that has done things their own way, as much as Sparks? Probably not, which makes Do Things My Own Way a statement of intent from the fraternal duo - if such a thing is possible 53 years into a career. In this particular case the Sparks way involves a punk-ish, two-chord guitar riff, some curious whoosing noises and a Kraftwerk-ian synth motif, the various sounds of the 1970s come crashing into 2025. Plus, of course, it has a brilliantly catchy vocal you will be singing all day. God I love them.
“Stochastic” means “having a random probability distribution or pattern that may be analysed statistically but may not be predicted precisely”. But so what, you say? Well, Barker’s new album is called “Stochastic Drift” and it is a ravishing ode to letting things kind of get away from you, of abandoning fixed goals and seeing where life takes you. Reframing, the gorgeous first single, is a brilliant example of this technique-non-technique, with the song’s pointillist riff wafting across the mix like it has absolutely nothing better to be doing and has realised it is entirely the right place. It reminds me a little of lying on a float in a swimming pool on a hot day and just letting go, something I really don’t do enough of.
Things I’ve done
Line Noise podcast - with Tesfa Williams
This week on the Line Noise podcast - episode 198! - I spoke to Tesfa Williams, the artist formerly known as T. Williams (and before that Dread) a British producer who has passed through grime on his way to Funky, house and everything in between. We talked about that name change and the very personal reasons behind it; we also dug into everything from his excellent debut album Raves of Future Past to innovation in dance music and Williams’ favourite house producers.
The playlists
It’s February, a whole stinking month has passed, and I still only have a handful of followers for my best new music of 2025 playlist. Why not lend it some ears? And if that’s not enough, you have my very, very long playlist of the best new (well, it was new at the time) music from the last five years.
Great post! I'm giving "Cut to the Chase" a first play
great column & all but plz stop using Spotify...