In Singapore, drum and bass was born from love, not business. In a country where the expansion of alternative music is often handicapped by a tiny population, a dominant commercial club culture, strict laws, and sky-high rents, drum and bass heads fought hard to promote the sound, regardless of its seemingly limited potential to turn profits. Against all those odds, DJs, promoters, and fans alike were united in their quest to listen to the tunes they loved—a mentality that infused gigs with warmth and community spirit, which set Singapore's scene apart from other global drum and bass capitals.

During its roots in the 90s, drum and bass was as obscure as a genre could get in Singapore, but a handful of pioneers managed to turn a frenetic oddity into a fully formed movement that has endured for over two decades now, silencing claims that the squeaky-clean island nation wasn't capable of producing gritty subcultures.

As is the case with much of Singapore's electronic music history, the roots of drum and bass can be traced to Zouk, one of the island's oldest and most influential nightclubs. In 1996, five years after first opening, the venue launched Phuture, a smaller room that targeted experimental sounds to offset the club's more traditional house and techno fare.

There, DJs like Zul Othman (AKA Zul) and Ramesh Krishnan (AKA Ramesh)—who were among the first to play jungle in the country—were free to indulge their most abstract impulses and spin the dark, twitchy beats of influential British DJs like Trace and Dom & Roland. But despite growing interest from DJs, the music was still hard to come by at that time. "Pre-internet, it was really about scouring whatever we could get our hands on at the time," says Zul.