The first clue is in the little splashes of colour dotted here and there amid the darkened industrial streets on this brisk Bank Holiday in Birmingham. Hundreds of giddy ravers and gaggles of girls in hoodies and caps are chattering their way past warehouse doors and concrete sprawls, the iron fire escapes crosshatching the skyline. It’s archetypal rave territory, a quintessential rave scene. But the splashes of colour aren’t glowsticks, or horns, or facepaint. They’re giant logos thundering ‘SASASAS’.

The second clue is the ticket touts, sniffing around the thunderous queue of another sold-out event as though it were a gig by indie-pop’s latest darlings while the railings and staircases of the mighty Rainbow Venues complex quiver from the bass-quakes within. Something feels different. The excited babbling and craned necks, straining towards the packed entrance and its security melee, confirm it. This has all the hallmarks of an actual, proper ‘thing’.

Welcome to the SASASAS hype-vortex, a place in which all previously applied logic is reversed: where drum ’n’ bass raves are fun, light-hearted and inclusive, where girls almost outnumber boys, and where much-maligned ‘jump-up’ d’n’b, in all its wobbly-basslined, synth-screeching, snapback-wearing glory, is suddenly the hottest ticket in town. “For our Bristol takeover at Motion we had to deal with up to a hundred fake ticket scams,” says DJ Phantasy, old-skool rave legend and the veteran anchor man behind the six-strong DJ-MC supergroup currently ripping up all the rules on drum ‘n’ bass credibility. “It took serious amounts of time putting out announcements, contacting agencies, dealing with upset fans. People were selling £10 tickets for £90 online, and we had some threatening to jump the fences.”

They say every dog has its day. But how on earth how did a sound often pigeonholed as ‘the least likeable form of drum ’n’ bass’ turn the tables to become a runaway hype train, with festival promoters from Creamfields to Belgium’s 15,000-strong indoor mega bash Rampage clamouring for a piece of the action?