download: DJ A Plus live @Yellow on February 27

Could house be any more influential on the bass-continuum in 2010? First came UK funky, then the future garage movement, the Night Slugs camp, Joy Orbison's filtered dubstep anthem "Hyph Mgno", Kyle Hall's bombshell of a 12" on Hyperdub, not to mention an influx of South African flavors: London pirate sounds through all of which ran the influence of house and garage, in differing amounts. Even the Dutch are bubblin. But there remains one London camp which are building momentum quite distinctly from all the others. If you don't know them, then you're probably not in the Circle.

Four years ago, when the ashes of UK garage had cooled and the intense heat of grime began to drive fans away, a small collection of pirate station DJs made a rewarding decision: Unhappy with the status quo they took things into their own hands and started their own night. And with the bravery of true pioneers, they started it on one of perhaps the riskiest day of the year: Christmas Day. "You eat and relax on Christmas Day, I couldn't see why we wouldn't be busy or why it wouldn't be a success," insists Tippa, the Circle camp's host and one of its co-founders. "[The] rest is history."

What began Christmas Day 2006 is now rapidly turning into a completely self-contained, autonomous scene. Built by its co-founders Supa D, Kismet, Feva, IC, Gemini, and of course Tippa, and showcased on their weekly Rinse FM show, the Circle sound and the DJs they affiliate themselves with like Geeneus and A Plus are distinct and separate from the UK funky movement that has garnered attention in recent years.

The Circle parties began as unadvertised events of 150-200 ravers who attended after receiving an invite through the post. To get the invite they'd have to share their home address and personal details, a level of disclosure that both ensured the Circle knew and controlled exactly who their clientele were. "That way we could kinda have an influence on the people that were attending, making it easier to control any problems on the night should they occur," explains Tippa, who's seen numbers grow to 700-1,000. "More and more people want to attend because all friends are talking about it, or the younger heads hear their older siblings gassing about how good the last event was."

Asked to describe the scenes at Circle, Tippa paints a vivid picture: "Typical Circle Rave: a new generation of twenty- and early thirtysomethings raving to music and atmosphere very similar to UK garage at its peak, but with a sound that has been around for years-- rejigged, refreshed, and re-energized into what we call dubbage.

"Typical raver? People will say our crowds are ghetto, but really, there are no ghettos in the UK. There are poor parts, but nothing on the scale of the States or parts of third world countries. We're middle class, our people are middle class. Some are aggressive, some are super cool, 80% are super sexy girls, who pretty up themselves in the most expensive dresses and shoes they can get from West End to rave at Circle. They express themselves in ways other house raves/events before could only dream of. I can say hand on my heart, you come to a Circle event, you will turn round to me and say 'Tipaa... where the fuck did all these girls come from?' That's what type of party it is."

As the events have become more successful, affiliate raves have sprung up, particularly Tippa and Rinse's Yellow in Brixton, DPMO and Adultz Only, and Its My House. A Plus-- one of the first DJs on Rinse, a Roll Deep associate, and the founder of grime DVD film crew Media Gang-- spun an incredible set from February's Yellow. Anthems played by the DJs include Dennis Ferrer's "Hey Hey", Bassjackers & Apster's "Klambu", Kentphonik's "Sunday Showers", Paul Woolford's "Pandemonium", Rishi Romero's "African Forest", Kentphonik's "Hiya Kaya (Rocco Deep Mix)", and Ultra Nate's "Loves The Only Drug (Adam Rios Shelter Mix)", many of which are on Rinse FM's "I Love Funky" compilation.

The parallels with UK garage are uncanny: dressy raves for an older, female-dominated crowd, held in the bars off London's financial City district not unlike the seminal Gray's Inn Road garage raves that gave DJ Kismet his name. Though in this case it's almost like the timelines are running in reverse: UK garage started as the Sunday scene, London's take on U.S. garage for the older "mature" raver, before a younger, ruder crowd swarmed in, changing the role of host to MC and spawning grime. But this time around, the younger ravers have had their time first, with UK funky's skank tracks attracting all the attention in the past three years, while the Circle sound was busy incubating out of the limelight. But despite the comparisons, make no mistake, there's precious little love lost between the two camps.

"It's not just your basic tribal beat then any old melody, bass line, and dead-singer-that-can't-sing-live-to-save-her-life like most so called UK Funky..." says Tippa of the difference between UK funky and dubbage, making his position on the former entirely clear. "[Dubbage is] more intelligent, more of an experimental dubby ting that you will actually feel on a decent sized sound system..."

While so much of the Circle setup bears the hallmarks of garage, the music itself is perhaps the most interesting element, not because it is so alien but because as house it is so familiar. If you view the beginnings of UK funky five years ago as a reaction to the harshness of grime, then in this context the dubbage sound maintains the groove and sophistication that the rougher snares, MC bars, and ruder bassline drops of the current UK funky scene has in some parts edged back toward. Within these cluster of clubs, MCs play the host role with the DJ at the fore, riding long seamless mixes of tracky instrumentals, avoiding drops or breakdowns.

What's curious about the gap between the London/local/DIY/pirate feel of how Circle operate and their dressy crowds and sophisticated global house sounds, is that it creates an ambiguity. Is this a subset of the international house music family, as would be recognized by ravers from Ibiza to Berlin? Or is this the next pirate-inspired, grassroots local London jungle, UK garage, and grime scene? Paradoxically, you can say "yes" to both. (This kind of ambiguity is reminiscent of dubstep, another subgenre focused on high-quality productions, unlike grime.)

When hosting sets, Tippa often very charismatically states, "this is our style/our music...," exerting the strong spirit of ownership endemic throughout preceding London genres like UK garage. "[Our sound] means it's something that we brought to a new generation" he explains. "This is what we push, what we fully believe in, what we want to create when making music but with our influence, and not influences from the States like most UK artists portray in their music. Because let's be honest, a lot of deep house can be boring and shit, a large portion of it."

House is arguably the largest dance genre in the world and by the very nature of its size and popularity, much of it is bland, conservative, and generic. Some argue that the digital era in which we live offers access to an effectively limitless supply of music that causes musicians to be glutted and make clotted music. But in the case of the Circle DJs they are reaching out into this vast store of music and using it as an opportunity by trawling through this massive global pool to find tracks with which to define their local identities as DJs, in London clubs and on pirate radio.

"I used to buy vinyl for myself," explains Tippa. "Feva & IC and it was the same then, searching all the sites and shops for new tracks and hard to find gems, paying over the odds sometimes on eBay. It's filtered through to MP3s and the same ethos. Between April and June there was like 17-20gb worth of music downloaded by Kismet and APlus to sieve through, which we all have a go at and then pass on to each other. It's part and parcel of staying on top and playing sounds that we feel fit into what we want others to hear and follow."

Taking local ownership of a global sound is something London DJs have been doing for decades, most visibly with the shift from UK DJs playing U.S. garage records to then becoming UK garage producers, and this shift is happening too with dubbage. Just as the internet has provided easy access for DJs to house's massive global library, so it has democratized the tools of music production, and several of the Circle DJs-- Kismet and IC-- are making the transition. Other DJs like Lighter, Teaser, and Comfy are hotly tipped.

"Kismet's sound is straight dubbage," explains Tippa. "Because he downloads so much music, his sound knowledge is amazing at the minute. Every tune he has made is completely different from the one before, but he always keeps it dubby, dubbage. IC is also producing, he's style is dubbage, but it's more rollers that roll continuously. Kismet's will actually take you on a journey at times.... he's got that early WBeeza mould going on, that's probably because they're actually good and close mates."

The immediate future for the sound is not obvious, but like dubstep, it has everything at its disposal to translate to clubs worldwide. Indeed Tippa recently hosted with Geeneus at Global Gathering, one of the UK's largest dance festivals and a far cry from the London underground. For now the Circle are busy doing what they "fully believe in." The rest will be history.

Download Dusk + Blackdown's latest show here, full tracklist here.