Young people dressed in baggy jeans and hooded sweaters groove to chunky rhythms in a dark, smoky club. The music is spun by the night's DJ, Goth-trad. It may look like any other club, but the style is unique to Japan.
Goth-trad is spinning dubstep, a genre imported from England by Japanese DJs around four years ago. Since then, they have built the local dubstep scene from scratch and reworked the genre to their own liking, a move considered rare in the country's dance-music world.
Created in London seven years ago, dubstep is defined by 2-step beats and deep, rumbling bass lines. A common misconception is that dubstep is a form of drum-and-bass, a much faster form of dance that evolved from breakbeat records. While dubstep has taken a little from drum-and-bass, the sound has absorbed an array of other genres such as dub, U.K. garage and minimal techno.