The sound needed a hub to grow, and that hub was Big Apple.

Technical devices or processes which receive intensified investment during cold or hot wars spread through societies contagiously once their monopoly by the state has been undermined.

Audio virology is not a metaphor. It is to be taken literally. It maps real processes of mutation, transmission, contagion and memory within music culture.

Because we live in a condition of ubiquitous music and media, and near infinite technological memory, it is much easier for local cultures to find an audience that resonates with their music, whether local or globally.

I wrote a short article called "Yardcore" for that issue, too, as an attempt to talk about the Jamaican influence on garage, grime and dubstep; as a splicing of soundsystem culture and hardcore.

Most music culture these days runs on systems and networks devised to deal with the aftermath of thermonuclear war. Music culture has a habit of using these moods and machines in creative, unintended ways.

Both analog and digital developments have intensified the viral nature of sonic culture.