In 1998, Fabio began championing a form he called "liquid funk". In 2000 he released a compilation release of the same name on his Creative Source label. This was characterised by influences from disco and house, and widespread use of vocals. Although slow to catch on at first, the style grew massively in popularity around 2002-2004, and by 2004 it was established as one of the biggest-selling subgenres in drum and bass, with labels like Hospital Records, State of the Art Recordings and Soul: R and artists including High Contrast, Calibre, Solid State, , London Elektricity and Logistics among its main proponents. Alex Reece and LTJ Bukem were amongst the first producers to experiment fully with deep smooth drum and bass, and as such could be considered the forerunners of liquid funk.