2562 album launch, Corsica Studios SE1

For some people, dubstep has an identity problem. Its suburban origins and recent global spread, its propensity for hybridity, the relatively genial nature of the scene, and perhaps worst of all its popularity with – whisper it – students lead some commentators to regard it with suspicion.

A common attack is to compare it unfavourably with either its antecedent jungle (the wild polyrhythmic early-mid 1990s precursor to drum & bass), or its first cousin grime (the fearsomely jagged, lyrically ultra-violent sound of London's pirate radio stations in the first part of this decade): next to them, dubstep is not localised enough, not grassroots enough, not edgy and gangster enough, and – the often not even concealed subtext goes – not black enough for the radical chic hipsters.

Certainly walking into the Corsica Studios last night, although the venue itself is distinctly grimey, essentially just two railway arches under Elephant & Castle station with an underground, old-school rave feel, there was none of the air of threat and consequent hyper-adrenalised feel of the crowd teetering on the edge of chaos one would get at, say, an old jungle rave.

Completely the opposite, in fact: though boisterous and noisy, everyone had an air of approachability and in the covered smoking terrace at the back (amusingly shared with the rather tough-looking patrons of the Colombian salsa nightclub in the next arch) striking up conversation or at least a little banter with just about anyone was easy. Though a lot more mixed than most mainstream dance clubs and with a pretty even gender balance, the crowd was relatively white for south London and, yes, there were clearly a fair few students out for the night.

But to judge dubstep on its relative “safeness” and lack of urban disaffection is a fundamental category error; it's like berating an apple for not producing lemon juice. Dubstep at its best is less about catharsis and raging energy than about an immersive sensualism – typified by the direct effect of its bass vibrations on the body - and the creation through digital sound of an evolving environment. Escapist, yes, but not an escape into the infantilising anaesthetic balm of a hippie chillout event or the brutal delerium of harder, faster dance music forms; rather into a constantly shifting sculptural musical structure full of open spaces where real aesthetic thought is possible as well as base hedonistic release.

Dubstep's massively fertile nature, too, needs to be appreciated on its own terms rather than in comparison to more purist, parochial forms. 2562 – aka Dave Huisman from the Hague – is a case in point: with deep roots in the most soulful of house music (his releases in the style as A Made Up Sound are connoisseurs' favourites), his dubstep tracks on Tectonic records are laced with funk, but also often have the gravity-loosened or underwater feel of Berlin's rarefied dub-techno.

Where occasionally on his debut album Aerial this could lead to washed-out moments, and a weakening of dubstep's physical kick, his new record Unbalanced – which he showcased over Corsica Studios' fantastically loud and clear Funktion One soundsystem - sharpens the edges, brings the syncopation to the fore and generally realises his vision far more clearly.

Mixing its tracks fluidly in and out of others' purist dubstep, deep techno and less categorisable sounds, the one constant the body-shaking pure bass tones, Huisman drew the crowd into the sound so that by the time he dropped into a finale of the wild funk synthesiser extemporisations of Austrian producer Dorian Concept's “Trilingual Dance Sexperience”, appreciation was shown not with whoops and cheers but by the obvious and total involvement of the couple of hundred dancers in their moves.

Good as 2562 was, though, he was actually trumped earlier in the evening. The crowd's interest had already been piqued early on by the deeply odd and hypnotic abstractions of Werkdiscs founder Darren J Cunningham's live electronic performance as Actress. But it was Hyperdub recording artist Sara Abdel-Hamid aka Ikonika and Planet Mu and Blunted Robots producer Rob Kemp aka Brackles who delivered two of the best DJ sets my dancing partner or I had seen in quite some time.

Both went back to dubstep's roots in the massively funky and upbeat late nineties sound of UK garage, blending it with the more Afro-house and dancehall-influenced syncopations of the current pirate radio mainstay genre UK funky, but extended outwards from this framework by throwing in all manner of disco and funk samples and synth sounds, and underpinning it all with dubstep's precision bass manipulation.

The phlegmatic Ikonika's set was meticulously paced and full of subtle blends, which left the audience perfectly keyed-up for the far more manic mixing of Brackles. A rangey, bearded figure, he had something of the mad scientist about him as he lurched back and forth in the DJ booth flicking between vinyl records and digital files at a dazzling pace, building a fiercely colourful collage of hybrid sounds – but never sloppy, never letting rhythms clash and never disrupting the constant flow of of the electronic funk.

Following 2562 was Rob Ellis aka DJ Pinch, the figurehead of Bristol's thriving dubstep scene and owner of Tectonic records. With an MC rapping sparingly over his records, he played the kind of dubstep best known outside the scene: the beat generally at half tempo with crashing snares, dramatic and vertiginous stops and starts, and an aggressive, wobbling bass sound providing the main momentum to the tracks. It's this style which is most often sneered at as student headbanger music, but in Pinch's hands it was easily sophisticated and varied enough to shrug off such criticisms.  It played mischievously with dance music's clichés of tension and release, went through some sharp and stimulating emotional shifts, but most crucially, like the music of the DJs before him, it grooved – and the crowd continued not to nod and lurch as can occasionally happen to such music, but to move in a style that gave the lie to the idea of them and the music as “painfully white”.

Come 3am our old bones began to tell us it was time for the night bus, and we sadly made our excuses and left before the great Kode 9 (see theartsdesk Q&A here) could take over. But we left behind us two packed dancefloors full of people for whom the party very clearly was not over: and with such a gregarious and open crowd it really did feel as much like a party as a nightclub. This, then, is UK bass music's answer to its critics: while nay-sayers mither themselves about lack of edginess and gritty authenticity, the lovers of quality dubstep are far too busy having a really excellent party to even hear what the party-poopers are grumbling about, let alone care.