In the early hours Thursday (last night if you're on Pacific time), Mary Anne Hobbs broadcast the final show of her 14-year career with BBC Radio 1.

Aided by special guests Hyperdub artists and dubstep breakout stars Kode9 and Burial, Hobbs ended an era with elan, with a track list that ranged from old rap classics such as the Prodigy Remix of Method Man's "Release Yo Delf" and Rakim's "I Know You Got Soul," to skits from "Pulp Fiction," to recent tunes from Ikonika and Al  Tourettes.

Befitting her Left Coast-leaning slant, Hobbs also played "Change," a collaboration between Gonjasufi and the Gaslamp Killer. Kode9 and Burial opted to avoid satiating fans breathless to hear their new tracks, instead sticking to a set heavy on Hyperdub artists (Terror Danjah, Cooly G, Darkstar) and the garage and 2-Step artists that influenced the creation of dubstep (El-B, A Guy Called Gerald). To keep things funky, they found time to play a little Erykah Badu and Prince.

The set is available for streaming at BBC Radio 1's website. While Gorilla vs. Bear has a streamrip of Kode9 and Burial's portion. Listening to the whole thing is recommended, as it provides an ideal two-hour survey of the last decade-plus in electronic music, a tenure in which Hobbs was one of the genre's most vaunted taste makers.

As she said herself, it's the end of an era, but with dubstep and its offshoots currently enjoying record popularity, it's clear she helped usher in an entirely new order.

-- Jeff Weiss

Photo: Mary Anne Hobbs performing at a Low End Theory party at the Airliner. Credit: Christine Cotter / Los Angeles Times.

The news of a BBC Radio1 DJ leaving her post would ostensibly have little impact on the Los Angeles music scene, but Mary Anne Hobbs is the exception. Over the last three years, the host of an experimental program has consistently broken many of the artists associated with the Low End Theory scene, oftentimes months or even years before local journalists.

This Q&A that Hobbs did with Pop & Hiss last year has a more thorough examination of her role in championing Los Angeles bass music and dubstep as a whole. But in brief, her 2006 "Dubstep Warz" program was credited as being one of the seminal moments for the then-incipient genre. Subsequent compilations "Warrior Dubz" and last year's "Wild Angels" are also essential anthologies of the heavy bass and blunted beats that have been emanating out of England and Los Angeles over the last half-decade.