the reason why these styles sound so strange is because the sonic referants of the classical nuum have faded into folk memory and basically not extant as they originally were. Noone was buying belgian techno and gabba records in the grime era, much less trojan box sets. there was a memory of house, a dancehall influence, technoid atmospherics from jungle/dnb, but the nature of a continuum is to eventually dissolve. So when a german or a Polish dude makes hardcore or grime of course it's not going to sound like London, but simply because London doesn't sound like the london of 10,15,20 years as well. Factor into this the producers remove and its going to sound even more strange.