FH: >But I would still call myself an "original junglist" as much as you >can be in the States, and when the mood is right I'll pull out those >old atmospheric and ruff tracks and turn up the bass ...
I never got into spinning jungle/D+B (though I have a small collection of Jungle vinyl) but when DJ DB started playing it here in NYC around '93/'94 I picked up a couple of his first Jungle tapes (He was my favorite DJ afterall so bought 'em any of his tapes I could find without a thought). I got these tapes home, popped one in the deck and was like 'What the FU*K is that!?!?' It took me at least a few months before I *got* it if ya know what I mean. Much like Fred I too totally lost interest in Jungle around late '96 early '97 when it seemed to go in a direction I really didn't like, especially here in NY. In late '98, when I was working on an EDM magazine, I got a bunch of promo CDs and went to a bunch of D+B parties in NYC and at WMC in '99 and '00...I also got to interview/meet some of my heros which was cool, but I never *really* got back into the music. The novelty had worn off for me I guess....and I just wasn't feeling the newer stuff I was hearing at that time. I think a lot of it is that I ain't all that great a dancer and D+B is just too much of a strain on my weak abilities on the floor;-) Anyway my favorite Jungle mix is Alex Reece's mix on One In the Jungle on BBC1 in '96...I have it on tape and still pop it in from time to time when I'm in the mood. It's a great driving tape... Cheers, m* ----- Original Message ----- From: "Fred Heutte" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <313@hyperreal.org> Sent: Thursday, January 16, 2003 4:57 PM Subject: RE: (313) Exploring Drum and Bass > Pardon the extended digression. Yes, there is Detroit content (a little). > > The history of drum and bass looks very different from the US side as > opposed to the UK side. > > Jungle (not "drum and bass") first showed up in San Francisco in the late > spring of 1994. Ameba, the little shop on Haight St where I spent many > hours both looking for records and mixing on the store system, started > getting stock from a dodgy distributor in Chicago. This was going > completely in the opposite direction of the "trip hop" and "acid jazz" > scene that was starting to choke SF. So naturally my friends at the > store jumped all over this strange new hybrid of dub and breakbeat > 'ardkore. > > The first one I bought, was a white label Moonshine re-release of Shy > FX's "Original Nuttah" on yellow vinyl. Soon thereafter the first > Looking Good/Good Looking releases starting coming in -- I have most of > the first ten or so. For a while there were only a handful of DJs > playing jungle at all on the west coast, although I recall sets in 1995 > by Jonah Sharpe and great live performance by Gamall Awad using a Mac > and Cubase and a couple synths. It turned out, though, a lot of DJs > really liked jungle but wouldn't play it out for fear of alienating the > audience. > > In '95 jungle was still pretty unknown in the US. I played Bukem's > "Horizons" as a set closer a couple times, once at sunset > on Bolinas Beach on the 4th of July, and still hear about that. > > On one of my trips to the D that year I played some jungle on the > store system at Somewhere in Detroit and got a lot of amazed looks. > It seemed at the time that there might be some techno/jungle hybrids > but it never really happened beyond some good experiments by some of > the Detroit producers. > > At that point, jungle was still under the covers for the most part > except for tower block radio and small parties in London. But the > commercial feeding frenzy was just starting, and Mixmaster Morris, > who'd been playing the ambient sound for quite some time, wrote a > somewhat tongue-in-cheek article for Mixmag that fall called "What > the f*** is jungle?" > > This was just at the brink of when jungle was repositioned as "drum and > bass," and the sound increasingly focused on what the wider market would > go for, which was darkness/techstep/etc., on the one hand, and > "ambient"/"intelligent" (or even "dolphin" I kid you not) on the other. > Much of the creativity that distinguished jungle in the 1993-95 era was > rubbed out by the rush to commercial success. And a lot of offshoot > styles like jump-up never seemed to make much headway here. > > I still think the 93-95 era had stellar music, and really amazingly > consistent and excellent material from LGR/GLR and of course Metalheadz > and especially the label that really made it happen, Moving Shadow. > This was followed by the second generation including Certificate 18 and > the others previously mentioned. It's worth recalling, once more, the > crucial influence that Dego and Mark Mac had on shaping up the early > jungle scene and setting the stage for what followed. And finally, > I have to mention Rob Haigh. "Renegade Snares," the 1993 Omni Trio > release on Shadow that really laid it down, is the one everyone > remembers, but he's done ten years of amazingly consistent and deep > work. One of the very few producers whose work I will buy on sight. > > I lost interest in spinning jungle very much in about 1997. The > evolution of the music had slowed to a crawl as a million imitators of > the Amen break and the first three or four Ed Rush and Optical records > swamped the scene. The American side, anyway, developed into a > scattering of little self-conscious and often snotty cliques, putting > on a club night or two in a given city and exercising all the petty > little stunts that people in small scenes do. > > But I would still call myself an "original junglist" as much as you > can be in the States, and when the mood is right I'll pull out those > old atmospheric and ruff tracks and turn up the bass ... > > phred > >
