Drum'n'Bass 2013 (???)

droid · Oct 23, 2013

Its a bit of a headfuck really. I started buying jungle seriously in late 95/96, and it was genuinely exciting. It really felt like you were being bombarded with unimaginable new sounds every day. The fecundity was incredible. The gig No U-Turn did here in Dublin around the time was one of the best I've ever been to.

It felt like the beginning of something - not the end, and yeah, it was probably 99 or so before I realised what had happened.

droid · Oct 23, 2013

Interesting to hear Dugs chatting to Dextrous and Remarc about how 'I didnt leave the music - the music was taken away from me...', mainly in reference to the jungle council/anti ragga sentiment around 94/95, Metalheadz, again, as Goldie admits being a prime catalyst in 'taking our scene back' (from ragga).

They're sentiments you rarely see expressed publicly by people in the scene.

vvvwwwv · Oct 23, 2013

went to a night last saturday with fracture, sam binga and krust (playing an old school set) in one room and dj hype and shy fx in the main. the second room peaked at around 30 people on the dancefloor tops with the odd straggler and damsels in distress recovering on the sidelines, whilst the main room remained packed to the rafters due to tunes such as 'incredible', 'mr happy' and 'tarantula' raising the roof...:slanted:....hahha, no wonder dnb is looked down on as a joke by most. school disco biz.

question for the og's who were there 94-97, was ragga really encroaching the whole scene and suffocating other sounds? with the distance of time, it seems to me only a small subcategory compared to no u-turn/prototype techstep, jump up (trouble on vinyl and bristol sound etc.) and metalheadz all flourishing in this era.

droid · Oct 23, 2013

I wasn't 'there' in 94, 95, no pirates over here- but looking back, I think its fair to say that ragga and amen dominated almost completely in 94 in terms of sales and number of releases.

craner · Oct 23, 2013

I think in the spring and summer of '94 it seemed to be going that way for a short while. That was my impression from brief trips to London throughout the year and feverish record buying, rather than club-going or daily pirate-listening. It had receded as soon as the winter, and by the New Year 'jump-up' and 'ambient jungle' had fully emerged and solidified and cleaved apart.

However, there was enough variety from the avalanche of music being made for these impressions to be wrong or misleading or only part of the story. You can play Dreamscape sets from 1994 that contain Bukem, DJ Rap, Kenny Ken, Swan E, etc. all playing completely different styles but all playing amazing records. In that perspective, ragga jungle was not dominant at all. That's what I recall. It was very exciting. It put a spring in your step every day just knowing you had all of these great sounds to devour and look forward to. That was emphatically not the case in 1997, when I formally bailed.

craner · Oct 23, 2013

'August' by Ed Rush was the first 'techstep' style record I remember really noticing, which I thought was '96 but was in fact '95. That very severe, austere, lumbering sound No U Turn had I will always associate with the summer of 1996, and it was really good and much better (and actually very different) to what it almost immediately led to.

droid · Oct 23, 2013

The first mutant jazz remix was mine (not No U-turn, but the same camp, ala many of the early Emotif's), great tune. 95 I think.

Oh, and then of course, there was pulp fiction, which came out about the same time as SD's 'the crane' and 4 Hero's 'Solar feelings'. Incredible diversity still.

vvvwwwv · Oct 23, 2013

good to hear. perhaps just a sudden push to get a track in the charts after 'original nuttah'?...

http://www.xlr8r.com/podcast/2013/10/special-request
man of the moment paul woolford on more of a dnb flex than usual with this one

anyone actually a fan of bad company here?

it seems everyone's cut-off point is 97/98, but personally i've always loved early virus, dom and roland etc.
still a long way off total anathema like fucking noisia!

craner · Oct 23, 2013

Part of the reason it was so hard to abandon is that at its peak the music propelled you and affected (and effected) every part of your life. It wasn't just your taste in music, but got partly or even wholly woven into your identity and DNA. And then suddenly it was shit and none of your heroes could do anything about it and some of them were actually responsible for the rot. It was hard to take.

droid · Oct 23, 2013

Its left many people scarred. I don't think I've fully recovered and I was barely on the periphery. I can't imagine what how it impacted on those in the epicenter.

There should be a name for the psychological effect of having the promise of unlimited musical innovation and brilliance snatched away so cruelly. Post Wickedness Stress Disorder.

rubberdingyrapids · Oct 23, 2013

always better to get into a genre in your late 20s/early 30s. much less scope for dissapointment than when in your teens!

well i say that but i love footwork like i loved grime so...

droid · Oct 23, 2013

rubberdingyrapids said:
always better to get into a genre in your late 20s/early 30s. much less scope for dissapointment than when in your teens!

well i say that but i love footwork like i loved grime so...

No no no. Its not a function of age or nostalgia, Jungle was OBJECTIVELY the best, most promising genre of the 90's, and possibly ever.

craner · Oct 23, 2013

Well, I don't know, speed/2-step garage was another radiant effusion leading directly to another crushing blow.

rubberdingyrapids · Oct 23, 2013

im not saying its all to do with age or nostalgia - jungle wasnt even my most fave genre at the time but i still listen to it now and go 'wow'.

but this

There should be a name for the psychological effect of having the promise of unlimited musical innovation and brilliance snatched away so cruelly. Post Wickedness Stress Disorder.

sounds like such a teen phenom. when you believe in a type of music so much that its just everything to you and shapes not just your musical tastes but how you see the world and you only begin to understand it years later.

and depending on what sort of person you are, maybe realise not just how your love for it was blinding, but how it blinded you to lots of other things too.

thats maybe the biggest thing i miss about the end of 'the nuum' - those periods of genres burning up for a few short years. even though the endings are always shit, its worth it for those few years of brilliance.

droid · Oct 23, 2013

craner said:
Well, I don't know, speed/2-step garage was another radiant effusion leading directly to another crushing blow.

It let you down a bit more gently though - and it never quite had the same insane level of variety...

droid · Oct 23, 2013

rubberdingyrapids said:
im not saying its all to do with age or nostalgia - jungle wasnt even my most fave genre at the time but i still listen to it now and go 'wow'.

but this sounds like such a teen phenom. when you believe in a type of music so much that its just everything to you and shapes not just your musical tastes but how you see the world and you only begin to understand it years later.

and depending on what sort of person you are, maybe realise not just how your love for it was blinding, but how it blinded you to lots of other things too.

Well, the thing is, much of my 'belief' is retrospective. Geographically and temporally, I missed the boat. I've discovered more great jungle tunes since 2000 than I did in the previous 5 years. There arent many genres that can STILL astound you after 15 years of investigation.

droid · Oct 23, 2013

But yes, the question of whether the perception of the 'ever decreasing circles' of the nuum (and quality in general) is a function of age or anything even vaguely objective is central.

You could argue that Reynold's retromania is nothing more than an attempt to justify or rationalise the same sentiments that 'things were most vibrant' in their youth expressed by every middle aged music fan since the dawn of time.

rubberdingyrapids · Oct 23, 2013

im taking this thread a bit off topic but i realise thats the thing i still look for in genres, even now in my 30s. that same rush that hip hop gave me in the mid 90s (when i was a teenager). grime had it, footwork too, but im always waiting for that same feeling (and im not saying its not there in anything anymore, so hopefully i havent hit that musical menopause stage yet). but thats interesting that you came to realise that after the fact. im guessing the germ of your awe about jungle started in the 90s though, so maybe not that much after the fact, even if you did find out more afterwards, when it was 'over'.

droid · Oct 23, 2013

And just a corollary to that. Pretty much every 'scene' genre Ive been really into seems to have had its golden age which overlapped with my teens. For hip hop Id take 89-95, for dancehall, a bit broader, but probably about 86/87-94/95, jungle/hardcore, 93-96.

Now, I didn't really get into dancehall until 96/97, was late to jungle, and I can separate my teenage hip hop obsessions from other records of the same period and still see the quality. Its almost as if there's a giant presence there sucking me into orbit regardless of when I was actually exposed to tunes themselves.

So, the question is, was this just a brilliant time for music?

And just to elaborate - there is consensus on particular times of great innovation and quality in Jazz, rock, classical and other genres - why not dance music?

droid · Oct 23, 2013

droid said:
There should be a name for the psychological effect of having the promise of unlimited musical innovation and brilliance snatched away so cruelly. Post Wickedness Stress Disorder.

Thinking about this, Im definitely afflicted. I mostly listen to drone these days, which is basically music for people who've given up on music.

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