1. I think there are some new things about Jungle. It created a whole new set of rhythmic idioms (as defined by particular kick and snare emphasis) that I can't find precedent for. Aren't things like stuttering snare samples, crossfaded breaks, melodies played on pitch shifted snares and Akai vocal stretch original to Jungle? These elements place it as more then just recombination.
I would certainly agree that jungle was something new, in fact, Id say it was probably the biggest (and last) great innovation in dance music, particularly between 94-96.
BUT, playing devil's advocate, rhythmically, despite outliers, most of the polyrhythm in jungle can still be boiled down to the snare on the 2 & the 4, ala funk and hip hop. Timestretching was a great effect, but not dramatically different from pitch experiments using tape, stretching back decades. Pitch shifted melody played on drums - actually very rarely used, and lets not forget that the Eventide Harmoniser, the great leap forward in terminator, was first used on drums by Visconti back in '76 during the recording of Low, and sold to Bowie with the exact line that "it fucks with the fabric of time' - which could have come straight out of Goldie's mouth whilst he was dancing around on the desk during that legendary e-fuelled session at Reinforced.
Jungle is in fact the ultimate recombinant genre. Breaks from funk & soul (via Hip hop), Sub Bass & vocals from reggae & dancehall, synths & pads from techno, female vocals from house, a bit of attitude from them all, all channeled through rave and bass culture.
Its a synthesis of practically every genre of late 20th century black music... ...but - couldn't you almost say the same about dubstep?
Music, and especially dance music suffers greatly from the idea of the constant revolution, the fetishisation of the new, the bolt from the blue (you can probably blame the Beatles for this), when in fact the story of music (and art) is largely a story of homages, remakes, plagiarism, rivalrous borrowings, nuanced imitations. An accretion of variations which may eventually reach a kind of critical mass where a line is crossed and we can say that this is something radically different to what came before - if the social and cultural conditions are aligned correctly and the attention span of the audience is sufficiently limited.
2. I'm not saying that all recombination leads to paradigm shifts, but that every now and then, to use a cliche, the whole is greater then the some of its parts. 'I Feel Love' is on the one hand a synthesis (excuse the pun) of disco and electronic music, yet on the other hand it established an entirely new aesthetic and set of possibilities that disco, krautrock or avant guard electronic music wouldn't have done on there own.
Yeah, good call.