Thrive in '95 - Jungle's zenith

[droid]

Psykis ‎– Pretend

Before Darren Beale began his second life as Decoder he enjoyed considerable success recording as Koda and Orca alongside Kristian Townsend on the Dee Jay/Lucky Spin label axis based around the Lucky Spin shop on the kings road. This was one of the their last collaborations, and is quite unlike anything else in his catalog. The tune is held together by a stuttering, hesitant hot pants break which supports an edifice of beautifully understated amen edits characterised by rolling undercurrents, dubwise loop repeats and pitch shifted cymbal crashes. One of the few jungle tunes that has a proper structural connection to dub through it's use of delay.



But what makes this one really strange is the main vocal loop and the various sound effects. Sampled from Sanchez's 94 'Can we talk' tune on the Billie jean riddim, produced by Jammy's son, it doesn't immediately strike you as a likely candidate for a jungle sample, and yet they manage to produce a silk purse - seemingly out of nothing. Evidence of the immense creativity, inventiveness and willingness to experiment that was common at the time.

 

[Corpsey]

I love bullying those black cloth people. Took the pisd so many times

What's black cloth people

 

[thirdform]

This is fine tbh but it ain't jungle

lol is this gonna turn into a kiran sande fact mag thing where he argues with raime about whether source direct are jungle or drum and bass?

 

[thirdform]

jungle is such an amorphous and subjective term anyway.

I tend to draw the line at 96 personally. but still until about 98 it's jungle-drum and bass.

I need to grab droid's artcore mix again, hopefully it has that early tech itch thing and the override tune. actually on remand assault 94 is an underrated semi-artcore tune but probably criminally hard to come by.

 

[pattycakes_]

Why do people find it important to define this stuff so clearly?

 

[thirdform]

Why do people find it important to define this stuff so clearly?

I don't, ironically I'm the brown bro on dissensus who should be a control case for how disgusting techstep and neuro is/was but nah i think there were some amazing ideas there, even when it all got squeaky clean and connoisseur, my problem is with most stuff after that bad company ep forget the name now. the screwball ep? the one that come out in 99 or so i think.

 

[thirdform]

it's the planet dust/speedball 12 on prototype, 2001.

by then it was all getting into a linear gloopy mess sharing more in common with stadium rock than hard techno. otherwise I'm always for dnb sounding like punishing techno. the fear ep is still great imo. the 9 im not fussed about though either, same problem as the later stuff.

Speedball itself is an ok tune anthropologically looking back it presaged a lot of electro house but just an ok tune. an interesting cultural artifact i wouldn't play it out, much less make an aesthetic defence as to its worth but hey.

 

[pattycakes_]

Lol I owned that 12. Was one of maybe 30 dnb vinyl I owned in my short career as a vinyl buying dnb fan. One of the biggest letdowns of my life was going to see photek play at some club near Old St and he played and rewound planet dust maybe 7 or 8 times. The rest of the set was the same kind of bombastic brainless shit. Ol Rupe had flown the coop.

 

[thirdform]

I like bombast but yeah. that wasn't bombast done well.

bombast is my favourite aesthetic when it's designed to give you nightmares like early Jeff Mills, not that lads and lager punk shit.

 

[thirdform]

droid, got the razers edge mix on now, pretty fabulous, a pretty soundboy nerds approach to sequencing this which stuff which i never really heard in bukem sets after 94.

 

[Pearsall]

1995 was pretty fluid, as it was the bridge between jungle before and the drum n' bass era to follow. this included the shift from plundering JA reggae / dancehall to plundering US hip-hop / rnb for samples. This is a tune that very much anticipated the US focus that became so dominant in 1996, but really it's just an all-time dancefloor smasher. I played this at an old skool event in Berlin a few years back and the reaction was so frenzied the promoter reached over to wheel it within seconds of the main bassline dropping. Awesome tune!

 

[thirdform]

allowed to share or not?

 

[thirdform]

1995 was pretty fluid, as it was the bridge between jungle before and the drum n' bass era to follow. this included the shift from plundering JA reggae / dancehall to plundering US hip-hop / rnb for samples. This is a tune that very much anticipated the US focus that became so dominant in 1996, but really it's just an all-time dancefloor smasher. I played this at an old skool event in Berlin a few years back and the reaction was so frenzied the promoter reached over to wheel it within seconds of the main bassline dropping. Awesome tune!

yeah the hip hop thing did get cliched after a while but this is a slammer, indeed. huge. also one of those tunes that could still be mixed in with the more piano lead fourbeat (before that went chedercore)

 

[thirdform]

95 also the last year of the ruffneck intelligent tunes. the soulful lics with ghosted fx and mad beat science.

 

[thirdform]

really like this one as well.

 

[luka]

1995 was pretty fluid, as it was the bridge between jungle before and the drum n' bass era to follow. this included the shift from plundering JA reggae / dancehall to plundering US hip-hop / rnb for samples. This is a tune that very much anticipated the US focus that became so dominant in 1996, but really it's just an all-time dancefloor smasher. I played this at an old skool event in Berlin a few years back and the reaction was so frenzied the promoter reached over to wheel it within seconds of the main bassline dropping. Awesome tune!

I really really really really hate this kind of shit.

 

[luka]

Jump up is even worse than techstep and all that stuff imo. It's the nadir.

 

[Leo]

I get the sense there might not be lots of dissensus love for ed rush but I still enjoy some of his '95 tracks





although I still prefer his '93-94 vibe

 

[hmg]

I liked the hard tripping jungle direction this track explored in 95, but neither t power nor anyone else ever did anything like it

 

[hmg]

Jump up is even worse than techstep and all that stuff imo. It's the nadir.

Techstep got bogged down and brought dnb to a halt, but not at first, tracks like this used to light places up and put cavernous space in the rave