To What Extent Was 'Zomby - Where Were U In '92?' A Real Jungle Album?

[Negative Miami]

Zomby - Where Were U In '92? was supposed to be a real jungle album however the title of the album discusses the year 92 when jungle music wasn't really around at that time.

Jungle music started in 1993 and had its best years in 1994 and 1995.

Jungle music, the underground london genre had its most prominent year in 1995 and that was not 1992 like the zomby album states.

In 1992 hardcore was popular and not jungle.

Jungle music is also supposed to be at 160 BPM and many tracks on the zomby album are made at 140.

Classic Zomby Where Were U In '92? Fact Mag Interview

Interview: Zomby - Fact Magazine

Having just released the amazing Where Were U in 92 on Werk Discs, we speak to Britain's foremost rave digger

www.factmag.com

Having just released the amazing Where Were U in 92 on Werk Discs, we speak to Britain’s foremost rave digger


“I roll a spliff of high grade skunk and get wonky” starts Zomby‘s response to my email (he doesn’t do interviews over the phone, and he stays anonymous, only photographed in a mask) question about how he makes his tunes.

“I use Gameboys, Nanoloop, LSDJ, Pro Performer, MPC2000 XL, Logic Studio, Macbook Pro, Atari ST Akais, Microkorg, anything that gives me the texture I want.” If he ever writes a book, that opening line should be its title.

Zomby spent 1992 (the subject of his first full-length album, Where Were U In 92, on Werk Discs) “buying white labels and collecting flyers for raves [he] was too young to get into, skating around on Bauers in a Total Kaos t-shirt with my Jordans ’round my neck and a rucksack full of cassette tapes.” It’s devotion to, and reverence of, rave, that defines the record – it explicitly references Kicks Like A Mule’s ‘The Bouncer’, Baby D’s ‘Let Me Be Your Fantasy’ and other touchstones of early ’90s dance music.

You call it rave, but do you know what that means?” retorts Zomby when I ask him whether he’s self-conscious about making an album dedicated to a musical culture that spent 2007 so surrounded by pastiche. “It’s ’90-’94 jungle techno umbrella named hardcore, it’s about the art-form of the music, and how that structure builds a vibe that interests me.” It’s hard to get an impression of an artist over an email exchange, but Zomby’s responses are curt, usually nonchalant, sometimes facetious, and often witty. Which, to be honest, is how I expected him to be. Zomby’s got a reputation for not turning up to gigs, and being antagonistic online – he was banned from Dubstep Forum, which is, for better or worse, the hub of most activity (for both artists and fans) in that scene.

Producer, never turns up, spends his downtime having cyber-rows – ring any bells? Right, Wiley. Easily the most compelling British producer of the past ten years. And like Wiley, despite his indifference to many aspects of being a musician (“I don’t understand why you should have to make effort to do anything other than make the songs I make”), Zomby’s clearly deeply dedicated to his craft. The sheer range of his tunes is unbeatable: Where Were U In 92 is one thing, but when you hear the material from his forthcoming 12″ pack on Hyperdub that he was making at the same time, the time-stood-still, paranoid 4×4 of ‘Bubble Bobble’, the abstract assault of ‘Liquid Dancehall’, and ‘Rumours and Revelations’, which basically out-funks ‘Township Funk’… That sort of scope, with that level of quality, and that level of prolificacy, is something else.

In his interview with Martin Clark last month, Zomby compared himself to a sonic explorer, claiming that he “only had half the map” but “kept finding Xs.” When I ask him to expand on that, he explains that he’s “searching in creative reference for an idea that you may have but aren’t sure of the final scope of. I know the feel I want to put into the song, but I don’t know how the song will sound from that.” It implies perfectionism – or at least, a producer who won’t be restricted or compromised by his equipment (check the list of kit in the first paragraph) and who’s always striving for more facets to his style.

That’s where him and Wiley differ/ Wiley will basically put out anything – and what made his Tunnel Vision mixtapes so engaging was just how anything-goes they were; everything went in, whether it was a cast-off freestyle or a look-back-and-cringe tune about being pissed off at his girlfriend. As DJ /rupture put it when we talked about Wiley this year, “it’s great to have someone who keeps on moving and giving away “too much information” … he’s so generous with his lyrical content and musical ideas.” But Zomby’s perfectionism makes me like him more. There’s no accidental, half-arsed genius here, everything’s finely honed. And the product of hard work.

Although he’s found musical kinship in Kode 9’s Hyperdub label, which brings him together with similarly-talented producers like Darkstar and Ikonika, the overriding vibe with Zomby is that of a musical outsider – not just because of his anonymity, but this sonic explorer aesthetic, the genuine nonchalance he shows to interviews and public relations…You feel this is someone who cares about music – both absorbing, engaging with, and making it – and little else. Is it truly Zomby against the world, or there anyone he feels allied with in this sense?
“Well right now I’m playing chess with Silverlink while Burial’s rolling a zoot. Oh, the doorbell’s rung, it’s Diplo and Rustie with DVDs of Kratfwerk and Jimi Hendrix live.” Make of that what you will.

Another comment about the album is that it uses alot of wobble bass in the albums most prominent tracks and jungle music from the 90s didnt use that much wobble bass.

 

[Negative Miami]

XLR8R Zomby Interview

Interview: Zomby

Excerpts from our AIM interview with Zomby, Hyperdub’s elusive and spooky beatmaker. To read the […]

xlr8r.com

What are you doing right now?

Just about to skin up and drink a can of Coke.

What’s a typical day in Zombytown?

Hmm… lots of rolling joints and altering volumes on various sound sources. Erm, cooking chickens and making coffee. I don’t know really… LOL

Cooking chickens?

Yeh. Not en masse and live, but generally eating some chicken-based dish a la carte.

That you make yourself or that you microwave?

I’m not a microsinner. I cook like primitive man with fire and pride.

Sounds epic…

It’s totally epic.

Did you have it in mind for a while that you wanted to make Where Were You In ’92 or did it just start developing?

Well, I had the idea I’d always make a homage to early ’90s hardcore but I didn’t know when or how it would come about. For a while I’d been making things close to the style and then it literally came together over a weekend. It was really the first time I’d allowed myself to really just make what I wanted, bar no exceptions in style or production. My first record I made for myself I guess.

It’s pretty amazing what an old school sound you got.

I grew up on golden era hardcore so for me the vibe of the sound is easy to put back in. I adore the crusty breaks and samples LOL. I got hard into buying recs about 13-14 and then I wanted to make my own. I knew the Akai S2000 and Atari with Cubase was the clue but as a kid with no job it’s hard work so I bought some decks and DJed. Only last ear did I buy a sampler and Atari to get the crunch in the tunes. The hardware isn’t as important as the ear but if you’re a fine swordsman a sharp blade serves you well.

Old stuff is better. It’s just the vibe of this music. It’s solely for the youth. I’m thinking fuck, what happened to punk dance music? Drugs, raving all night, and crime. It’s a shame; right now the youth is sterile. The only form of rebellion is indie and they’re slack.

The thing about crime is I guess it doesn’t give you a lot of time for other things…

It leads to violence and violence sucks. I found that out. Music’s more fun. Anyway so hardcore has the real spirit for me. It’s so pure.

You think youth are sterile even in the grime scene? That’s full of raving and crime, supposedly.

In a way. I think they self-market and don’t develop. It is full of raving and crime but in a marketing sense. It’s about marketing and not the music. I mean, you wouldn’t go into a Formula One race in a shit car. You’d spend all your time on the car. Why not make sure the tunes are solid? Lads are too busy getting ideas for videos. It’s stupid, but fair enuff is some ways. Everyone can do as they please, but for me it’s about classic dance music and following a lineage laid for good reason. Things are all for a reason. It’s made to last the test of time. I want my record to rise in value. I take time with my ideas; make sure they’re solid. I can execute a song fast but the idea might be three months in planning.

Do you feel like ragga jungle is destined to make a come back?

Yeah, of course. Artistry can’t be ignored. New eyes and ears see the work differently. Remarc is like Autechre to me. It all depends how u see things. Everything has an artistic element to it–if you can find it and expand on it it’s halfway to being something new. I make a lot of music u know… I make about 30 beats a week.

What happened to your “tropical house” tip you were on when you did “Get Out My Life Hater” and the Spank Rock remix?

The summer before last or so I got kinda into a style of house I wanted to develop but then got bored as usual and left it half done. Tropical house was to be what it was called–like fidget but with my own jackin’ and bass licks on it. I wanted to make it simpler and harder and more jackin’ but it ended up near juke so I gave up. It’s not really something that felt right at that time and I was slowly drifting towards 8-bit sounds too.

What I like about a lot of your stuff, in particular the album, is that it has a melancholy or spooky feel.

Yeh that’s my slant. I play those notes. A lot of dance music hasn’t any real passion. The real passion is in the emotion or anger at not being able to make the tune perfect. That’s what people feel–the effort or passion to make it feel right.

What do you find really scary?

No money. LOL. No skunk, the police, and zombies.

 

[rubberdingyrapids]

No one thought it was real jungle or neo jungle or whatever iirc

 

[wektor]

he sounds like he hasnt aged very well and is probably an alt right conspiracy theory head now

 

[thirdform]

jungle def did exist in '92






back to school for the miami me thinks.

 

[thirdform]

pure 92 junglizm for the miami!

 

[other_life]

thanks third

 

[thirdform]

thanks third

Jungle as a distinct split from hardcore (meaning happy) came in '94. that's why its erroneous to say that jungle started in 93 or 94, it started as early as 1991.


Of course, hardcore and jungle were somewhat interchangeable, but only because jungle like all genre names is applied retroactively. Not every hardcore tune is jungle, but every jungle tune from 91-92 is hardcore.

non-junglistic hardcore



Junglistic hardcore



In general, the more minimal/sparce things are and/or focused on dub bass, the more jungle it is. I was going to post 28 gun bad boy to illustrate this which is actually from '92 on dub, but only got officially released in '93

same with some of the invisible man/babylon timewarp stuff

here you can verify, for instance. the invisible man's twisted (1993) was originally on dubplate here in '92. https://www.discogs.com/release/3941081-Doctor-G-Terror-In-The-Jungle-Twisted

 

[dilbert1]

Just heard this for the first time recently. When the whole beat drops at 1:05 its a helluva rhythm 😍

 

[Negative Miami]

Zomby's comments

Interview: Zomby - Fact Magazine

Having just released the amazing Where Were U in 92 on Werk Discs, we speak to Britain's foremost rave digger

www.factmag.com

“It’s ’90-’94 jungle techno umbrella named hardcore, it’s about the art-form of the music"

Interview: Zomby

Excerpts from our AIM interview with Zomby, Hyperdub’s elusive and spooky beatmaker. To read the […]

xlr8r.com

" Did you have it in mind for a while that you wanted to make Where Were You In ’92 or did it just start developing?

"I had the idea I’d always make a homage to early ’90s hardcore" "

 

[mixed_biscuits]

 

[wektor]

there is something quintessential about this type of personality isn't it
the drug induced social climbing
some talent but also a great amount of overconfidence in it
the belief in creating a mixed feelings type of appeal through mysterious/snarky/I am the single legit person on the scene rn/dickhead behaviour etc

all feels like an inherent part of the rave music scene to me somehow

 

[dilbert1]

the belief in creating a mixed feelings type of appeal through mysterious/snarky/I am the single legit person on the scene rn/dickhead behaviour etc

“Of course what in a curious way one is always hoping to do is to paint the one picture which will annihilate all the other ones, to concentrate everything into one painting. . . . I’ve got an obsession with doing the one perfect image.” - Francis Bacon

“Adorno may have been as dissatisfied with each and every composition—with music and indeed art altogether—as anyone has ever been. […] [If so,] it was because he was intent on finding the one right art work, the one that would be the art work. In other words… Adorno thought not just that one work of art may be liked better than another, but that this one work would be, in itself, better than another. […] Adorno’s philosophy conceived as a whole seeks the primacy of the object. […] The philosophy of the primacy of the object itself derives from the audibly urgent primacy of one art work over another in a mind that is prepared to hear it.” - Robert Hullot-Kentor

When I said that I think I meant that version would never vouch for anything that isn’t clearly cool. You can’t poke holes in his taste, everything he likes is obviously sound. It’s too tasteful. Thats why the versioncore cannon is so recognizable

Maybe me liking it makes it cool.

 

[version]

Of course what in a curious way one is always hoping to do is to paint the one picture which will annihilate all the other ones,

Memoires, with its sandpaper cover, had a very literal way of going about this.

 

[dilbert1]

Bro was really out here trying to speed-run the realization and abolition of art 😂

 

[dilbert1]

Something else from my recent Adorno excursions, namely when he speculates that “dehumanization is also its opposite” and that “Only when the victims completely assume the features of the ruling civilization will they be capable of wresting them from the dominant power,” reminded me of opinions I expressed about the barbarousness of jungle in an exchange with @mvuent a while back

Loving something so much you hate it, or, because you know better, see it for what it truly is — in this case vulgar trash made by and for brain-damaged fools masquerading as “culture” — is a logical position to me

[In the production of jungle] there’s a recogntion of and subordination to a specific shared context over and above one’s own uniqueness. Its part of the goal to get your stuff to sound like that of everyone else around you, in the sense of a conscious standardization. You’re not so precious, so no wonder you might carelessly run through 12 different pseudonyms in a year… not to say your shit can’t have “personality,” but again, its subordinate to the proper venue of its exhibition, which is not you ‘performing’ (and performatively taking credit for) it, but it being absorbed into a contiguous, almost undifferentiated mass.

its this much more modern and ‘dehumanized’ paradigm I really like, and the thrill of which makes part of me snark at everything outside of this today as conservative anachronism, weak because scared of this essentially faceless and cold utilitarian ethos.

It is conveniently self-congratulatory, I know, but I choose to interpret the below as a philosophical defense of Amen tear-outs more than half a century before their actual historical emergence…

“The change in our surroundings, which has been illustrated here with a few examples that were not separated from their psychological implications, points towards the ongoing development of a new type of human being. It has been aptly described as the ‘Radio Generation’. It is the type of person whose being lies in the fact that he no longer experiences anything himself, but rather lets the all-powerful, opaque social apparatus dictate all experiences to him, which is precisely what prevents the formation of an ego, even of a ‘person’ at all. From an orthodox analytical point of view, a type of human being so incapable of ego formation would be described as neurotic. But the concept of neurosis encompasses certain conflicts with reality. As, however, the ‘Radio Generation’ withdraws from ego formation precisely by adapting to reality, seemingly becoming part of reality without any conflict through its egoless nature, the concept of neurosis is not directly applicable here. If all these people are sick – which there is reason to assume – they are at least no sicker than the society in which they live. At the same time, the nature of this society must form the point of departure for any attempt at change. There is reason to assume that the loss of some abilities is accompanied by the freeing of certain others, and these are precisely what destines them to carry out changes that would never have been possible for the old ‘individuals’.

[…]

The same people who will not allow themselves to think (or do similar things such as read books, discuss theoretical questions, etc.) have become ‘canny’ and can no longer be fooled. It seems to us that this contradiction really circumscribes the central concern of all conscious education in the present phase. It is a matter of pushing this ‘canniness’ so far that it breaks through its bond to the immediate world of action and transforms itself into real thinking. If that succeeds, it is precisely those ‘crippled’ human beings who will become most able to put an end to that crippling. Their coldness can become a readiness to make sacrifices for truth, their improvisation can turn into a cunning in the fight against the giant organization, and their speechlessness can become a willingness — without words or arguments — to do what needs to be done. It is revealing that the achievements of pedagogy in this direction do not correspond to those of an education in traditional ‘culture’.” - Adorno, “The Problem of a New Type of Human Being” (1941)

 

[wektor]

It is conveniently self-congratulatory, I know, but I choose to interpret the below as a philosophical defense of Amen tear-outs more than half a century before their actual historical emergence…

this is about zoomers on tiktok

 

[dilbert1]

I think I’d totally have to concede that if I’m being consistent! Unfortunately, the people today who make appeals to Adorno in their cultural critique miss this point altogether, precisely because their conservative sensibility’s fealty to Art fears nothing more than ‘zoomers on tik tok’

Dosing Culture, Part One

What we get from cultural reception now is not so much an “experience” or a single coherent “work of art” as an endless series of doses.

damagemag.com

Dosing Culture, Part Two

What we get from cultural reception now is not so much an “experience” or a single coherent “work of art” as an endless series of doses. (Part Two of Dosing Culture.)

damagemag.com

 

[version]

You read Lyotard's thing on Adorno "as the Devil"?

Lyotard - Adorno as the Devil, m.m. (Telos, No. 19, Spring 1974) - [PDF Document]

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vdocuments.mx

 

[dilbert1]

No. Can’t wait!