Chapter Fourteen

War in the Jungle

45 records, in the order the book names them

• 001

  Mystic Stepper (Feel Better)

  Omni Trio

  From Moving Shadow and Reinforced came bliss-drenched releases like Omni Trio’s ‘Mystic Stepper (Feel Better)’, Foul Play’s ‘Open Your Mind’, 4 Hero’s ‘Journey Into The Light’.

  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 002

  Open Your Mind

  Foul Play

  From Moving Shadow and Reinforced came bliss-drenched releases like Omni Trio’s ‘Mystic Stepper (Feel Better)’, Foul Play’s ‘Open Your Mind’, 4 Hero’s ‘Journey Into The Light’.

  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 003

  Music

  LTJ Bukem

  With ‘Music’ and ‘Atlantis (I Need You)’, LTJ Bukem invented oceanic jungle.

  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 004

  Angel

  Metalheads

  ‘Angel’ by Metalheads (aka Goldie) sounded another death knell for darkside.

  Synthetic Hardcore Phonography
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 005

  Vol. 2

  DJs Unite

  Bridging the gap between darkside and ambient jungle, Omni Trio’s first tracks for Moving Shadow – ‘Mystic Stepper (Feel Good)’ and ‘Stronger’, from the ‘Vol. 2’ EP – sounded at once ecstatic and harrowed.

  Rogue Trooper/Death Becomes Me
  album Open ↗ YouTube
• 006

  Thru The Vibe

  Omni Trio

  On ‘Thru The Vibe’, harp-cascades and deliberate Michael LeGrand piano chords lead into a roundelay of hypergasmic female gasps and ‘yeah!’s before the track lets rip with a twisting break that rattles like a rivet-gun.

  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 007

  Renegade Snares

  Omni Trio

  Omni Trio allies and ‘Renegade Snares’ remixers par excellence, Foul Play were another Moving Shadow act who played a crucial role in the rise of ambient jungle.

  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 008

  Dubbing U

  Foul Play

  Stephen ‘Brad’ Bradshaw, John Morrow and Steve Gurley first weirded up the pirate radio airwaves in 1992 with the ectoplasmic textures and judderquake beats of ‘Dubbing U’ and ‘Survival’, the latter featuring perhaps the most tremulous Morse Code oscillator-riff of all time.

  Oblivion
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 009

  Survival

  Foul Play

  Stephen ‘Brad’ Bradshaw, John Morrow and Steve Gurley first weirded up the pirate radio airwaves in 1992 with the ectoplasmic textures and judderquake beats of ‘Dubbing U’ and ‘Survival’, the latter featuring perhaps the most tremulous Morse Code oscillator-riff of all time.

  Oblivion
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 010

  Vol. 3

  Beaumont Hannant

  Then Foul Play really made their mark on the hardcore scene with ‘Vol. 3’ and its attendant remix EPs.

  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 011

  Being With You

  Foul Play

  After Steve Gurley left the band, Foul Play lay low for a year, then in November 1994 unleashed ‘Being With You’, a soul-harrowing blitz of infra-red bass, cluster-bombs of phuture-jazz synth-chords and aerobatic vocal samples courtesy of swingbeat-diva Mary J. Blige.

  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 012

  Menace

  Rufige Kru

  Tracking tunes by Nebula II and Manix back to their label, Goldie became part of the Reinforced crew, where he acted as a sort of producer/A & R/spokesman, and, under the name Rufige Cru, released awesome tracks like the gaseous bliss-overdose ‘Menace’.

  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 013

  Timeless

  Goldie

  ‘Timeless’ – the title track of Goldie’s major label debut album – took over a year to come out.

  ffrr
  album Open ↗ YouTube
• 014

  Nazinji-Zaka

  A Guy Called Gerald

  On tracks like ‘Gloc’ and ‘Nazinji-Zaka’, breakbeats writhe like serpents, samples morph and dematerialize like fever-dream hallucinations, itchy ’n’ scratchy blips of texture/rhythm dart and hover like dragonflies.

  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 015

  The Water Margin

  Photek

  And this was true: although tracks like ‘The Water Margin’ had a compelling neurotic frenzy, generally Parkes’s work infected drum and bass with the funkless frigidity and pseudo-conceptual portentousness of techno – just dig track titles like ‘Resolution’, ‘Book of Changes’, ‘Form and Function’!

  Photek
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 016

  Basic Principles

  Alex Reece

  And so his tunes, like the Latin-tinged ‘Basic Principles’ and ‘Feel The Sunshine’, downplayed the cut-up, jagged breakbeat-science in favour of a slinky, easy-rolling flow.

  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 017

  Pulp Fiction

  Alex Reece

  This disco-fication of jungle paid off massively just once, in the form of the monumental Speed anthem ‘Pulp Fiction’.

  both Metalheadz
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 018

  Is It Love

  Hidden Agenda

  Fusion-jungle wasn’t an unmitigated calamity; tracks like E-Z Rollers’ ‘Rolled Into One’, Hidden Agenda’s ‘Is It Love’, PFM’s ‘one and only’, Adam F’s ‘Circles’ and Da Intalex’s ‘What Ya Gonna Do’ showed it was possible to incorporate smoother textures from seventies soul and jazz-funk without forsaking jungle’s polyrhythmic exuberance.

  Metalheadz
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 019

  Circles

  John + Julie

  Fusion-jungle wasn’t an unmitigated calamity; tracks like E-Z Rollers’ ‘Rolled Into One’, Hidden Agenda’s ‘Is It Love’, PFM’s ‘one and only’, Adam F’s ‘Circles’ and Da Intalex’s ‘What Ya Gonna Do’ showed it was possible to incorporate smoother textures from seventies soul and jazz-funk without forsaking jungle’s polyrhythmic exuberance.

  XL
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 020

  What Ya Gonna Do

  Da Intalex

  Fusion-jungle wasn’t an unmitigated calamity; tracks like E-Z Rollers’ ‘Rolled Into One’, Hidden Agenda’s ‘Is It Love’, PFM’s ‘one and only’, Adam F’s ‘Circles’ and Da Intalex’s ‘What Ya Gonna Do’ showed it was possible to incorporate smoother textures from seventies soul and jazz-funk without forsaking jungle’s polyrhythmic exuberance.

  Flex
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 021

  Rolled Into One

  E-Z Rollers

  Fusion-jungle wasn’t an unmitigated calamity; tracks like E-Z Rollers’ ‘Rolled Into One’, Hidden Agenda’s ‘Is It Love’, PFM’s ‘one and only’, Adam F’s ‘Circles’ and Da Intalex’s ‘What Ya Gonna Do’ showed it was possible to incorporate smoother textures from seventies soul and jazz-funk without forsaking jungle’s polyrhythmic exuberance.

  Moving Shadow
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 022

  Music Box

  Roni Size & DJ Die

  This duo is often regarded as pioneers of jazz-jungle, on account of their early 1994 classic ‘Music Box’ and its sequel ‘It’s A Jazz Thing’.

  Full Cycle
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 023

  Warrior

  Dillinja

  ‘Warrior’ places the listener in the centre of an unfeasibly expanded drum-kit played by an octopus-limbed cyborg; the bass enters not as a B-line but a one-note detonation, an impacted cluster of different bass-timbres.

  both Logic
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 024

  Step Off

  Danny Breaks

  On tracks like ‘Long Time Comin” and ‘Step Off’ bass fibrillates like muscle with electric current coursing through it, hi-hats incandesce like fireworks in slow-mo, beats seem to run backward as uncannily as trick photography of a fallen house of cards tumbling back together.

  all Droppin' Science
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 025

  In Rough Territory

  4 Hero

  But jungle’s militaristic streak actually goes back to the early days of hardcore. 4 Hero’s 1991 debut album In Rough Territory featured cover images of a commando unit planting a flag on enemy soil.

  album Open ↗ YouTube
• 026

  Bombscare

  2 Bad Mice

  Alongside the idea of urban life as a warzone, there’s a fascination with the military as a sort of avant-garde of science: Goldie, one-time Reinforced A & R, talked of his protégés as ‘prototypes’, like they were secret weapons under R & D. 2 Bad Mice’s ‘Bombscare’ actually employed the sound of a suspect device detonating as part of its bassline, making funky the sound of urban dread.

  Moving Shadow
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 027

  Terrorist

  Renegade

  Moving Shadow continued this idea with ultra-minimal 1994 tracks like Renegade’s ‘Terrorist’ and Deep Blue’s ‘Helicopter Tune’, whose roiling Latin percussion evoked the sound of the famous’copter dawn-raid in Apocalypse Now.

  Moving Shadow
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 028

  Helicopter Tune

  Deep Blue

  Moving Shadow continued this idea with ultra-minimal 1994 tracks like Renegade’s ‘Terrorist’ and Deep Blue’s ‘Helicopter Tune’, whose roiling Latin percussion evoked the sound of the famous’copter dawn-raid in Apocalypse Now.

  Moving Shadow
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 029

  The Predator

  Shimon

  From the first movie came the sample ‘she said “the jungle, it just came alive and took him” ’, as used in Shimon’s ‘The Predator’; from the sequel, the ‘fucking voodoo magic’ hook in Hyper-On Experience’s ‘Lords Of the Null Lines’.

  Ram
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 030

  Lords Of the Null Lines

  Hyper-On Experience

  From the first movie came the sample ‘she said “the jungle, it just came alive and took him” ’, as used in Shimon’s ‘The Predator’; from the sequel, the ‘fucking voodoo magic’ hook in Hyper-On Experience’s ‘Lords Of the Null Lines’.

  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 031

  The Battle Frontier

  Keen

  By 1996, jungle’s militarism had gotten ever more explicit and upfront: artist names like Soul-Jah and Military Police, track titles like ‘Dark Soldier’, ‘The Battle Frontier’ and, my favourite, ‘Homage to Catatonia’ by Unknown Soldier.

  Formation
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 032

  Soldier

  The Terradome

  The Terradome’s ‘Soldier’ featured the histrionic sample ‘I’m not a criminal, I’m a soldier, and I deserve to die like a soldier’, crystallizing the idea of the gangsta as a one-man army, a rogue unit in capitalism’s war of all against all.

  Dope Dragon
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 033

  Lost Entity

  Trace

  This was when the teenage DJs Trace and Ed Rush cut their production teeth with sinister classics like ‘Lost Entity’ and ‘Bludclot Artattack’.

  Lucky Spin
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 034

  Bludclot Artattack

  Edrush

  This was when the teenage DJs Trace and Ed Rush cut their production teeth with sinister classics like ‘Lost Entity’ and ‘Bludclot Artattack’.

  No U Turn
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 035

  Just Want Another Chance

  Reese

  Working in tandem with Nico and Ed Rush, Trace tore the fusion-flavoured original to shreds, replacing its leisurely glide with slipped-gears breakbeats, spectral synths and a brooding, bruising bass sound sampled and mutated from Kevin Saunderson’s Reese classic ‘Just Want Another Chance’.

  Incognito
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 036

  Gangsta Hardstep

  Ed Rush

  Meanwhile, Ed Rush’s No U Turn tracks ‘Gangsta Hardstep’ and ‘Guncheck’ took the explosive energy of hardcore and imploded it, transforming febrile hyperkinesis into molasses-thick malaise.

  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 037

  Guncheck

  Ed Rush

  Meanwhile, Ed Rush’s No U Turn tracks ‘Gangsta Hardstep’ and ‘Guncheck’ took the explosive energy of hardcore and imploded it, transforming febrile hyperkinesis into molasses-thick malaise.

  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 038

  Drumz 95

  Doc Scott

  In tracks like Doc Scott’s ‘Drumz 95’, the emphasis is on the 80 b.p.m. half-step, making you want to stomp, not sashay.

  Metalheadz
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 039

  Squadron

  Trace/Nico

  No U Turn themselves reached something of a pinnacle with the dark exultation of Trace/Nico’s ‘Squadron’, whose Carmina Burana-gone-cyberpunk fanfares slash and scythe like the Grim Reaper.

  No U Turn
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 040

  The Shit

  L Double & Shy FX

  L. Double and Shy FX’s ‘The Shit’, a classic 1996 roller of a jump-up tune, kicked off with a gangsta monologue: ‘Yo man, there’s a gang of muthafuckers out there on the dick . . .

  Flex
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 041

  The Hidden Camera

  Photek

  Hence tracks like T. Power’s ‘Police State’ and Photek’s neurotic ‘The Hidden Camera’: lyric-free critiques of a country that conducts the most intense surveillance of its own citizenry in the world (most UK city centres now have spy cameras).

  Science; Astralwerks
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 042

  Metropolis

  Adam F

  Hence No U Turn tracks like ‘The Droid’ and ‘Replicants’, or Adam F’s ‘Metropolis’.

  Metalheadz
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 043

  The Droid

  Ed Rush/Trace/Nico

  Hence No U Turn tracks like ‘The Droid’ and ‘Replicants’, or Adam F’s ‘Metropolis’.

  all No U Turn
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 044

  Amtrak

  Trace/Nico

  ‘Amtrak’, another late 1996 Trace/Nico meisterwerk, pivots around the sample ‘here is a group trying to accomplish one thing’ – that is, ‘to get into the future’.

  No U Turn
  track Open ↗ YouTube
• 045

  The Cult

  Source Direct

  ‘It is defeat that you must learn to prepare for,’ runs the martial arts movie sample in Source Direct’s ‘The Cult’, a track that pioneered the post-techstep style I call ‘neurofunk’ (clinical and obsessively nuanced production, foreboding ambient drones, blips ’n’ blurts of electronic noise, and chugging, curiously inhibited two-step beats that don’t even sound like breakbeats anymore).

  Metalheadz
  track Open ↗ YouTube