It's cool to hear people on this list talking about jungle, since a bunch
of releases lately seem to really be listening music as much as dance
music. I really like Omni Trio and Metalheads (aka Goldie) as far as
interesting listening. I recently got a tape made by a DJ here (Chicago)
that he describes as "intelligent drum and bass" which is very interesting
in a dubby sort of way, but unfortunately I don't have a track listing.
Looking at jungle in terms of musical progression, the junglists seem to
be developing some really interesting ways to employ samplers. On the
best stuff they have gotten out of the whole problem of having a monotonous
drum thud marking the time. Instead, they loop various bass lines and
sound effects to keep the time and use the drum samples more as a lead
instrument, and in a fairly non-repetitive way. Of course, I'm talking
about the best (IMHO) stuff; jungle always runs the risk of degenerating
into noisy sound-effects records, or worse yet, into extremely fast rap
music.
To anyone who's interested in this kind of stuff, I'd recommend trying
to find Simon Reynold's article about ambient jungle in _the Wire_
(I think it was last month's issue). In general _the Wire_ seems to
cover jungle releases from an "intelligent" standpoint, and they often review
jungle singles and compilations.
David
|*******************dbdodd@midway.uchicago.edu*******************|
|"It was an abiding mystery to Adrian that all man-made rubbish |
| smelt the same once it had been in a dustbin for any length of |
| time." --Stephen Fry*****************************************|