REVIEW: History Part 2, The rough & the smooth
Sm:)e, SM-8027-2
1. Valley of the Shadows - Origin Unknown
2. The Terrorist - Renegade featuring Ray Keith
3. Da Bass II Dark - Asylum
4. The Lighter (VIP Mix) - Sounds of the Future
5. We Enter - Aphrodite
6. The Bomber - Aphrodite
7. Fury (Goldie's Dub Plate Remix) - Rufige Kru
8. Running the Family - Dead Dred
9. Spiritual Aura - Engineers without fears featuring DJ Rap & Aston
10. Wishing on a star (urban shakedown mix) - 88.3
11. Pulp fiction - alex reese
12. Horizons - LTJ Bukem
13. Circles (alternate mix) -Adam F
14. Complex - Photek
15. Musix is the Key (Omni Trio Remix) - Foul Play
16. Can't you see (Dub Mix) - Technical Itch
17. Free Rolling - Rae
18. Expressions - Dave Wallace
19. Who are you? - Omni Trio
20. This Time (original & dub) - Jonny L
A pretty diverse mix of jungle and drum 'n bass. I can't imagine a DJ in
a club ever mixing all these styles together. This is mixed by DJ DB, who
did a great job on Acid Resistant.
We start dark and hard with tracks 1-7, with some jump-up stuff in 4,5,6.
9 begins to get some vocals and happy hardcore-ish. The tempo settles
into a slower groove starting at track 11 and continues on a _logical
progression_ style from 11 to 15. The drums 'n bass begins to take a
second place to melody around track 16.
If I heard this in a club, I would be going crazy from the start until
about track 9, when I would sit down and have a drink, and maybe a
conversation with fellow junglists who also wondered what happened to the
music. But we wouldn't be complaining that the music was bad, just that
it wasn't fun to dance to (like SAW II isn't fun to dance to, well maybe
that is an extreme analogy :).
The idea of the cd is to track the evolution of jungle. The tracks date
from May 1993 to Feburary 1996 (not in chronological order). I guess
maybe I favor the "old school" from may 1993 to the beginning of 1995,
possibly because the whole jungle thing is new to me.