Jungle as breakbeat

DJ Sun
Tue, 27 Jan 1998 10:00:32 -0600


Well, again lets look at "history". Jungle originated from the rave scene,
a young dance-oriented setting. These kids did not go to these raves to
hear complex musical structures, they wanted to move their collective
butts.

Along comes Roni Size Reprazent which goes against the norm and makes
something they imagined comes closer to "jazz"... (witness the use of live
bass, and other live instrumentation, and even a track called "Jazz").
However, Roni himself admits that he doesn't know or write music and that
he is more in tune with what the underground jungle followers want to hear
as the genre progresses (I'm paraphrasing here, but check out SNC and URB
for quotes).

I personally find New Forms very interesting and I like it. From a purely
musical standpoint (and I'm not a technical expert) its probably lacking a
bit and somewhat repetitious, but the way I use the music is in creating
new sounds anyway by mixing and cutting the tracks with others, does not
require it to be overly complex. So in essence the music is more like
"intelligent breakbeat" to me.

To answer your question, though, the new 4 Hero EP Earth Pioneers to me
qualifies as "quality jungle". The live bass on "Planeteria" and
"Loveless" seems as though its actually played and improvised throughout
the track rather than how the Roni Size "live" bass comes across: sampled
and repetitious...

PEACE!

Elson Trinidad wrote:

> At 11:26 AM 1/27/98 +1100, philipm@isd.canberra.edu.au wrote:
> >haye!
>
> forget the hype...there's some great jungle
> >around but this aint it.
>
> Okay...not trying to argue with you, but what *is* "great jungle"? What
> sounds good to you?
>
> Elson