Logos Wrote:Sumo Wrote:Leviticus made no impact on the music? he may have been a gun for hire, but he had a big hand in arguably the biggest jungle tune ever.
Absolutely it had an impact.
But you can't deny that Optical had a sound he was developing and Leviticus had very little to do with it.
This is what I mean. Optical may have been involved in the production of Leviticus, but I never heard him do a solo tune that reflected anything of that vibe at all. I liked some Little Matt stuff alright, but everything from 96 on... left me kinda cold.
Quote:For the record I don't see the jungle/drum and bass split as ridgidly as Naphta, I think its more that Optical had a vision of the music he wanted to make which he was able to realise post-Metalheadz/No U-Turn...he's more like an auteur like Photek.
To explain a little further: Jungle = (by comparison) more organic, more obviously sample-based, more fragmented... etc. etc.
Sure I agree - Optical had a vision! I just wasn't very interested in it. Most people I know went ballistic for Moving 808s, To Shape the Future etc.: I didn't. It just sounded like another variant on techno to me, and that didn't grab me, y'know? Whereas early No U Turn had retained that hiphop influence and attitude, the likes of Dom and Optical made the music whiter-than-white, bringing the industrial, synthetic vibe, minus any traces of the organic. I wasn't in that really... and when he started to make his rhythms even more linear and techno-like (Wormhole etc.), I was gone altogether.
Sumo: I actually didn't mean what I said as an insult to Optical at all - it's just an observation! Optical has rightfully earned his place as a big influence in the devlopment of drum n bass (for better or worse ). But I don't think of his music being anything to do with 'Jungle'...