Jungle vs Drum & Bass

Deep Blue - Fantasy #1

So is this Hardcore, Jungle or Drum & Bass??????

Thats a fucking hard one! It's a bit of an anomaly

So is this Hardcore, Jungle or Drum & Bass??????

Good call! Bit of each really

Drum 'n' Bass - what the fuck is up with that 'n'? That has always annoyed me. Lazy bollocks term. Stuff 'n' nonsense.
Hardcore was really the most fitting genre tag..

Ro 'n' dema.

Ti 'm' Reaper.

Drum 'n' Bass - what the fuck is up with that 'n'? That has always annoyed me. Lazy bollocks term. Stuff 'n' nonsense.
Hardcore was really the most fitting genre tag..

Ro 'n' dema.

Ti 'm' Reaper.

Or 'n' ette

All I pray is that Ju 'n' Gle by 2015 hasn't evolved into Ju 'n' 'Glee'

Classic Subvert Ce 'n' tral

We all know and feel the 500 pound elephant in the room............................Coke vs. Pepsi??!!?!?

Y'all forgot about 'Hardstep'

Ok, I was hoping my friend was gonna come and give his take on the origin of the term 'drum & bass' but looks like that's not gonna happen. So...

I wont try to make out I knew this all along, but this is what I have gathered:


It's pretty much accepted that 'jungle' (certainly on the[amoff] Back To The Old Skool[/amoff] forum) was coined by Paul Ibiza who, hearing Noise Factory working on a track, said something like "this sounds like jungle". No doubt some vocals were hastily added, and the release [amoff]"Jungle Techno[/amoff]" was made (the one you mention Droid)

(I had thought this was 1992 not 91, but looks like you are just about right, if you follow the discogs link, the list [amoff]Slipmatt / Lee Gee / Lomas - Fantazia NYE 1991[/amoff] gives an indication when the tune came out - right on the edge)

From the term being born it captured people's imaginations and connoctations accumulated: the strain of living in an "urban jungle" perhaps; or racial ones such as "jungle bunnies" or "jungle music", long a slur to denote 'black' music (follow Jason oS's [[amoff]dead[/amoff]] [amoff]link to DOA[/amoff] [[amoff]>>direct[/amoff]]); or more simply "tribal" connoctations of african dancing & drumming (which is no doubt what Paul Ibiza had in mind, hearing the quarter-note beat loop that repeats in "[amoff]Jungle Techno[/amoff]")

Certainly on the B2VOS forum people's recollections are of Mad P (of Top Buzz) being the one to really jump upon this phrase. Top Buzz used to play a lot of Ibiza stuff and infact Mad P is Paul Ibiza's brother - which helps to explains why he took on this phrase 'jungle techno' so. You can read some of his comments on this [amoff]here[/amoff].

At this point, early 1992, 'jungle techno' was simply something that referred to hardcore, and some of the earliest releases I can find have nothing 'jungly' about them at all -[amoff] M.S. Six "In The Jungle EP"[/amoff] & [amoff]Jungle House Crew "Total Kaos EP"[/amoff] - both very typically hardcore sounding. Another example, psV_Nt2iSrk [amoff]Family Foundation "Xpress Yourself (Jungle Techno Remix)"[/amoff], features the refrain "all jungle techno crew... all crew badboy sound... hardcore bass crew", yet little else to mark out as anything we'd think of as 'jungle'.

Now there had already been a trend within dance music (because it was really just 'one' scene) to take influence from reggae & dubwise, [amoff]Meat Beat Manifesto "Radio Babylon"[/amoff] and hvxVpSqCX_c [amoff]Rebel MC "The Wickedest Sound"[/amoff] are two examples (i'm sure others can fill in many, many blanks, I'm just going by what Kiss FM used to play) - this was nothing unique as dance music used to borrow from all corners. But what must have began to happen was as 'jungle' took hold as a concept, so the term began to align itself with tunes that had a reggae influence.

3r-0T65_tgg

My first memory of the term was with the Project One "Come My Selector" track above  from summer 1992. I had just made some new friends who were into hardcore, and one guy used to play it on his little radio, with its "jungle techno, ju-ju-ju-jungle techno" refrain. He was obviously quite taken by the catchy term and used to go on about it. I was confused - what was it? But he clarified "its just a new name for hardcore really"

Regardless, this was probably the first track to attempt to give an identity to jungle. It has a big reggae b-line & reggae vocal sample (typical for Project 1's stuff of the time), but in addition it uses that bloody annoying pan-pipe sample which is somehow reminiscent of the jungle (south american?), and more obscurely, little screams taken from the arcade game [amoff]Strider[/amoff] that the enemies make on the Amazon level! Clearly an attempt to make a 'jungle' record.

At this point it wasn't going to be long before people made connections to references they'd heard on Jamaican sound tapes to "jungle" & "junglists". Come the first wave of what I'd say was truely jungle music - hardcore junglist


[amoff]Primitive "Coming From The Jungle" (discogs/youtube CMC "Comes From The Jungle")[/amoff]

[amoff]The Moog "Jungle Muffin"[/amoff] xCuG4n2mLMI

3 Theives & A Liar [amoff] Alien "Forseeing The Future (Prophesy)"[/amoff] XUW4D-cpRWE

I'm gonna stop here or I'll be here all day. Only points to make is I think is particularily in London the concept of 'jungle' was adopted quite readily by black people who had been part of the rave scene and wanted to redefine a rave music that would speak to people in the inner city, and that this began in the second half of 1992. The music was still most certainly hardcore, but a particular style of hardcore.

In addition to this, and this is quite important, the 'jungle techno' phrase did not die, and carried on being used by Mad P well into 1993 - and as Top Buzz began to increasingly play stuff from Basement, so 'jungle techno' itself went on to find a particular form

Two different 'jungles'.

Ornette you truly are the oracle

One of the more well researched (and referenced) posts I recall reading here. Sterling work

grumble vs Drum 'n Complaints.

Has anybody mentioned Lennie De Ice yet?

If not...

Lennie De Ice.

Any reason in particular?

http://www.discogs.com/DJ-Phantasy-The-J...aster/7302



PS how does one do yootoob here these days?

[Statto]

PS how does one do yootoob here these days?

1991

I dunno what you two are trying to say, instead of having a reasonable discussion about it you seem to wanna poke holes at me?

Listening to the two 1991 tunes, the DJ Phantasy one is more of a 'jungle tekno' record, where the Euphoreal tune I can see does have quite a clear 'jungly' feel to it. Although I'm not sure it is anything unique for its time, there are many tunes from then with a similar feel - as I said, others can fill in many blanks

I get my information from many discussions on this and an interview of Paul Ibiza on Kool FM on B2VOS ages back. I may still have the recording hanging around somewhere. Of course its possible that Paul's account was not quite right, but the Mad P / Top Buzz thing is a clarified thing.

Having got out my copy of 'State Of Bass' again, it's interesting to see it does pretty much say the same thing, starting with that "Jungle Techno" record (although mistakenly crediting to Johnny Jungle) and straight away a reference and a quote from Top Buzz: "We originally sad 'jungle techno' just as a phrase, but people jumped on to it when it wasn't really meant to mean anything."

I'm still maintaining that jungle was a buzz word applied to the music, and didn't initially have a recogniseable form. You only have to look at my examples to see this. Where as 'drum & bass' started being adopted as a descriptive term for the overall music sometime towards the end of 1992. To say everyone was calling it and referring to it as jungle is misleading. The music was generally known as hardcore, right up to the end of 1993 flyers were still headlining it as the 'hardcore arena'.

Just some clarification about 'jungle tekno' (techno): Because Mad P continued to use the phrase despite the emergence of a identifiable jungle sound, jungle tekno eventually came to define something very particular in itself: basically the stuff that was coming out on Basement - a darker, 4 to the floor techno influenced sound. This corresponds closely to what Top Buzz were typically playing during 1993. To give some examples:

Agent Orange "Gettin' Rougher (Kaos Remix)" a.k.a. Chaos & Julia Set "Fear The Future (Chaos Mix)"

Wax Doctor & Jack Smooth "What's Goin' On"

Tango & Ratty "Final Conflict"

Go onto any old skool forum and talk about jungle tekno and this is what you will be generally understood to mean.

You can also see some confirmation of this by Jack Smooth himself, clearly marking a number of tracks uploaded on his soundcloud as jungle tekno

In Ornette we trust.
You Columbo(d) that shit lol, lol.

I dunno what you two are trying to say, instead of having a reasonable discussion about it you seem to wanna poke holes at me?

lol! dude, take it easy there

To sum up, I broadly agree: that Paul Ibiza put a stamp on the 'Jungle' tag and defined it as a sound, but that other strains of development kinda co-existed eg. Basement/Top Buzz-style Jungle Techno.

As for talking about exactly which tune was first, I think it's a bit silly. These things evolve in a soup-like fashion, not with lightning bolts from the sky. Lots of people claim 'We Are IE' as the tune that invented everything. I don't really care either way, which is why I posted that Phantasy tune - to suggest that you could argue the finer points indefinitely. If you can quantify 'Jungly feel' and win an argument with that, then fair play to you. But for me there comes a point when all that analysis starts to suck the fun out of things.

btw I've said just as much to Droid on many an occasion

Ooo driving me nuts as I heard this interview with a certain producer explaining how the term drum and bass came about, it was interesting and sorta random if i recall yet I dont remember the story... Goes to show my memory didnt select it as something that important though.
Really wishing I could remember who the interview was with,,,,

Well this is what I don't understand. The fact they were titling albums 'drum & bass' from early 94, with 'jungle' as a subheadng, should indicate that drum & bass was in some sort of common usage for at least some time.

Out of interest, when did people start to use 'drum and bass' and 'jungle' to actually refer to different things rather than different names for the same thing? I'm currently trying not to get involved in an argument on another forum with someone who reckons that Renegade Hardware are more of a definitive jungle label than Reinforced because they were doing a lot more crucial stuff in the late 90's - a point when I'd defintely not have considered what they were doing to be 'jungle'.

I dunno what you two are trying to say, instead of having a reasonable discussion about it you seem to wanna poke holes at me?

There were plenty of opportunities for a reasonable discussion earlier in the thread before you tried to back up your wooly thinking with some dubious claim of authority.

Nothing Im saying is in the least bit controversial. It is objectively true that the vast majority of producers, promoters, DJ's, labels and punters called the music jungle. The term coming from 'jungle techno', becoming more popular throughout 93, peaking in 94/95, and slowly being replaced by drum and bass between 95-96. How do we know this? Tens of thousands of flyers, press releases, promo sheets & references by MC's, hundreds, maybe thousands of tunes, compilations, and album titles. So this is not a subjective appraisal, this is based on the only real criteria that counts, what the people involved called it at the time. Try some keyword searches on RDB and check the results. Also, despite your claims, I have yet to see any evidence to suggest that 'D+B' was in widespread usage before 94/95.

Were there parallel, overlapping and competing streams? Sure. Did the terms mean different things to different people in different places? Sure. I'm not debating that. If you want to claim that you and your mates saw it as hardcore and then D+B, fine. If your suggesting that there was jungle tekno, then D+B, and jungle was only used as some kind of undefined meaningless buzzword around the same time... well, you havent provided any convincing evidence for that claim is the most polite way I can put it.

they don't sound very similar to me, but We Are IE and the Saunderson are similar in BPM, unlike 1990 records like Psycho Bass or Energy Flash.

Tronikhouse - Hardcore Techno E.P '91

Lennie De Ice - We Are IE '91


"It's like a mashup of techno/ house / hiphop...but faster"

We Are IE reminds me of something like Radio Morocco [totally forgot there's a "techno" mix on this] or Steinski's Lessons in a weird way, yet I call We Are IE and Tronikhouse Hardcore. "Hardcore Techno" probably doesn't help with the confusion despite a rather straightforward title , yet I'm not entirely surprised either by that Jungle Techno record.
So I see how it's possible that noone was ever in agreement about what Hardcore is or was, but "got the gist of it".
I don't think most people would notice a 10 BPM difference save perhaps kids on pills, but i could be wrong.

"nono, jungle is like a mashup of Hardcore & Hip-hop, but faster"

possibly the same with Jungle. Or rap/hiphop.
Jumpin'n Pumpin' for example calling comps Jungle Tekno with the phrase Drum N Bass in 93-94 might have a simple explanation.They're songs made from techno songs. Sounds like they're "out of the jungle" - demons themes pitched up vocals, tropical birds, Tangerine Dream woodwind thing...songs are predominately comprised of the sounds of drums.and bass. If somebody told me they listened to Moo Cow music, I think I would understand what they meant on my first time hearing it.

Hell, without knowing anything about dnb, my sister called Ni Ten Ichi Ryu "jungle watutsi music" on first hearing. Offensive, yet funny as well as ironic.

Dance music was growing faster than people could name it. The records coming out couldn't be mixed with records from two years before, so they sampled those records to make new songs. Everybody was pushing to find new styles this way and I feel like it led to everybody trying whatever they possibly could with imaginative use of samplers. I'm not going to name a bunch of '93 Jungle records with hardcore influences or that record x was the first of it's kind - there's waaaay too many. waaaay. But whatever you want to call those records, whether they sample reggae records, Foreigner, Bladerunner, Whitney Houston, Looney Tunes, Willy Wonka etc, they all share much more of a common sound/influence with the other music of their times.

Sample based music & 90's DJ culture fucked peoples heads up on some "what the fuck am I listening to?" shit.
Recycle everything. Detroit techno is a lot like Chicago House. Chicago seems like it was into italo disco. I've heard Chris & Cosey in techno/house mixes.
Brian Eno is house music...
Who gives a fuck.

where was I...
Hardcore->Jungle->Drum N Bass.
"

What I've been calling Drum N Bass is Jungle that's lost it's resemblance to Hardcore I guess -with little resemblance to those hardcore rave tunes, more than just looping an amen maybe + bird sounds. Less like some sort of mash-up and something of it's own maybe?
Hate to make yet another SC photek comment (Not saying it's the first dnb record ) but this was the first thing I thought of.

...this, because it contains every cliche I mentioned yet I still think of it as dnb.

Ultimately I don't really think it's a big deal. All I know is by '97-98 I was referring to it as Drum N Bass and not jungle yet neither term meant much to me.
"This record is too fast!"

I mean, was the first record with "Funky" the first Funk record ever made? Could be. There's thousands of records with funky in the title.
I'm not entirely sure if I really give much of a fuck about it though. I just happened to grow up in the 90's.

Blah blah blah Whatever people did after the fantastic drugs wore off - that's Drum N Bass. Interesting thread.

Me at 16 " Oh whats this? ....Oooh I love jungle."
Me at 18 " oh this is pretty cool, oh whats this? drum and bass huh ."
Me at 20 "I don't think I like drum and bass anymore, I miss jungle."

That's an oblique, yet really insightful post you've made there Abend! Really captures the 'mish-mash', confusing nature of it all. Yet at the same time you point out enough peaks & troughs to make it an objective overview. I think you make a good point about hardcore, that people were not entirely certain what it was. Like for a long time I couldn't understand what 1992 was - I got into it then I knew, but other than that, made no sense. Only by making a dedicated effort playing my oldest tunes on Stressfactor around 2007 and learning off others did I finally feel I got a handle on it. But even then I still don't understand from before, like 1991 and even the early part of 92

A nice side discussion we had on this, recently, was here http://www.rolldabeats.com/forum/index.p...gust-1992/

I was going to pick up on your post about Lenny De Ice already, so its good you've come back. "We Are Ie" (1991) is clearly a classic & influential track and often gets mentioned in discussions like this. There's a thread on B2VOS now http://www.backtotheoldskool.co.uk/forum...4&t=122860 where we talk about this, and although Fabio refers to it on both the 1Xtra Stories: Fabio & Grooverider program and their final show calling it "one of the first jungle tunes" I think the common consensus is that its a plain & straight hardcore track which I would pretty much tend to agree.

Just a point regarding B2VOS - for a long time they had a prune policy going on on their forum, meaning that a lot of the old discussion is gone, save for a few threads I've saved here & there. So I can't link to any of them. But rest assured, they did happen!