I dunno if it's because people like Luke Vibert and the Planet Mu label have ignited my enthusiasm by excavating and reimagining the old Junglist stuff, but I find myself in total agreement with Drip Drap Drop's comments about a "great fondness for jungle" . I'm listening to this sort of shit now more than I ever did during it's heyday and, to coincide with my 'Cassette Pets' nostalgia trip, I was extremely pleased to find this little beauty lying at the bottom of a pile of my tapes recently:
A HISTORY OF HARDCORE
It's a double cassette tracing the development of two of Hardcore Jungle's most central labels, Suburban Base and Moving Shadow, from 1991-95. I hadn't played it for years and, if I'm honest, there was a time when I probably would've scoffed at it. But playing it today is just a total fucking rush. Selected and mixed by DJ Kenny Ken and sequenced in a fairly chronological order, it really shows the development of the scene, featuring all the major playaz like Q Bass, Hyper On Experience, DJ Hype, Omni Trio, Foul Play and Remarc. Side 1 is mainly still anchored to the 4/4 House kick drum with ghost-traces of Happy Hardcore's E-rush oscillator riffs, side 2 is where the BPM's start getting excessive with the helium diva samples and the breaks start to fragment, side 3 is where the breaks start to really fragment and the sounds get sparser and more raggafied and side 4 is total Amen madness. How the hell anyone (me included) thought 'intelligent d'n'b' was progress after this shit is beyond understanding. Total genius - Reynolds was right all along!
