Some real nice music in the Earfuzz currents as of late. Kudos everyone. Great stuff!

My last post celebrated the joys of discovering early 90’s Jungle, Drum and Bass, and Breakbeat. Well, months later I’m still deep in the midst of absorbing this music. And, I’ve started picking up records. Man oh man, I’m spending way more on 12″ ’s than I ever did on full albums. My curiosity to hear these songs loud and in their natural vinyl’d state is getting the best of my wallet (cursed exchange rate and overseas shipping So far, I am pleased to say my purchases have been well worth it. My ears and speakers are quite appreciative: the records sound waaay better than mp3’s. And, these records are quite simply a ton of fun to play for people.

Interestingly, most of the songs I’ve gravitated towards are from 1993. Since my only window into the cultural landscape associated with these tunes comes through scattered articles, very enthusiastic (and vividly nostalgic) Youtube comments, Discogs, and the music itself; I’ve come to recognize 1993 as a unique and pivotal year in the development of Amen Break related music and rave culture. Some describe the time as both a “kitchen-sink” sort of creative explosion, and, a point of divergence for many of the sub genres (of which I won’t even pretend I know how to tell the difference) and their related club scenes.

Simon Reynolds does a nice job describing the “continuum” of this music in a recent lecture transcribed here.

DJ Solo – Darkage [Production House Records, 1993]
One of my favorite aspects of this music is how producers layer and craft the introduction of the beat. This track has one of my favorite bass drops. Heavy.

M-Beat – Rough Like Me [Renk Records, 1993]
I recall reading somewhere that Jungle producers liked to incorporate Reggae into their tracks as it was a very familiar groove for club crowds. People knew how to move and dance to Reggae; so, it became the perfect rhythmic Trojan horse to add bounce to some dirty driving breakbeat work. M-Beat knew this formula well and amassed a pretty fine catalog of tunes.

DJ Crystl – Meditation [Dee Jay Records, 1993]
Ah, what’s not to love about the long player DnB/Breakbeat “epic”? For a song with such a relaxed ambient undercurrent, this track packs some surprising intensity. We’ve found it mixes quite smoothly into some ‘Reign in Blood’ era Slayer.

Hope you enjoy.

Booyakahahka! – 49:54

I don’t exactly how or when this happened, but lately all I listen to is breakbeat, jungle, and drum & bass. A month ago I knew nothing about this music, now, it’s an obsession. What happened to me? What’s happening to me? I feel like a steady diet of this stuff changes your metabolism.

I guess it all started about a month or so ago when I came across this slice of ridiculousness.

Aside from making me laugh, the video also made me want to get up and move. The clip was a reminder that I hadn’t had my ass kicked on a dance floor by a DJ in a long while (granted I spend most of my time in rock clubs, but still… My last great dancing expedition was a few years ago at a three day psytrance party in upstate NY. I dig trance well enough, but, when I was younger and made it to some of the larger, multi-room clubs, I tended to gravitate to the rooms with the fractured snare beat and crushing bass lines. I never followed up on that interest until now.

My friend, then recommended this excellent and informative video:

What followed was full on Youtube immersion. Youtube is full of music! Who knew? I certainly didn’t. There’s tons of amazing stuff in there; especially for people interested in exploring early 90’s UK dance/rave records (or late 80’s Detroit House… well… maybe later). As I cruised through video playlists, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Junior’s thoughts on the ever-increasingly availablity of music on the internet. Now, even Youtube is yet another tool for digging up lost, rare treasures?! Still, it’s all about where you look, so, I hope my mixtape (posted above) does the Fuzz and the music justice.

Some of these tracks are available on iTunes. Most aren’t. So, I joined Discogs and made a few overseas orders. I think this is going to be a dancing year, and, I want to be prepared.

Photek: KJZ and Hidden Camera
From: The Hidden Camera E.P. (Astralwerks, 1996)

Back in my schooldays music appreciation was split into two very clearcut groups; you were either into rave or grunge. Sure, there was other music being played and you could put on a De La Soul album and everyone would nod their head but above it all lay these two clear cut groups.

I was most definitely a raver back then and used to shop every week for the latest jungle, and later drum n bass, vinyl, never returning home until I had an armful of headache inducing breakbeat monsters.

However, come the mid nineties, the music that at first seemed so different and challenging had begun to grow extremely stagnant, every week I’d go and hear the same old Amen breaks and warped basslines over samples from Scarface and Goodfellas and I began to loose love and interest in the scene. Then this album came along and simultaneously proved to me how great drum and bass could be while killing of all my interest in subsequent releases as I could see that the future of my music taste lay elsewhere.

Rupert Parke’s, AKA Photek, had already been on the scene a while when this EP was released and he must have been as sick of the stagnation of the scene as this album was a major step in the crossover between the electronic and organic in dance music.

Gone are the Amen beats of old and instead we suddenly have something more like freestyle jazz drumming. Take a listen to the first track I have up for you today, KJZ, it’s drums are more like something you’d hear on a Billy Cobham record than on a record by one of the up and coming drum and bass maestros as Photek samples his own staccato drumming to create a texture of breaks. Add to this the beautifully late nineties synth strings, the subtle electronic vocal harmonies and the plucked bassline and you have 7 and a half minutes of modern jazz genius.

The second track, Hidden Camera, is a slower number, full of whirling spookiness and ominous strings. While less groundbreaking than KJZ it proved once again that you could have tracks that worked as well on headphones as the dancefloor and that the Amen and Apache breakbeats really had had their day.

After releasing an album which was more compilation than new material Photek also started to distance himself from the drum and bass scene, dabbling in techno and house, before returning to the folds of drum and bass with his own label. However I’d really liked to have seen what he could do if he’d gone the more Matthew Herbert/Squarepusher route and let his imagination run free……..

You can read more about the man here.