90s Jungle

According to Nia Archives, one of a new breed of electronic producers tapping into the past to write the future, 2022 was the ‘summer of jungle’. But what’s the real origin story behind one of the 90s most incendiary musical and cultural scenes? Julia Toppin says it’s time for a rewind…

Without jungle, there would be no garage, no drum’n’bass, no dubstep, no grime and no drill. Forget Britpop… when jungle emerged in the early-90s, it was the most exciting music in the world. MC Navigator, a veteran of the jungle and drum’n’bass scenes and the presenter of the first national jungle radio show in the UK is not resorting to hyperbole when he states: “Jungle music became the most popular style of underground music that you could imagine. It gave the UK its identity.”

Many in the scene consider the terms drum’n’bass and jungle synonymous. Others aim to unite the two by using the term jungle drum’n’bass. Though a more universal term, for reasons we will explore later, drum’n’bass is not the same as jungle nor is jungle a sub-genre of drum’n’bass.

“Jungle is the mothership,” says DJ and author of the first jungle newspaper column, Tina Irie. Sonically, the easiest difference to spot is the synthesized uniformity of the drums and a much, much lighter bassline. Think Roni Size, Goldie and LTJ Bukem for drum’n’bass as opposed to Ray Keith, Doc Scott and Lemon D for jungle.

Of course, this rousing music didn’t just appear out of nowhere fully formed. It’s time for a rewind. The story of jungle begins with the sonic dominance of the reggae sound system culture; born in the small island with a mammoth footprint: Jamaica. It journeys through the Black and gay Xanadus of Chicago house and Detroit techno. It traverses the provocative raps of New York and LA hip hop. It takes in the mathematical beauty of New York breakbeat and incorporates the ecstatic abandon of acid house and happy hardcore. The bullying beats of Belgian hardcore give way to the dubbed down bass of jungle techno.

Depending on which myth you believe jungle was named after an area in Tivoli Gardens in the Jamaican capital Kingston, or the concrete jungles of its bleak urban birthplace, London. One fact that is not up for debate is the way that for a few years, jungle felt like it was everywhere in the UK.

“You would walk down the street and hear it coming out of houses, shops, the cars, people listening on boom blasters,” recalls MC Navigator. “It was mad, so overwhelming… it was thee ting!”

For Chris Inperspective DJ, label owner, former manager of Hospital Records offshoot, Med School and founder of the Black Junglist Alliance: “Jungle drum‘n’bass is one of the greatest British exports.”

Again, such an expression is justified. The music is now a billion-dollar worldwide business. Time-lapsed, warp-speed, stretched-out… jungle was imaginative and intoxicating; Black and British, white and working class, with a healthy representation from South Asian youth. Chestrupturing basslines, melancholic soulful vocals, posturing lyricism and complex drum patterns. Former Metalheadz resident and 1Xtra host DJ Flight, who grew up listening to various artists from Dennis Brown to Madonna, found the “hodgepodge melting pot of genres” attractive. “It was such a mishmash,” she recalls enthusiastically. “Jungle was interesting and different.”

Those differences brought people together from walks of life who would not normally give each other the time of day. There was already a small but significant Black presence in the rave scene, however the blend of breakbeat, hardcore, reggae, ragga, R’n’B, rare groove, jazz, funk, house, techno, horror films and gangster films (both Italian and African American) really balanced the scene out.

People formed lifelong friendships across cultural divides. “Black, white, old, young,” DJ Hype told Uncle Dugs in a recent interview. “We broke down every barrier.” No wonder the government wanted it shut down. You can imagine their absolute dismay. The anarchy of rave AND Black people! There would be a revolution soon if everyone continued to get along.

DJ and V Recordings co-founder, Jumping Jack Frost recalls jungle as a force to be reckoned with. “It was a cultural revolution because you had people from all different backgrounds that had never met each other.”

Reid Speed, an instrumental DJ in the jungle scene in America agrees: “It was very mixed and fluid. It was very free, very loving, and very accepting.” The outlook was bleak for those without privilege. They lost themselves in the euphoric haze of ecstasy, weed, alcohol, and repetitive beats. People who used to fight each other on a Saturday night, or never socialise with other cultural groups at all, crossed the dancing divide and became best friends for life. Sharing water, sharing the dancefloor, then sharing their stories.

Black musical elements of jungle struck a deep chord with the grandchildren of the Windrush generation and their friends like DJ Hype who built his own sound system while still in school. They had spent their childhood listening to Coxsone, Jah Shaka, Saxon and Wassifa sound systems in local community halls and ‘blues’ parties or ‘shebeens’ held in their neighbours’ homes. Carpet rolled back, all the furniture moved into one room to accommodate the giant speakers now located in the others, food and a community bar set up in the kitchen on a table across the doorway that blocked entry. Vocalist, composer and voice professor, Cleveland Watkiss who was a resident MC at the legendary Metalheadz club night at The Blue Note in Hoxton immediately felt the parallels. Recalling his

146_DISCO_POGO

DJ Flight.

Roast at The Astoria, London, 1993.

DJ Hype.

Speed at Mars, London, 1994.

MC Deman Rocker.

regular attendance at LTJ Bukem’s club night Speed he says: “There was this speaker right on the bar and it was like thumping the most clear sonic sound. It just reminded me of the sound system.”

Jungle’s emergence against a bleak political backdrop of post-Thatcherite neoliberalism is significant. The dark heart of its sounds represented the disillusionment that young British Black people felt in a home that often depicted them as strange, violent visitors. On the other side of the tracks the largely working class white youth harboured no love for Thatcher’s Britain either as it had abandoned them without looking back. Unions were broken and state services like education and healthcare were pared to the bone.

“We were soldiers,” states Jumping Jack Frost about a time when unemployment and inflation were riding historical highs.

The jungle scene would be nothing without its ravers. They turned up in their hundreds or thousands to worship weekly at the altar of this fresh new music. Whether in Gucci or Versace,

Bryan Gee and Jumpin Jack Frost.

white tees or combat camouflage gear, leggings, lace and hot pants, the ravers were the heart of the jungle scene. They would skank and sway half time on the beat or jerk their bodies rhythmically to the pace of 160 beats per minute. They would tell the DJ if their tunes were good by demanding a rewind, banging on walls, cheering, two finger gun saluting, and cut up the dancefloor until the early hours.

DJ Paulette, a renowned house DJ and former press officer for Talkin’ Loud when they had legends like 4hero and Roni Size on their roster, believes women brought a particular energy to jungle’s dancefloor.

“Women ruled it all, because they just did,” she states emphatically. “There were lots of sets of female dancers that just tore up the dancefloor in all their finery.”

The popularity of jungle created a thriving self-sustaining underground ecosystem that was the making of a new life for not only the DJs, MCs and producers, but many others in the scene.

“It started as a small seed economy then people got jobs through this,” explains Frost who has never worked outside of music. In a country that did not present the underprivileged with many options, they took the entrepreneurial ethos of Thatcherism and created their own network of promoters, agents, record labels, record shops, (pirate) radio stations, vinyl (dubplate) manufacturers, designers, dancers, and printers.

Many of the early pioneer DJs of the jungle sound came from the acid house rave scene. Fabio and Grooverider, Kenny Ken, Mickey Finn, Randall and Jumping Jack Frost were all spinning acid house tracks before producers like Paul Ibiza and Lenny De Ice, tired of the influence of Europe over the UK dance scene, started to infuse reggae basslines with hardcore’s looped breakbeats to create a new sound. Metalheadz founder, DJ and producer Goldie recalls infinite “progression” of the sound where producers were “always trying to find something new and pushing things forward.”

This new music and the creativity that newly affordable technology like samplers could bring fired the imagination of DJ/producers like Frost: “The thing that was different is that the music was pushing the boundaries. That was what was exciting.”

MCs are a critical part of the jungle scene inherited from sound system culture. They ride the rhythm and keep the crowd bubbling. It’s an artform.

“There’s nothing like it,” says MC Chikaboo, the first female MC in the jungle scene, “you’re the conduit, the connection, the link between the crowd vibration and the DJ’s intention.”

The best MCs chat on the mic just the right amount. They know the tunes, the drops, and have perfect timing. Ravers would recite the iconic rhymes of lyricists like Moose, GQ, Chikaboo, Navigator, Det, Shabba, the Ragga Twins, and Cleveland Watkiss, whose jazz-infused melodic ad-libs at Metalheadz were in a league of their own. He comments: “My mic was plugged in for about three or four years every Sunday.”

Pirate radio was the social media of its time. You could hear all the tunes that you heard in the rave and get all the information that you needed to work out where to get your tickets from. Getting a shout out from the MC or DJ was very special indeed. You could big up your crew and rep your manor. Stations like Sunrise, Fantasy,

Pulse, Weekend Rush, and Kiss FM would broadcast illegally through homemade transistors that were placed on top of high rise council housing.

DJ Andy Clockwork remembers broadcasting Eruption FM, which launched in 1989, out of an empty tower block condemned for asbestos. “We had the whole top floor of that tower block for most of 1993,” he recalls.

DJs and MCs would sneak in and out of these spaces like spies to avoid detection by the police and government agents from the DTI (now Ofcom). If caught broadcasting on an unlicenced frequency, station owners, DJs and MCs would get arrested, or perhaps suffer a fate even worse... having all their equipment and records confiscated and then destroyed.

In November 1991, Kool FM launched as a pirate radio station that played jungle, initially hardcore jungle. The station quickly became the sound of the streets. You could tune into Kool FM and hear DJ Mampi Swift and MC Navigator or DJ Brockie and MC Det. DJ and Rupture host Mantra recalls getting bit by the jungle bug while listening to Kool FM as a kid.

“In 1994 my brother always had Kool FM on super Sundays, Det and Brockie. I used to go nuts.”

Kool FM also put on events. Kool FM’s 3rd Birthday Bash at The Astoria in London is one of MC Navigator’s favourite raves of all time. “The energy at that party was electric,” he remembers.

Held at the peak of jungle’s popularity in 1994, the rave brought Charing Cross Road to a halt as hundreds of people queued outside desperate to get in. Sadly, the Astoria is no longer with us, much like a number of venues where extremely popular jungle events were held.

For MC Chikaboo the best venues were: “Clubs with low ceilings and lots of bass like The Blue Note or Bar Rhumba.” She asserts that “dark and sweaty” rooms that felt a bit “dirty” were the best place to listen to jungle.

Outside of the venues, record stores like Blackmarket Records in Soho’s D’Arblay Street and De Underground Records in East London’s Newham borough, became the new Meccas of music worship. They were community hubs for the scene. Jumping Jack Frost fondly describes Blackmarket Records, which launched in 1988, as a “youth club” as many would hang out for hours at a time.

“I remember one day there was me, Goldie, Grooverider… we were there all day,” he smiles. “Listening to records, checking out promos. Going for lunch and coming back.”

Founded in 1991, De Underground Records, which was recently celebrated with a blue heritage plaque, had a studio in the basement where they would cook up beats. MC Navigator remembers the time well.

Goldie.

Kemistry (right) and Storm.

Roni Size.

Grooverider.

“When I first went in there, Randall was selling records. He’d be in there mixing music. I’d love to see him play. Just seamlessly mixing everything.” In addition to Randall, other producers like Goldie and Hype would go to De Underground and have sessions in their studio.

In jungle you could hear a track in a rave, and try to find it, only to discover that it was a dubplate. Like the MC, the dubplate culture of jungle was inherited from the sound system.

Dubplates were highly limited pressings of tracks cut on acetate disc used to gauge their popularity on the dancefloor before committing to a pressing of thousands. According to Jumping Jack Frost, they could only be played about “30 or 40 times” before their sound degraded. Producers would take a DAT tape to a pressing and mastering studio like the legendary Music House in Tottenham Hale to cut a dubplate.

These would only be given to a select few DJs, notably, Grooverider, whom Flight recalls as always having the “brand spanking new cutting edge stuff.” Producers would religiously attend Metalheadz every week alongside ravers “just to hear other people’s dubplates.”

A thriving dubplate culture in jungle was one of the factors that kept everything sounding new and exciting. Different DJs had different dubplates and at Rage or Metalheadz you would hear loads of tunes that had been made that week and pressed that very night. Goldie describes the continual process: “You’d get an idea from a rave, go to a studio to try and create something on Monday. Mix it on Tuesday. Get it together on Thursday. Cut it on a dubplate on Friday and take it to give to a DJ to play.”

Some describe the period from 1992 to 1996 as jungle’s golden years. Especially after the genre’s 1994 crossover to the mainstream and national chart success. Tracks like ‘Incredible’ by M-Beat with General Levy and ‘Original Nuttah’ by Shy FX and UK Apache even landed a place in the UK Top 40 chart. ‘Incredible’ spent over three months in the national charts and peaked at number eight.

The success of jungle brought attention from the police, the press, and the major labels. The police accused the jungle scene, especially the pirate radio stations, of being involved with organised crime and fronting events where drug dealers could thrive. It would be ludicrous to say that there was no drugs or violence in the clubs, but violence, gangsters, drugs and alcohol have always had a close relationship with night clubs. Jungle was no different to any other UK dance genre.

Whilst the media was busy trying to pigeonhole jungle, the genre continued to branch out simultaneously into several different areas. The atmospheric beauty of Goldie; the slightly laid-back sound coming from Bristol artists Roni Size and DJ Krust. The jazz-infused tones of LTJ Bukem; the liquefied basslines of Fabio; the ominous dark sounds of Motive Unknown; the R’n’B-tinged fury of DJ Ron. All these things were evolving, producing beautiful music. Flight comments: “Jungle changed from many different angles. Some of the changes were by design and some were kind of forced on the music.”

A decision was made to rebrand, and a new version of an old name - drum’n’bass - began to circulate. It was under this new name that Roni

Size and Reprazent won the Mercury Prize for their debut album ‘New Forms’ – a record that went on to become the best-selling drum’n’bass album of all time.

Jungle enraptured some music and popular culture writers, like the late Mark Fisher, but was largely ignored by most music journalists until just after the mid-90s. Fuelled by the mainstream success of Goldie’s ‘Timeless’, which was backed by a major label campaign, and the constant carousel of celebrities at Goldie’s Metalheadz Sunday Sessions, jungle became very cool indeed. For Flight the audience changed at Metalheadz after magazines like Dazed & Confused and i-D decided that drum’n’bass was “trendy” and started to cover the music. “Once they took hold of it you just saw a whole different type of person going out.”

The story of jungle does not end there. After being shadow banned out of the mainstream for the more palatable drum’n’bass, jungle merely went back underground to the smaller venues that it had called home in the early days. Though drum’n’bass evolved in exciting and wonderful ways with artists like Adam F, Pendulum and Noisia, it seemed to lose all the multicultural conviviality of the early jungle scene. For Reid Speed the new dark sound that was being pushed in the US: “shrivelled up the scene”.

Flight describes the sound losing its “soul” and becoming “very cold and dark”. The composition of its ravers became homogenised. Women and Black people abandoned the sound in droves. DJ Hype describes how the composition of ravers went from “multicultural girls” where “everyone is raving” to “white guys with their tops off.”154_DISCO_POGO

Grooverider, Fabio, Cleveland Watkiss.

Securely back underground, jungle just kept on going. It also went international, sending DJs and MCs all around the world. Then its popularity started to build up with old favourites like Roast and Jungle Mania still going strong alongside new club nights like Rupture, which was launched in 2006 by DJs/producers Mantra and Double O. Stretch from foundational label AKO Beatz reminisces how the new jungle night inspired him.

“2013, I went to Rupture, totally blown away by the music,” he says. “Left there knowing in my heart that if this is what’s going on, I can safely come back and make [the] music I want to make again.”

In recent times jungle has caught the ear of a new generation of producers and DJs. Goldie states: “We’ve already got the next generation of young people like Nia Archives and Tim Reaper making music so it’s just going to keep going.”

Flight agrees: “People have tried to write the music off so many times over the years. It’s just become its own entity. It’s become its own and our own thing.”

DJ/producers like SHERELLE, Tim Reaper, Coco Bryce, Sully, and Nia Archives – who memorably declared the past hot few months as “the summer of jungle” – are keeping one foot in the past whilst simultaneously pushing things forward. Mantra believes this is because jungle’s golden years were perhaps not long enough.

“I think when you have a lot of new producers revisiting that sound,” he argues, “maybe there was a little bit more to discover.”

So jungle is back, though it would tell you that it never went anywhere. The bass is still dropping low, the breakbeats are flying high.