Jungle Rhythms

Also bit WOW @ the Radical Sound and Dub Technicians tunes. Any time I think I've heard it all with jungle things like these come along and I realize I've still got so far to go (which is a good thing obv).

*big WOW

that "what is love" mix's directly from Jungle Soundclash Volume 1

Strictly hardcore!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvMZYz5HoCs

this is one of my favorites, i don't think it sounded quite as generic as it sounds now in 1994 BUT what happens at about 3:15 is still amazing to me (and even though the first part is kinda undistinguished i like the hook enough)

if you compare it though to something like remarc though bizzy b's drum edits are way more brutal and they snarl like detuned synth almost, in remarc there's quite a lot of slightly dated isolated percussion hits (sorry metalheadz)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Qm1F3Z_YnI

at the beginning its like the speakers are firing missiles at you

does what it says on the tin, but ...

(the melody slips out and back) "under from a bass drum"? "thunder from a bass drum"? "wonder from a bass drum"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t5Cr2tForc

^^ kinda like autechre until the diva shows up ... and then its like autechre again for a split second and then it just turns into seasick drum rolls

fukin tune! wikid upload --

SKYTZOO

for a second you think the diva's coming back in but then its just the sound of brain cells dying

actually maybe that's why some people hate jungle, it's too much like IDM

on one hand i had to log in to flag the most-liked comment on youtube ("dj rape lol")

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1YtJFBObQQ

on the other hand

http://goldenerajungle.net/mixes/rap/xdjrapx.jpg

The fanboys getting very hot under the collar

― mmmm

while we're getting anachronistic, i believe i detect some early todd terry infuence sneak in around 2:22, gets especially pronounced about 20 seconds later

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7nbPUNxFKE&feature=related

i love how the toms and stuff are folded into the break, otherwise its not that special except it has the sexiest breakdown ever, somehow turns amens into trance snare rolls and it doesn't suck

and here's the "dj rap get raw remix"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ggzXMp8tsc&feature=related

early techstep w/o the dred bass

euphoria + techstep = cyberdelic?

unfortunately she kind of only had a talent for the breakdowns

she does do a good trick at the end of some bars though where the drums mimic little tiny scratches and rewinds

Belated uuuuhhhh at What is Love. Restraint, nonrestraint.

one more

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFzzec3gl98&feature=relmfu

^^ very psychedelic about 3 mins in

i tried the radical sounds one and the beats actively bother me, in a bad way. there's no...pulse to it, it's just all over the place and i can't make sense of it in my head. i like the bass though and would probably like a house remix without those beats. sorry :/

this thread has only made me realise that when i've enjoyed bits of jungle in the past it's because i was basically ignoring the beats, when i actually focus on them i can't enjoy any of it.

haha it's okay lex i'm resigned to this now. Thanks for trying again!

He's just being willful.

Been playing this one an awful lot recently:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5BuitZ-_A8

Sort of like Music Box's slightly more melancholy cousin.
(Not aiming at conversion here, just felt like posting it).

this thread has only made me realise that when i've enjoyed bits of jungle in the past it's because i was basically ignoring the beats, when i actually focus on them i can't enjoy any of it.

it also explains pretty neatly where our opinions on funky tunes differ radically - it's not just a "rhythm nerd vs sonics nerd" thing, it's that the bits I find the most exciting you are actively tuned off by. "House Girls 6" being an apt example.

In some ways funky expresses a direct line of descent from jungle that bypasses uk garage, in that at its most rhythmically perverse it explores a kind of constructive messiness (but not too messy - that's always the tension) that was very rarely part of garage's make-up (though there are exceptions).

the ne plus ultra of funky for me was always the initial wave of do you mind/in the air/falling again. the vocals and melodies and textures. i don't actually think i ever loved a funky house tune for its rhythm. dump a more straightforward beat behind them and i'd pretty much get the exact same things out of the music.

which is why i find even the best funky instrumentals just...okay, rather than best thing ever. i would rather hear ill blu remixes of the entire top 40 before an ill blu vocal-free ep again.

He's just being willful.

i don't even know what this means. i'm pretending not to like jungle?

hmm it sounds a little bit like bragging that you only read books for the verbs

"i only care about plot and characters - you could write "to the lighthouse" in 19th century vernacular and i'd be happy"

the ne plus ultra of funky for me was always the initial wave of do you mind/in the air/falling again. the vocals and melodies and textures. i don't actually think i ever loved a funky house tune for its rhythm. dump a more straightforward beat behind them and i'd pretty much get the exact same things out of the music.

― lex pretend, Monday, 9 April 2012 11:04 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, see, I love all three of those tunes but "In The Air" and "Falling Again" are (already) rhythmically so straightforward that they could never sum up what I love about funky - or not what I love about funky specifically at any rate.

It's a similar issue with a lot of rhythmically straightforward jungle tunes - as much as I adore Alex Reece's "Pulp Fiction", Lamb's "Gorecki (Global Communications Remix)", Doc Scott's "Shadowboxing", Boymerang's "Still", Dom & Roland's "Can't Punish Me" and Lexis' "Destination Unknown", they're too linear to be the tunes that spring to mind when I think of what I love about jungle.

Though that Gorecki remix is probably a tune that you would get with Lex.

i remember not really liking the "gorecki" original back in the day!

"i only care about plot and characters - you could write "to the lighthouse" in 19th century vernacular and i'd be happy"

there was a minor discussion on one of the music compression threads about what people get out of films, actually - for me plot and character are absolutely paramount. obv i care about cinematography but it's rarely the thing i go to get excited about. people who get excited about set design baffle me.

not gonna lie, while i've loved a lot of funky since that initial wave, the failure of the genre to recapture what i loved about it has def been a source of annoyance.

i'm not sure how i can so easily appreciate, say, "stupid hoe" as a beat qua beat though when rhythmic complexity in jungle and funky is a distraction at best.

i don't even know what this means. i'm pretending not to like jungle?

Just find it hard to believe at a certain point that you could listen to so much UK dance music (hardcore continuum, etc.), and not be into jungle. I guess it's entirely possible, but that whole lineage seems to be entirely about rhythm...

But it's about which bits of UK dance music I've loved and the different types of rhythm. 2-step and grime both tend to use much steadier, pulsier beats - and the singers/songs and MCs are front and centre. As discussed elsewhere the UK dance I like most atm is textural rather than rhythmic in appeal. UK dance music post-jungle pretty effectively removes the biggest obstacle about jungle for me, ie the focus on undanceable rhythms that just code as "wacky" and purposeless to me

i'm just saying that i don't think rhythm and melody and harmony and lyrics etc etc are as separable as this conversation is making them out to be, not any point about what you pay attention to or whether you should like jungle or not

guess i should come clean and say i sympathise with lex for the most part - obv not to the rhetorical lengths he's gone to but nevertheless the mystical boners jungle rhythms seem to provide many have always eluded me somewhat

in particular i recall studying the metalheadz oeuvre at length round the time of whenever yall polled it and feeling very "if u say so"

idk, not to dip a toe too far into the shallow waters of self-mythology but my first feeling is i am maybe one more for "juxtaposition" personally, whatever it is i mean by that

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIMQjLuG0OY

lex will you concur with me that this magnificent tune is a triumph greater than any other posted heretofore?

HAHA i actually heard that nookie mix of 'the dreamer' vahid posted this very weekend flicking thru the car radio dial!! but er i spent the entirety of the rhythm bit racking my brains where i knew the sample from

geir to thread

Granted I've really just dipped my toes into it here and there, but one thing I've always found somewhat unsatisfying about jungle is how bifurcated it can feel, like, here's the busy drum part here and there are the elements floating on top of it. They relate to each other but don't really coalesce and interact, as if the drums just take up so much space in the track that the rest can't do much other than drift or poke at them a little here and there. It's as if rhythmic complexity has been reduced to drum complexity, which is a pretty simplistic reading of rhythm if you ask me, and I also don't really understand the idea of someone not being into jungle automatically being labeled "not a rhythm guy"--I love the way house and techno can involve all sorts of rhythms rubbing up against each other, rhythms that aren't just in the drums but are grounded by them. (My favorite jungle tracks, ironically, have been ones that do away with non-drum elements nearly entirely.)

Not really in keeping with the original spirit of the thread but here is the Global Communication Remix of "Gorecki" - only the finest in hypnotic linear d&b. Nb. not for juxtaposition folks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBMaBYE-Awo

not gonna lie, while i've loved a lot of funky since that initial wave, the failure of the genre to recapture what i loved about it has def been a source of annoyance.

I guess where I struggle with this a bit is that it's asking for funky to have basically stayed subservient to us vocal house mores forever. Which wouldn't have been a bad thing per se but there is a lot of us vocal house and it's not going anywhere. I'm not sure that the same thing but with British divas is enough really by itself to sustain an exciting long term genre.

I always loved that stuff within the context of all the rougher instrumental material (which was always there since the end of 2007 at the latest), but without that sense of dynamic I don't think I could ever have fallen so completely head over heels in love with the style to the point where it became a raison d'etre.

The only analogue I can think of offhand is if speed garage had basically settled into being Tuff Jam permanently.

They relate to each other but don't really coalesce and interact, as if the drums just take up so much space in the track that the rest can't do much other than drift or poke at them a little here and there. It's as if rhythmic complexity has been reduced to drum complexity, which is a pretty simplistic reading of rhythm if you ask me

By the way Clarke FYI this is very very very very very wrong.

i am maybe one more for "juxtaposition" personally, whatever it is i mean by that

this is an amazing sentence

(i will give that a listen later, i can listen to stuff in this office but i'm not quite sure which thing the headphones go in) (i haven't listened to everything on this thread though, i got dispirited quite early on, also bored)

xpost:

The best jungle really operates according to an entirely different logic to that I think (responding to yr post lex): this sounds naff or cliched but the beats become the storyteller, and the melodic and textural motifs become the supporting framework like the beat would be in a pop tune; it's like an inversion of the normal structure of popular rhythmic music.

― Tim F, Wednesday, October 26, 2011 10:55 AM (5 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the beats become the storyteller, and the melodic and textural motifs become the supporting framework

sorry Tim but I now can't help hearing this as Nate Dogg singing "the rhythm is the bass and the bass is the treble"

except the rhythm being the bass and the bass being the treble is a far more attractive proposition both conceptually and as it actually sounded

Tim, I did love that Radical Sound track you posted and said was the best jungle tune ever. I love the way you can focus / move to seemingly any beat division: half-note, quarter-note, eighth, sixteenth--there's an internal logic to the beats as they progress that is beyond my current pre-caffeinated ability to articulate.

x-post: Regarding your quote above about melodic and textural motifs becoming the supporting framework, I see that. I don't care much about melody in my dance music, but texture is a huge thing for me--individual sounds--and I feel like much of the jungle I've heard is a little feeble in the sonics department.