Jungle/D&B: Dead or Alive?/Search & Destroy

haha big dapper inna ned raggett-stylee.

keith are you looking for a full-on retrospective? or just recent stuff? (apologies if this was made clear in yr question, it's still early for me.)

Alive and thriving, I think. There have been reports of its death for years, but good records keep coming out in large numbers. For me, D&B is probably second only to hip hop if I were to count the number of tunes I've loved by genre in recent years. There are probably more strong albums nowadays than there were in the mid-'90s, if that is any criterion. Best D&B album ever was DJ Teebee's Through The Eyes Of A Scorpion, from 2001. The best new tune I've heard lately is Fierce and Bad Company's (I dunno how to do their weird symbol, and you know I'm not talking about Rogers and Ralphs and whoever) Innocence. There are strong and interesting side areas like the poppier stuff Tim mentions; the more soulful material - I think the likes of Addiction and Carlito will be big names soon; and the garagey end, where the best exponent is Zinc. The new Polar stuff sounds great (Norway is on top form!), and I bought the new Lemon D & Dillinja album today, though I haven't had the chance to listen to it yet.

It's asking a lot but: full-on retrospective.

Particularly: what directions has it gone in since neurofunk, and what tracks are the very best examples of these directions?

I went to a jungle night last friday at the End and it was ace - lots of good darkside stuff, real blast from the past. DJ Trace played, and even dropped Mutant Revisited!

The biggest problem I find with drum and bass is that the good stuff is not easy to find for a few reasons.

1. More than any other genre of mix music, there seems to be an absolute premium on many dnb tunes being kept to white label or limited issue on singles.

2. Many dnb artists don't seem to translate to a albums quite as well. Many seem to get into other genres and styles and honestly that music doesn't work as well as what they do best, this makes their full lengths spotty.

3. At least living in the US, alot of the British dnb CDs are hard as hell to find and when you do find them, they are freakin way expensive. The indies that do this music just don't seem to have as good distribution as some of the other labels.

4. Like hiphop, dnb suffers from production cloning. Someone comes up with an interesting style, within a few months there are everyone plays it out by basically copying what has been done, weakening what made the originals good.

At least this is what I have noticed being interested in this music, living in the middle of nowhere in the USA.