Drum and bass has been variously described as "the music of the future" (Roni Size), or "the sound of someone chucking a canteen of cutlery down a lift-shaft" (my mate Tony). Whichever way you hold it up, though, it’s without question the most innovative, forward-looking and (groan) fashionable sub-genre of dance music existing right now. Also, for the time being at least, all of its leading practitioners are native to this septic isle. The object of this exercise, then, is to give you, dear reader, some idea of where it’s coming from, where it’s going to, and where the hell it’s at right now. Whilst I firmly believe that it’s more fun to discover something for yourself than to be led by the hand o it, there seems little point in telling you how great all this stuff is and then not telling you where to hear it. With this in mind, I have bowed to journalistic convention and included a (very subjective) shopping list of records that will hopefully give you a flavour of some of the stuff talked about herein.
It must have been sometime in 1991, when what was known as the rave scene was becoming more and more fragmented, that drum and bass began to take shape. Although the roots can be traced back a little further than that, ‘91 was when the drugs started to get stranger and the music followed suit. It wasn’t uncommon to go to a do back then and hear DJ’s playing hour upon hour of records that sounded like a whole street’s worth of car alarms going off all at once. At the time, I have to admit, I thought that most of it was horrible, but, looking back, an awful lot of it has proved to be massively influential in its effect on the development of d’n’b. Not least, the output of R&S Records. Based in Ghent, Belgium, they made their name putting out what was known as "hardcore" (as in house, rather than as defined by Fugazi, Bad Brains etc.). Releases like the "Beltram Vols I & II" EP’s by Brooklyn-born DJ/producer Joey Beltram, "Horsepower" by CJ Bolland, and "Mentasm" by Second Phase (a collaboration between Beltram & fellow Brooklynite Mundo Muzique) quickly became established classics of the genre ("Mentasm" was also notable for pioneering the use of the "hoover" sound, a nasty analogue belch that became the trademark of thousands of dodgy rave records). At Heaven, a club underneath the arches in Charing Cross, at a Monday nighter called Rage, DJ’s like Fabio and Grooverider, Colin Dale and Colin Faver were playing these records and countless other, and people over here were having a crack at a similar thing. Shut Up And Dance, who’d began life as one of the better UK hip-hop acts of the time, had the inspired notion of bolting hyped-up breaks to yer basic Belgian hardcore sound, itself a more dancefloor-friendly version of that pioneered by the likes of Front 242. Something was stirring in the lab...
S.U.A.D. released a swathe of records by themselves, and acts like the Ragga Twins and Nicolette, chocka with uncleared samples and with a pronounced reggae influence, which more or less became the template for drum and bass; nagglingly familiar hooks and sounds, heavyweight basslines in the great sound system tradition, and furiously sped-up drum breaks stolen from records that were standard-issue for just about any old-school New York hip-hop DJ. Around the same time, an outfit called 4-Hero released Mr. Kirk’s Nightmare, a cut which contained the same basic elements as S.U.A.D’s output, along with an aggravatingly-memorable sample of dialogue taken from a 1950’s "Reefer Madness"-type movie, which ran thus; "Mr. Kirk - come down to the station-house. Your son is dead. He died of a drugs overdose". Mmmm - nice! In Yorkshire, Warp Records had been putting out some very strange stuff since the tailend of ‘89. "Dextrous" and "I’m For Real" by Nightmares on Wax, and "Track With No Name/Shall We?" by the Forgemasters are often-overlooked slabs of robotic funky house that inspired umpteen d’n’b pioneers, whilst "The Theme" by Unique III used a broadly similar m.o. to S.U.A.D.; fat hip-hop beats and bowel-loosening sub-bass were back on the menu. These, and other, records, in particular Meat Beat Manifesto’s awesome "Radio Babylon", set the pattern for much of what followed up until 1993, when the ante was upped in spectacular fashion.
"Terminator" was the debut release from a Birmingham-born graffiti artist, b-boy, jewellery designer, "Rage" regular and all-round renaissance man called Goldie, which, along with "Music" by LTJ Bukem, blasted the genre into another dimension. "Terminator" was almost industrial-sounding, with an insane, looping break and soundbites from the Arnie movie that inspired it, whilst "Music" fused eerie chimes and ethereal string pads with a ridiculously funky James Brown beat. Both had an immeasurable effect in shaking off the cheesy hardcore raver image that the music had been saddled with, leaving the way clear for labels like Reinforced (the home of 4-Hero) and Moving Shadow to further pursue the more experimental direction many of their acts were beginning to take. It was roughly at this point that the term "jungle" came into use. Open to a great deal of misinterpretation, its’ coining is generally attributed to Fabio, long-time DJ partner of Grooverider, and was meant to refer to the "urban jungle" the music was supposedly a product of, although some people were uncomfortable with its alleged racist overtones. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, no sooner did the media begin to use the term to define a music they’d spent years either ignoring or taking the piss out of, than producers & DJs sought to disassociate themselves from it. Since many came from the sound system tradition of reggae, soul & hip-hop, the term "drum and bass", describing the the fundamentals of the sound, sat easier with many. Another thing that changed the face of the music was the release of Akai’s S-1000 sampler. This extraordinary piece of hardware meant that vocal samples and drum breaks would no longer sound like Minnie Mouse duetting with the Duracell bunny, one of the more grating aspects of the genre’s earliest examples, and the music took a gargantuan leap forward.
Around 1994, drum and bass started to generate serious attention beyond its own circles. Tunes like "Jazz Thing" by Roni Size, with it use of an obscure Lonnie Liston Smith sample, began to turn the heads of influential London DJs/record label A&Rs such as James Lavelle, Gilles Peterson and Ross Allen. Goldie had already established his Metalheadz imprint, putting out classics like "Your Sound" by J. Majik (son of the director of photography on "Alien") and "Far Away" by Doc Scott, a veteran of the Midlands rave scene. In Hornchurch, Essex, the spiritual home of "rave", Andy Clarke (PKA Andy C) and Ant Miles were releasing enduring floorfillers like "Valley of the Shadows" by Origin Unknown, and the staggering "Sound Control" by Randall via their Ram and Liftin’ Spirits imprints. Moving Shadow and Reinforced continued to forge their own path with a consistent stream of releases by Omni Trio and 4-Hero respectively, and the massive "Helicopter Tune" by Deep Blue (a.k.a. DJ Ray Keith, who already had an acknowledged classic to his credit with "Terrorist" under the name Renegade) proved to be one of the biggest releases in Moving Shadow’s history. By 1995, Goldie had released the first album by a drum and bass artist on a major, namely "Timeless", as well as notching up a Top 40 hit with "Inner City Life". Drum and bass was now officially flavour of the month.
If you’ve been keeping half and eye on the music press to any extent since then, you more or less know what happened next; popstar/media babe status for Goldie, critical plaudits a-go-go for Roni Size & the V Recordings/Full Cycle collective, every no-hoper with a record deal getting a drum and bass remix, and all those remixers getting record deals. Frankly, it would be impossible to tell you about every great record or artist that this music has produced, so in true lazy-hack fashion, I’m going to take a few short cuts. Listed below are some significant artists, labels and compilations that you ought to investigate if you have more than a passing interest in drum and bass. The idea is that you start off with the familiar names, come across some unfamiliar ones, and discover some incredible music in the process. All of those listed below are consistently good in terms of output, and come strongly recommended by yours truly. Most of the compilations should be available in your friendly neighbourhood megastore. As for the twelves - if you still buy vinyl, that is - you can avoid being intimidated by moody counterstaff in specialist shops by trying somewhere like Rough Trade, whose back-catalogue of drum and bass is both comprehensive and impressive. Happy hunting.
LTJ Bukem: Logical Progression # 1 (ffrr compilation), Horizons (Looking Good 12"), Music (Good Looking 12")
Photek: The Water Margin (Photek 12"), UFO/Rings Around Saturn (Photek 12"), The Hidden Camera EP (Science/Virgin double 12"/CD), Natural Born Killers (Metalheadz 12"), Modus Operandi (Science/Virgin LP)
Goldie: Terminator (Synthetic 12"), Timeless (ffrr LP)
Roni Size: Jazz Thing (Full Cycle 12"), Breakbeat Era [as Scorpio] (Full Cycle 12"), New Forms (Talkin’ Loud LP), Share The Fall (Talkin’ Loud 12"). See also Full Cycle/V Recordings.
4-Hero: Earth Pioneers (Talking Loud LP), Jacob’s Optical Stairway [as same] (R&S LP)
Source Direct: The Crane (Source Direct 12"), Snake Style (Source Direct 12"), Stonekiller/Web of Sin (Metalheadz 12")
COMPILATIONS (LABEL-BASED)
V Recordings: V Classic
Full Cycle Recordings: Music Box
Metalheadz: Platinum Breakz vols I & II
Moving Shadow: The Joint vol. II, Blueprint: The Definitive Moving Shadow Album - also any LP by Omni Trio or Foul Play
Ram Records: The Speed of Sound
Certificate 18: Hidden Rooms
VARIOUS ARTISTS/DJ MIX COMPILATIONS
Promised Land vol III (Higher Limits)
Artcore vols I-IV (React)
World Dance - The Drum and Bass Experience (Dino)
AWOL Live (Ministry of Sound)
Total Science vols I&II (Blackmarket/MCA)
The Prototype Years (Higher Ground/Sony)
Quango Sport (Quango/Island)
