nu tru, tru nu - "a nod to the sound of my teenage self"

Press release for Inversion, the new album from Om Unit, which is on Metalheadz, and is also about Metalheadz:  

"Om Unit was schooled via Metalheadz. Although he earned his stripes via Hip Hop as DJ 2Tall it was breakbeat-hardcore and Jungle that shaped his attitude towards electronic music and the ferocious trail blazing of the Metalheadz crew was an undoubted inspiration....
  

Om Unit tells us how the project was conceived: “The project is really for me, a nod to sound of my teenage self. I’d been speaking to Goldie about this project for some time and had begun work on series of sonic sketches with a feel to making a collection of work for Metalheadz when, to sweeten the deal, Goldie gave me access to some DATs out of his studio as well as some other sample collections from his archive which I gladly used as Salt n Pepper to spice up the work, for example on ‘Bardo Realms’ there is the sound of Goldie vocalising an ‘Ahhhhhh’ which is probably about 10-15 years old, I love the thought of that. I have been truly blessed to be able to put this project together and to be welcomed into the fold so readily. This project is not an exercise in technical skill, nor a showcase or automated sound design. It’s a blueprint of what could be another way”


Not from Inversion, but Om Unit trak pointing towards it?




"what we gonna do right here is go back - way back" - quite!

The Om Unit - a nod to Omni Trio?

By coincidence - in the previous post's comments, Daze of Reality recommends "Shells For Gantz" as one of the better war dubs - and it turns out to be by Om Unit






coda: thought this entry from Fact's third quarter report on the 20 Best Albums of the Last Three Months (and things are getting out of hand with these summations of the year so far - what next, 20 Best Albums of the Last Month?), an entry on Sully's neo-jungle / retro-jungle Blue on Keysound, almost deconstructed itself, or cancelled itself out, as a set of claims and proleptic parries of objections and counter-arguments: 

"Jungle revivalism might have been flogged half to death, but it’s even hard to argue with Sully’s Blue, simply because he absolutely nails the brief. There’s something unquestionably authentic about his set of throwback anthems, from the crisp crunchiness of the drums to the bright and garish suite of synths. Blue is more than revisionist nostalgia for a sound thirtysomethings wish had never disappeared, it’s actually a handful of tracks that capture exactly what was so good about jungle in the first place."

the argument is, it's more than nostalgia, simply because it's so thoroughly achieved as an act of nostalgia?

still - given that my last post veered from rejecting retro-grime to embracing retro-junglizm without embarrassment, i can hardly claim to have sorted out my feelings on this subject....

tru jungle

Steeve Cross directs me to this monster slab of "new-old" jungle  -- "all current productions"

Says that people are starting to call it "tru jungle"

Funny that - reminds me of that keep-the-faith compilation of Detroit techno that Eddie Flashin' Fowlkes put together, True People.

Apparently these are the fruits of playful war between producers -   "various UK jungle lords taking aim at each other and firing tongue-n-cheek shots through rudeboi flex tracks", triggered by a tweet from "London-via-New Zealand junglist, Epoch".

A deliberate echo of the war dubs thing with grime last year 

Which I just completely didn't bother with...  

Overall the new instrumental grime thing leaves me pretty cold.... 

You'd read all these pieces and most of the time there'd be simply no mention of  the notion of grime as an MC-based art form.... 

Barely a nod to the fact that even the most unhingedly avant Terror Danjah or Wiley beats were designed as MC tools...  were only completed when spat over live on the pirates or at those rare club / rave events

It all seemed like nu-IDM's latest incursion - expanding into territory vacated by the nuum's core demographic (who'd moved into first funky, now deep tech)

Taking a form of music that was a tool of individual and social expression  and converting it into stand-alone sound-sculptures for aesthetic contemplation by the isolated ear

Anything with ‘nu’ in front of is, of course, by definition not new.  Oh it can be entertaining to listen to, through its exaggeration of the formal features of grime / eski. But it lacks the feral quality of original grime - the terror and the danger. 

In the end, it might as well be muzak. 

And some of it was outright retrogrime.  Take this one particular Logos tune - basically a mash-up of ‘Cockback’ and ‘Pulse X'

Beautifully produced, of course, but what’s the point? Lived through this already, thanks!

Logos was upfront about the nostalgia, though, so fair play perhaps:

“The title ‘Cold Mission’ is a nod to 4Hero”, Logos explained in a press release. “It was one of their aliases – and that whole era of London retro futuristic music.... It’s also a reference to Digital’s ‘Special Mission’ and ‘Mission Accomplished’, both form part of a run of paranoid late ‘90s jungle masterpieces the equal of Tricky or Massive Attack..... I’m interested in tracing the links between classic Metalheadz productions and early grime, especially the more angular stuff Slimzee played, but integrated in to a roughly 130bpm club context.  A lot of the album is informed by nostalgia for pirate radio grime and the sense of loss I feel for that period – 2002 felt like a much simpler time.”


Back to tru jungle - as regressive pleasures go, all good fun. Blasting biznizz. Wish I was strong enough to resist it, reject it....  

original come to boom it up

"we're walking in the air
while people down below
are sleeping as we fly"

"music's hypnotizing"

and it's haitch with a hot

STIFF AS AN ARD ON

junglisssss