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....