In the late 90s drum & bass music was completely new to me. I’d skipped almost all of the jungle era, having much more likely to have been wearing an unwashed Kurt Cobain t-shirt at that time. Grouchily. So 90s. When I did finally catch the bug, my favourite thing to do was to go crate digging for used records, mainly because I fancied myself as a modern day DJ Shadow for a period that may be personally embarrassing to note. That didn’t really work out. Any-hew, I vividly recall a trip to a completely random and long-since demolished second hand store hidden away in the back alleys of Christchurch, New Zealand – the very last place in the world you would expect to find any No U Turn castoffs… a correct assumption as it turned out.

Underneath a pile of used hats I uncovered a dusty cache of forlorn late 80s and early 90s rave music. At this time I was still not fully clued up on what, if any, connection this type of music had to drum and bass, but I knew enough to realise that there were probably some lucky gems in the stack if I was prepared to school myself on what they were. So, without listening to the records or recognising much about anything on the labels, I walked away with a shopping bag full of crusty rave vinyls for about $1 each. That is not a lot of New Zealand money FYI.

When I got home, in amongst a disappointingly large number of boring techno and house oonst oonst shit, there were several records that really piqued my interest. They all sounded pretty random – as if the makers had taken every single idea they had in their heads that day and put them down to music. And yet, there was an unmistakable and familiar energy about them. They were all breakbeat driven tracks, albeit much slower than the fast dnb tunes I was used to hearing. The intro – breakdown – drop structure was in place. There were amen breaks, those weird tiny uh-huh’s, and big rave hoovers that I incorrectly assumed were contemporary aspects of drum and bass circa 2000. But these were like from 1992 or so…? Head explodes!

The records turned out to be:

How on earth these classics turned up at the arse end of the antipodes will forever be a mystery to me, but they marked my own personal, belated, discovery of hardcore and jungle. Thank you random DJ whomever you were. I hope those records facilitated your score that week or some such other life urgency.

Since then,  starting with the 150 Volts release, I pretty much inadvertently wound up with a full run of the entire Ruff Quality label. It’s kinda cool for me to finally spend some time with these tracks as I must have acquired them all as random pieces within much larger record orders. I honestly can’t ever recall having listened to most of them prior to this.

So this post is a serendipitous follow up to my previous one on Red Light Records – both Red Light and Ruff Quality being Shut Up and Dance sub-labels. Ruff Quality pre-dates Red Light by some time however. All of its releases came out in 1992, serving up hardcore on a more experimental tip than SUAD might otherwise have put out on the main label. Ruff Quality provides us with the production output of some interesting characters, including but not limited to the aforementioned 150 Volts (an early Stu Allen alias), Konspiracy – an alias for the combo of MC Duke and DJ Leader 1 (aka e.kude/I.C.3), The Good Fellas aka DJ Red, and what looks like the first ever release from the soon-to-be-prolific jungle don DJ Dextrous.

The tracks are, in general, fairly unpolished but there’s something about the hardcore era when people were just throwing tracks together from all sorts of bits and pieces and cheeky samples that really appeals. My favourite release on Ruff Quality BY FAR is the Cosmic Brian 12″. There are two different mixes of the slick ‘Far From A River’ – I love the rolling breaks on this and the energetic synth line. The cheese pianos I can take or leave but I think this is a really solid hardcore tune that has stood the test of time. It still sounds great and is fun to mix. The other two tunes on the release are great too… two slabs of hardcore mentalism with a ton of variation and experimentation. Highly recommended 12″ – yes, we’re still listening to these in 2016   ‘150 Volts‘ is another standout for me. Hidden away on the b-side of relatively famous tune, 150 Volts is a minimalist dark(ish) roller that sits in the mix quite well with older jungle tunes if you can tolerate pitching it up.

Ruff Quality wouldn’t be a buy-on-sight old school label for me, but if you’re into quirky, creative hardcore then I’d definitely recommend that you give them a go at least. Best thing is, all of the records are still dirt cheap. All told, I’m quite happy with how the mix turned out. Some of these old tunes are seriously banging, even today. Enjoy!

Konspiracy – Police Tottenham

Download MP3 320kbps 50 mins

In and around 1994 the jungle scene was changing. Even though the sound had never been more popular there was internal division as to how the sound should be progressed. In one camp sat those who believed that the way forward was to eschew the trappings of hardcore rave tunes, stop the reliance on sampling each others’ music, and to move towards a more technical and considered approach. This direction led to the evolution of techstep and eventually neurofunk in the mid-late 90s. Similarly, there were those who believed the future lay in richer and more original musical arrangements, taking influence from jazz, classical music, and contemporary music in general. These were the antecedents of jazzstep in the mid 90s and then liquid drum and bass later on.

At the same time, there was still a significant demand for punter-friendly dancefloor tunes that retained the Jamaican soundclash-style ragga influences that had been a notable component of jungle and hardcore tunes since the beginning. These influences were often among the first that were let go by so-called ‘intelligent jungle’ producers as markers of an outmoded style. As a result, despite being wildly popular, ragga jungle existed almost on its own as a separate branch of jungle music – and so the annoying tendency to categorise every jungle/drum and bass track within very narrow, arbitrary and obscure subgenres (as I have just done!) began.

Red Light was set up in 1994 by rave pioneers Shut Up and Dance as an outlet for the ragga-style jungle tunes they were making at the time. Aka PJ and Smiley, Shut Up and Dance released numerous early rave scene classics on their SUAD label. Unfortunately, at the height of their success, SUAD were made an example of by the music industry for using uncleared samples on the monster hit Raving I’m Raving. Although this didn’t cause the label to completely shut down, it’s clear that the episode had an effect on SUAD’s output from then on. As such, Red Light became something of a safe haven – a cozy jungle sandpit where SUAD could continue to do their thing in their own fashion, with limited run releases, away from the glare of scene politics and the distractions that can bring. This mix features the output of those sessions.

I wont go too far into the history of SUAD but if you want to read more there is a brilliant in-depth interview with PJ himself over at Blogtotheoldskool. SUAD h

ave their own website too.

All of the releases on Red Light share a particularly unified sound thanks to shared and heavy sampling of various Jamiacan sound clash tapes across all of the tracks. If you took a shot for every time the same “Massive!”, “Get me!”, and “Oh God!” samples surface in the mix this month you’d be a dead man three times over.

There are two big anthems on Red Light. Coca Cola is a straight up ragga tune well-known for sampling the vocals from Simpleton’s Coca Cola Shape but Bastards is something else… instantly recognisable by its “Keep jumpin’ ya bastards!” vocal sample (by PJ himself) the clattering breaks and heavy warp bass smash forward to create the perfect dancefloor smasher. “We’re stompin now!” indeed.

Another Red Light release that I must shout out is Hunt and Seek / Selekta. Both tracks are similar to Bastards in that they hit hard, and bass sits really well in the mix. On Selekta in particular the breakbeat choppage is just ridiculous. As with most of the Red Light tunes, Selekta is bare bones, often just one or two channels running at the same time (drums and bass!). But what SUAD do within those limitations is true Amen artistry. Highly recommended! Here’s this other blogger who bigs up Selekta.

So, in summary, all of the Red Light releases are well worth tracking down. They’re probably the most pure examples “ragga jungle” you are ever likely to find, and they were doing it first alongside only a very small number of other labels at the time… Suburban Base, Tearin Vinyl, etc. Unfortunately due to th

eir limited nature, most releases on Red Light seem to be undergoing the dreaded Discogs price-gouging right now and are not cheap. Upwards of £50 seems to be about standard which is a fair chunk of change for a crusty jungle record. Despite this, any Red Light is a buy on sight item in my book.

Red Light was wound up after only 8 releases (9 if you count the Black Tracks release, see below) (2018 edit: damn, this is totes wrong now) having, in the words of SUAD themselves “run its course”, pretty much like jungle music really. SUAD, like so many of jungle’s biggest names, went on to become major players in the UK Garage scene over the next decade. Long live the nuum!

Hunt & SeekSomebody SUAD Remix

Black Tracks Vol 1 – this was the only ever release on the Red Light sub-label, Black Tracks. I’m not quite sure why the need was felt to release the tracks on the new label as both Skylarking and Liquidator could have easily sat as tunes on Red Light itself, but there you go.

Blackman – Bastards / Coca Cola Remix – Although both Bastards and Coca Cola were out on Red Light first, this release was done on the main Shut Up and Dance label. I’m guessing they wanted to capitalise on both tunes being big. Fair play! This release features a repress of Bastards and a similar-sounding remix of Coca Cola.

Blackman – Kunta / Wanted – Again, two more big jungle tunes from ‘Blackman’ aka PJ and Smiley, put out on SUAD, which would have been perfectly at home on Red Light itself. This release as well as Bastards/Coca Cola on SUAD are well worth a look as there are many more copies about compared to the limited Red Lights. As such, they can still be had for very reasonable prices. Bargain!

Red Light – Ruling Feat. Garnet Silk – this came out on one of the Jungle Hits compilation albums put out out by Street Tuff / Jet Star, and as far as I know this is the only place you can find the tune. I have the shitty four-tracks-per-side vinyl but there is a CD version which I presume includes the full (or maybe edited?) track in crystal clear digital.

Deep Jungle shizzle! So here we are in 2018 and as with my Legend Records post I’ve had to update this one because (these are words I never thought I’d be writing) new Red Light vinyl releases have dropped. Well, ‘new’ in the sense that the superb retro jungle label Deep Jungle has unearthed unreleased Red Lights from back in the day and put the legwork in to blessing us with them. Mah-siiive! As such, I’ve dug out the old mix and added 005 and 009 like they were never lost and we’re back once again in 1995. Peeee-ple!

Download MP3 320kbps 67 mins

Yo. Happy fricken 2016, peeps!

This is one of those rare “not a label mix” posts as a belated holiday season gift for you all. The last one I did was waaay back in 2014. This month’s mix is a personal favourite of mine – a set I did live, like, for real, in 2003 in a teensy tiny club in Christchurch, New Zealand, of all places, the name of which I forget but I’m sure it was an animal of some kind. Definitely not a turtle or a puffin. All ten people on the dancefloor were having a good time, believe you me, and no fisticuffs broke out. I presume due to the sheer skill of the DJ. The place smelled strongly of stale shit-NZ-beer and students.

What I love most about this selection is that it perfectly encapsulates my own personal memories of that late-90s, early-2000s style of DnB, which was ‘my era’ from both a raving and tunes perspective when I was all adorable and shiny and chrome… before Pendulum apparently ruined everything with the release of Hold Your Colour.

I joke of course.

Not really

Ok I do.

Love you, Pendeez! If you bookend an entire era of music that’s probably a good indication you’re doing it right…

The late 90s / early-2000s was when DnB was recovering from its then-recent attempts to socially cleanse the scene of anything remotely female, and the sound was reincorporating earlier influences again. Jazz-step suddenly returned as ‘Liquid’ and tech-step was re-imagined as ‘Neurofunk’. Oldskool hardcore stabs and breakbeats were back as if they’d never been usurped by filtered Reese basslines and squelchy stuff at all. It was an immensely rich and evolving time for drum and bass music.

The mix is complete and unashamed anthem-bashing, but what anthems they are! From all time tease-classics like The Nine, Messiah, Titan and Alien Girl, through to personal top Bad Company tunes Nitrous and Flashback (Tumpa). The Total Science remix of Champion Sound is probably my top 1 favourite track of all time – I vividly recall going mental to this when I heard it for the first time at a Grooverider gig. To this day I still get caught ‘singing’ the breakdown when Champion Sound comes on at raves. An utterly epic and wonderful hands in the air classic.

So, with love, from me to you. Happy new year peeps. New actual real blog post coming soon – it’s gonna be jungle-tastic.

Oh by the way, you can now get all of the blog mixes sent to your phone with no effort if you subscribe to the podcast. It’s taken me two years to figure this shit out.

John B – Up All Night rmx

Download MP3 320kbps 80mins

Sup, G here. Apologies for the delay. Life gets in the way sometimes.

This is the first Dillinja post on this blog. I feel slightly ashamed about that as Dillinja is undoubtedly up there with the greatest of all time jungle producers – possibly THE greatest. But I let others decide on that. Stab in the dark for fave D tune? Got to be any of the three tracks off of Angels Fell but that’s just me. Maybe Silver Blade? Or Threshold? Too many to count…

I’m going to assume anyone reading this already has a working knowledge of Dillinja’s body of work, so if not, I can only apologise, uber-geek wanky shit is ahead.

Anyway, back in the period 1993-95 Dillinja was at his most prolific, putting out track after track, week after week, on many different labels under numerous pseudonyms. I’m led to believe he was literally living in his studio at this point in time, if he wasn’t out delivering stacks of his own wax around London-town. Compared to Dillinja’s output on Deadly Vinyl, Logic Productions, Conqueror, Philly Blunt and Lionheart (among others) from around the same era, the Cybotron tunes strike me as being much more on the experimental side. Influences abound, from straight up hardcore and darkside jungle, to hip hop, sci-fi films, and ragga. I guess not entirely surprising as Dillinja was still learning the craft here. In this post, I’m mixing every tune that was put out on the label.

It is sad to see that these records have now become quite scarce. If you’re looking on Discogs you’ll probably see that many are up for sale only very infrequently. Those that do come up are often price-gouged. That’s a pity because the Cybotron tunes are some of Dillinja’s most interesting from a purely ‘listening’ perspective as opposed to straightforward dancefloor tracks, but at the same time I’m not aware of much, if any, availability on digital formats. Supply and demand, hey?

Cybotron Records cat numbers are fairly confusing as some were pressed on other labels. My take on the complete output is as follows, going strictly by DILL cat numbers which to me form the full Cybotron canon.

The only addition to this list is the second release on Target Records, Underworld – The Rising, which I’ve included in the mix for completeness as DILL 05 was also a Target release… the only other Target release, as it eventuated. The Rising features the cat number KARL 001 which is interesting to those who cling nerdfully to this kind of trivia – Dillinja’s real name being Karl Francis of course. Underworld was comprised of Dillinja and Defender (of Feel It fame), whom I’ve talked about previously in an older post. I was considering including the Digital Cloning EP in the mix too, which is another Dillinja release from around the same time on Tough Toonz, but I thought that would be a bit of a stretch so I left it off. And even though the Majestic B Line EP, DILL 06, was out on Deadly Vinyl, I haven’t included the other Deadly Vinyl releases. There are other mixes on the internets with those tunes though if you want to go deeper. Here’s a smashing Dillinja retrospective mix too.

More trivia:

Even from the very first release, Steal the Way / Forever Fierce, the Cybotron tracks are all distinctly Dillinja. Although those two tunes sound quite contemporary with their rave strings and stabs and chip-monked vocals to match, you still get the rough basslines and rap vocal fills that became synonymous with Dillinja’s productions later on. Things get a little darker with Lock Me Out and Dark Influence, but with From Beyond, a seething, breathing amen roller, and the funky mule-sampling Ride It Hard, Dillinja is properly in the zone. Dark Science is a fantastic 93-style dark jungle bleeps tune with similar atmospherics to the earlier From Beyond. On the flip to Dark Science is one of the more unusual tunes on Cybotron, Sinewave, which has some fairly intense stabs and weird beats that I find difficult to mix. Still quality though.

The later releases – Black Wax EP, Majestic B Line EP, Imperial Stix EP, and Test 2 EP – are all 4 trackers, except for Test 2 which is 3 tracks. It’s almost like Dillinja established the formula on the early tunes and then when into experimental overdrive once his confidence was up. It’s hard to separate the music on these EPs as they are all of very high quality, all extremely interesting, and all completely smash up the dance. It’s a dense body of work. Dillinja re-uses samples and breaks on many of these tracks which is actually quite cool as you can spot the style immediately. They may not be as technically proficient as Dillinja’s later work, particularly his tracks on Logic or Metalheadz, but it’s interesting to see the progression even just in the short year or so that these were made across. I get the feeling that Dillinja’s progress was driven as much by gear and tech upgrades through the 90s which went hand-in-hand-with intense bursts of creativity.

In spite of a notable lack of recent releases, Dillinja is still about, still in the scene, DJing at gigs quite frequently. And why not? If anyone has the right to trade on a legendary reputation it’s Dillinja. There have been noises for a while now that he is working on new tracks that harken back to the jungle days, albeit brought up-to-date with new-school production techniques. I have no idea whether or not this is still happening, but in interviews over the past few years Dillinja has made it very clear that there isn’t a lot in the music scene that truly enthuses him these days. There’s a real “over it” undertone in most of the exchanges that I’ve read, which is a shame, but totally understadable. Obviously it’s over 20 years ago now, but the rapid output and progress on Cybotron shows you what Dillinja was (and no doubt ‘is’) capable of when motivated. Here’s hoping the releases resume at some point. Luckily, we only ever look back in time on this blog so we don’t have to worry about any of this ‘future music’ nonsense.

Dillinja – Steal The Way

Download MP3 320kbps 83 mins

GFT here. This is a big post for me. Legend Records is my number one favourite jungle label of all time, so it is a somewhat daunting task to do justice to it. And so the mix has proven! It took me literally months of effort, chipping away at it week after week. Is this how GRRM feels slogging through new chapters of A Song of Ice and Fire? Call it the Legend Records Knot, or some such. Fuck me I’m nerdy…

Legend Records was founded in 1993 by the Oxfordshire trio of DJ Gwange, Spinback and Q Project, and continued to release until 1996. Legend is one of the defining labels of the so-called ‘intelligent jungle’ sound of the mid-90s, although I can’t be the only one who has always hated that term. In effect (lol), the bulk of the label’s output can be summarised as deep, rolling jungle tunes, predominantly featuring that classic and simple combination of big subs, hypnotising breaks, and spacey, ethereal pads and strings.

If LTJ Bukem perfected the formula on masterpieces like Music, or Horizons, then the Legend crew can certainly lay claim to their own defining classics in the same space with the likes of Airtight, Motionless, or Deep Concentration. Add to that several more hard-edged, but no less impactful darkside excursions like In Effect, Champion Sound, and Adrenalin and you can see why Legend is just plain sex for jungle lovers.

Legend wound up shortly after DJ Gwange quit the label in ’94/’95. Spinback and Q Project went on to even greater success as Total Science with too many releases to possibly list on Timeless, Metalheadz, their own label C.I.A, and many others, and are still putting out tracks to this day. Here’s a short excerpt from a RollDaBeats thread, with jungle old-skooler The Invisible Man chiming in on his associations with the running of Legend, and engineering many of its notable tracks:

“With Legend Records it was often Gwange and myself who would do a lot of the general running around to distro’s and cutting houses as I already knew the industry from having several releases under my belt, and besides we were ones with transport.. however sometime during 94 both myself and Simon had to go AWOL for a while – him for personal reasons, and me ’cause I had quite literally burnt myself out.. no, not too many drugs.. – more from doing too many tunes and not sleeping or eating properly etc. mind you, working with Quiff and Smithy is quite possibly enough to give anyone a nervous breakdown… the speech from my tune “The End” seemed to have become a freaky prophecy.. very spooky. It was at that point that I let Brillo (who used to work at Vinyl Distribution in Reading) take over my Timeless label and DJ Hood went on to finance a small studio setup for Quiff and Smithy so they could continue Legend Records without me, the last track I did with them was LEG-013 – by this point they had both spent a lot of time with me and had a pretty good idea of how to go about things, so after a short stop gap to re-assess the situation and learn the equipment they continued Legend for a few releases and finally wound it up at release number 16.”

There are so many great tunes on here it’s difficult to know where to start. Some of the early standouts are the aforementioned darkside efforts In Effect, and Champion Sound. Champion Sound in particular is a classic that has been remixed many times through the years although the Alliance Remix is probably the most famous. Adrenalin is a huge, pulsing monster of a tune. It has an ominous-sounding synth breakdown near the end that gets me every time. Deep Concentration is another standout with its spine-tingling intro into the drop. And Airtight, again, is an atmospheric classic – an epic tune that builds and builds towards a blissed-out pads breakdown before dropping back in with booming subs. Too many to choose from.

If you’re looking to track these records down on wax you had better hurry as a lot of the early releases on Legend are seemingly becoming hard to come by/expensive. Not surprising given the quality of the tuneage, but still.

Q Project & Spinback – Sinister Connection

So let’s go… every single tune ever released on Legend, plus its sub-label Code-001, and some other relevant bits and pieces. 100% crusty vinyls, if that’s something anyone still cares about. Enjoy!

Download MP3 320kbps 138mins

GFT here.

I’ve been spending a ton of time in Bristol lately, so I thought why not mine the rich history of the Bristol dnb scene for a post on the blog. Bristol has been a thriving hub for jungle/drum and bass music since the early 90s when artists like Roni Size, Krust, Suv and Die put the city on the map. Although this core would later form its own influential imprints Full Cycle Records and Dope Dragon, Bryan Gee and Jumping Jack Frost’s legendary V Recordings was also an early outlet for the Bristol sound. The mighty Philly Blunt Records was one of several V Recordings sub-labels at the time, and took a distinctly more junglistic approach to matters than the more progressive style of V and Full Cycle.

Before Philly Blunt was resurrected in the late 2000s, its output on its original run from 1994 through to 1997 features a ton of instantly recognisable dancefloor ragga anthems. This four year period is what I’m focussing on in this post. For those interested in something more contemporary though, Philly Blunt is absolutely still going strong… check them out here. You could even buy this awesome MUG. Slipmats too, damn!

But back to the OG…

Leviticus – Burial, is probably the most well-known tune in the Philly Blunt old-school run. With its memorable “Big, bad and heavy” lyrics sampled from Jigsy King and Tony Curtis’ My Sound A Murder, Burial is one of those classic, rinsed jungle anthems that appears on almost every retrospective mix. What the f*ck are the lyrics after “It’s a wonder…” though? “You came from Malta”??? Eternal mystery… somebody please help!

Burial aside, the oft-remixed, Sleng Teng bassline-sampling Warning is another big track. It’s not one of my favourites but people still play it out fairly often. Roni Size’s 1995 classic Bonanza Kid is probably my own personal highlight. It reminds me of a lot of 97-98 tunes with its slightly warpy No Reality-style bassline. I still drop this in for fun quite regularly.

If it’s amen workouts you’re after then the man himself Dillinja dropped four of his best ever heavy jungle tunes on Philly Blunt… Motherf*cker, Sky, I Selassi I, and the epic Gangsta. Sky, in particular, features some of the most carefully constructed and intricate break-work Dillinja has ever done. Its stuttering, drastically panned intro is mesmerising.

The bulk of the rest of the tunes, tracks like Bass Switch, Check Da Skills, Who Is It, The Only One, et al are in that distinctively sparse, minimal, steppy style synonymous with the Bristol sound and V Recordings at the time. They’re somewhat divisive in that many seem to find them pretty dull, looping the same bassline and break for seven minutes on end. I quite like them. There’s nothing to say that a DJ must roll out the whole tune every time, but whatever.

In summary, Philly Blunt is a jungle label well worth picking up. With the possible exceptions of Gangsta, Bonanza Kid, and The Only One, the records are not particularly difficult to get a hold of either, so you’ve got no excuse. Massive respect and big ups to Bryan G, Jumping Jack Frost and all of the artists involved.

Various aliases are as follows:

> Firefox & Survivor – Warning (Radio Edit)

Enjoy! Every tune on Philly Blunt up until PB010 in 1997. All vinyl, aside from the digital only tracks on the Who Is It CD.

Download MP3 320kbps 47mins

Noise Factory, as any junglist worth their natty dreads will recognise, was one of the most influential production teams in the scene back in the early ’90s. Formed of James Stephens, Kevin Mulqueen, and Terry Tee,  Noise Factory released early tunes on Paul Ibiza’s Ibiza label before branching out with their own label, 3rd Party. Numerous classic anthems were dropped on 3rd Party including The Fire, Breakage #4, Screwface, and many others. Straight From the Bedroom was a Noise Factory side-project that featured tunes from themselves alongside up-and-coming jungle producers in the same vein.

This month’s mix features all tracks from each of the three Straight From the Bedroom releases in 1993, as well as a couple of tangentally related bonus tracks thrown in, because that’s what we like to do. Typical of Noise Factory and related tunes at the time, the tracks feature liberal use of samples ripped from old reggae and dancehall tunes, as well as the odd pop/rock music loop thrown in for good measure. Quality, energetic, ragga-tinged material although no doubt hastily made and released (hence the label name!). All part of the charm.

Terry Tee resurrected the Straight From the Bedroom label in the 2000s (with different cat #s) to carry nu-skool jungle bootlegs… these are not in the scope of this mix, but I might do these in the future. For those looking to get hold of the records in this month’s mix, none of the three original SFTB releases are too difficult to get a hold of. The second is change, although the first and third are creeping up. The Capsule EP and Champion Jungle Sound LP from this month’s bonus features (see below) are significantly pricier – both well worth the dosh though.

Chatterbox – Come Fe Kill

Download MP3 320kbps 51mins

Planet Earth Records was Lemon D’s label before he moved to Metalheadz in 1994. The producer of numerous scene classics such as Manhattan Melody, Going Gets Tuff, This is LA, and Fade 2 Black, these days Lemon D is probably best known for his later dnb/jungle work with Dillinja, and all of the various collaborations that came as a result; the Valve Recordings label itself, cutting dubs, the LPs, the infamous Valve Sound System, etc. Although he seems to have left the full glare of the dnb scene in favour of his down-tempo cross-genre project as K-AZE, Planet Earth is where Lemon D made his start and shouldn’t be overshadowed.

As with so many of his contemporaries, the early tracks on Planet Earth are fairly raw, but by the end of the run on deep, atmospheric jungle tracks like Deep Space and Subconscious, Lemon D was absolutely killing it… The production values and break-work on these later tunes is amazing – you can see why he was snapped up by the Headz crew.

My favourite track on the label is Lemon D’s Something I Feel, from the Toxic Rhythms EP, PDJ03. It’s an unashamedly simple amen and hoovers smasher, but I am partial to that old hardcore sound. The drop is just deadly and I still play this one a lot. There is a remix but I don’t think it is quite as up front. Pursuit Through The Darkness is another one I love, which can be found on PDJ02. This is another more hardcore-sounding amen tune with a bunch of different melodies and hooks to it. Highly recommended.

I don’t really have much trainspotting geekery on this label apart from the fact that the Dexxtrous on PDJ04 was an early alias of J. Majik… in fact I think this might even have been his first ever release. He supposedly abandoned the moniker when he realised there was another high-profile jungle producer with the same name. Like Lemon D, J Majik was also soon to be Metalheadz-bound. This release is pretty cool… quite basic sounding jungle tunes. Absolutely nothing like his output today (!).

If you’re looking to pick up these records then the only ones that might cause issue are the first two releases, which are currently fairly pricey (£50ish), but everything else you can pick up for change.

Lemon D has never been a prolific remixer. An exception to this was a piece of his on 1993’s Midnite EP, by Sleepwalker. Age of Aquarius (No Surrender, No Retreat) (LD Rmx) matches up quite neatly with his Planet Earth output from around the time so this is in the mix. The ‘No surrender, no retreat’ sample is well used. The other two tunes on this EP are also in the mix as Bass Junkies also make an appearance on PDJ06 with the deep roller Groove Me.

I have queries:

Who was Sleepwalker?

Was there ever an original released version of Age of Aquarius??

Who were Bass Junkies?

Assuming it is actually the same producer(s), Bass Junkies have only one other release credited to them, and that is this obscure Fugees-sampling dnb one-off from 1997. The tracks are all late-90s style jumpup that don’t really fit into the style of the Planet Earth mix so I haven’t included them, but I’ve posted them up here, because why not? They’re straight-up dodgy rips from my dusty vinyl copy.

Does anyone out there have any info whatsoever on this release?

Enough of my rambles, here’s the mix itself. All’a dem tunes on Planet Earth and some extras. Back in the new year with yet another crusty jungle label!

Download MP3 320kbps 76mins

Whatsup geez. This month we mix up all of the vinyls ever released on another one of my all time favourite old skool jungle labels, Face Records.

In semi-related news this month I happened to check out Andy C play another one of his increasingly regular 6 hour sets, this time at Brixton Academy here in London. I have to say I was incredibly impressed… not just with Andy himself – he always smashes it, but also at the sheer depth of selection that the 6 hours allows. DJ Taktix – The Way VIP and Studio 2 – Dirty Games, for example. Genuinely epic shit. Was not bored for a single second.

I can’t really do much better than the existing Discogs intro, so me copypasta:

UK hardcore and jungle label started off in 1992 by Pascal & Sponge. Was responsible for the original release of the “Marked For Death” sampling jungle track “Johnny”, along with several other notable underground anthems. Folded at the end of 1994 due to an amicable split of Pascal & Sponge. Pascal went on to run Frontline Records, while Sponge started his own IQ Records label.

Face Records is one of those labels that totally epitomises ’93-style darkside hardcore/jungle. The entire output of the label is devoted to that singular sound – mangled, crunchy breaks with deep, dark atmospheres and twisted fx. The breaks in particular, are very distinctive… layered breakbeats all with a certain amount of swing left in the loops that gives the tracks a chaotic and unnerving quality to them. As easily recognisable to me as anything by, say, Bizzy B or Remarc. The beats flow, but sometimes it’s not entirely clear if there are multiple tunes on top of eachother or just one. Sometimes difficult to mix, but stylistically I really like that. This is tough, teeth-grinding, face-gurning, gun-finger shit. Simply brilliant.

Total end of the world music, and somehow appropriately, it didn’t last very long. A single release in ’92, but by the end of ’94 Face Records was done. Perhaps the genre really had nowhere left to go.

For such a short-lived label, there are numerous classics in the Face back catalogue… Johnny is on almost every old skool comp out there, but tracks like Tell Me, Inesse, Let Me Tell You Something, Nosebleed, Underground Feelin’ Remix, Night Stalker Remix, and X Amount of Shots (among others!) all deserve attention. Interestingly, all of the above tunes come from the middle peak period of the label, after a brief ‘hardcore’ period when it was still finding its feet, and a comparatively dull straight-jungle period towards the end (almost all of the new tracks on the Face of the Future compilation are like this). Minor trivia point, Mission Impossible, the last track in the mix, is a nice co-lab between Pascal and Goldie… it certainly has that mid-90s Metalheadz sheen to it. Probably an appropriate point just to let the whole thing disappear into the nostalgia of that not-quite-as-happy but instead slightly cracked-out MDMA fog of ’93.

If you’re looking to pick these up for yourself the only release that might be difficult to track down is FACE107, Clone Inc – Fear of the Unknown as that did not make it to full release (see below). Everything else is reasonably priced, although many of the earlier releases are in the £20 range, currently.

Jack Horner – Untitled A1

Have at it. All the tunes ever released on Face Records. The mix itself was not overly problematic, save for the usual story of less-polished tunes at the start. Had some difficulties matching breaks on tunes with very heavily layered and swung loops, but where’s the fun if it’s all four to the floor, hay?

Face005, Dopeski & Jakes – Approach With Caution EP did actually throw me for a loop. All 4 of the tracks on the EP sound and feel more like ’92 hardcore tunes (with the BPM to match) as opposed to the darker style stuff the label had been running with for some time already. As a result I had to move all of these tunes to the front of the mix. Makes sense when I listen back to it. I wonder if they were sitting on the tracks for a while and only got around to releasing them late?

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So, as you can see, we back in business. One more post before Xmas I hope… another one of my favourite crusty jungle labels. Peace, love.

GFT

So after 4 months of no decks I finally have everything unpacked again after the house move, and as everyone with a lot of shit knows, moving can be a bitch. But we’re all sorted now and ready to make up lost time.

As a consolation/apology for the unexpected gap, I’ve made a mix of all of the tunes I immediately grabbed once I got everything to order. It’s a big mix of dnb classics, new bits, odd bits, whatever… total anthem-bashing but I don’t give a fuck. At least I didn’t double drop Mr Happy

We’re back with the full labels next post. I know I promised some dnb for that one, but I’m not sure I can resist waking up back in the jungle after today’s mix. We will see!

Oh, and shout outs to Need For Mirrors and Bailey for the thoroughly excellent Soul In Motion club night they are running every second Wednesday here in London-town. I have been along several times in the last few months and the lineups are always top class. Best thing is, it’s free (!) and it finishes at the entirely civilised hour of 1am. Check it out if you’re about! No excuses.

Peace, G.

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There might be mistakes here, but u get the picture…

Dom & Roland – Outa Endz