"Drum & Bass!", I say, confidently.
"Can't accept Drum & Bass, we need Jungle I'm afraid," replies Amol Rajan.
I begin to sweat nervously.
- "Thunderclap 1995", Remarc
At some point I was trying to figure out exactly when "breakcore" broke off from Jungle and D&B. At least two sources I found (OK, Reddit posters) clamed this (Thunderclap) to be the first breakcore track. Is that true? What differentiates this from "Drum & Bass"? I've decided I don't care, and all I care about is that this track is sick. Sparse, spine-grabbing, this is a complex machinery made entirely of liquid. "Recommend".
Note: This track is mastered for 90s sound systems, so if you're listening on laptop speakers, you may prefer this rip, which sounds a little worse but does compress the bass higher in the mix.
- "Matter of Fact", Roni Size Reprazent
To those of us who couldn't experience UK dance culture firsthand in the 90s¹, "New Forms" is indelibly associated with drum & bass— it practically defines it. But Reprazent was also doing something bigger than D&B, weirder. Listen to this track, the album's biggest jaunt into outright jungle and a demo of its tendency to atmospherics that suggest spaces so well it could practically be a video game soundtrack.
- "Precision", Spinscott
I've heard it said that Drum & Bass, as a genre, couldn't have happened without Cubase. (Wait, have I started a track description like this before?) Anyway that's not strictly accurate, but… you do get the sense of D&B/Jungle as something made "offline". A person at a computer pondering a grid. All those sixteenth-note hi hats.
But then this dude just loads an Amen break into an MPC 1000 and fingerdrums some jungle. Triggers each sample live by hand. It's like watching someone fly without an airplane.
- "FastTracker 2 Jungle Style", Dee-Shaya
Jungle made in 2022 by 1996 methods (if you look at the top you'll see "FastTracker II by Triton Prod 1996" and then next to it a track label saying "2022 Jungle Style"). Short, unpretentious, immaculate, satisfies some primal need (to listen to Jungle). This YouTuber's channel mostly consists of C64 retrocomputing stuff, but here she has chosen to indulge us with some DOS.
- "Run", Michiel van den Bos
This is from Unreal Tournament (1999), a game I don't think I've played.
One nice thing about sample trackers is the files are small and playing them back has low CPU impact, which makes them ideal for embedding in video games. Apparently UT1999's tracker files can just be extracted and played in Impulse Tracker. Lacking any personal nostalgia, this soundtrack feels tonally all over the map to me, especially compared to my memories of the much-more-focused, single-player-friendly 1998 original (which I did play). But, some of the tracks hold up well; this one in particular is great, with Drum&Bass inflections, an authentically classic feel and emotionally dead-on Vibes.
⬇️ Click below for Zoomer breakcore ⬇️
- "Dismiss", Kalla
Dunno if you've noticed but whenever I introduce a 90s techno song I have this long backstory situating it in time and when I post Zoomer breakcore I'm like "I found this on YouTube! It's real good!"
Here's some Zoomer breakcore. It's real good! Fun beats and pads. I like how the poster felt compelled to censor their dragons. This song appears to have been published directly to YouTube, and nowhere else except SoundCloud.
- "takemeawaypls.wav", Purity Filter
The version of this on Tidal is subtitled "(into the nightcore)" (and it might be mastered a little better, idk). Purity Filter has several tracks that suggest being at a rave but far away from the speakers or action, loneliness pulled around you like a warm blanket. This track drives that concept to an extreme, with filmic sound design that swings from distant to oversaturated and muffled, music heard in a dream.
¹ I later found out Texas actually did have a rave culture in the 90s. But my chances of making contact with it in the eighth grade were pretty low.
