andi

"Drum & Bass!", I say, confidently.
"Can't accept Drum & Bass, we need Jungle I'm afraid," replies Amol Rajan.
I begin to sweat nervously.

1. "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.

2. "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.

3. "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.

4. "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.

5. "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 ⬇️

This week's mixtape was originally going to be an introduction to Breakcore but then at some point I started listening to the Tetrisphere soundtrack and got distracted

1. "beg4life", Dr. Mario

What if I told you possibly the greatest Drum & Bass song ever, and possibly the origin point of modern breakcore, was recorded by a guy named "Dr. Mario" whose entire release strategy was "mp3.com", switching to MySpace when that went away¹? What if I told you you've already heard this song, in the Napster/Gnutella era, but it was mislabeled as being by Amon Tobin, possibly named "Kill You Now" and possibly misattributed to a Splinter Cell soundtrack? What if I asked you to listen to it?

2. "Cyberia Lyr1", sewerslvt

Enigmatic, prolific, JVNE/JVNKO blessed us with an incredible amount of amazing music and an internet mythology casting them as the DJ at Club Cyberia from "Serial Experiments Lain", then disappeared in a puff of internet harassment. (The new artist "AgonyOST" might be them, no one's sure.) This track gives us some retro and (if you're listening to it right) very loud chaotic drum & bass. Music for a Dreamcast time attack

3. "Abraxas", Purity Filter ft. Catastrophi

Consider the Zoomer breakcore artists, who spill out in sewerslvt's wake like dismembered cartoon body parts. All incredibly hardcore, extremely traumatized and probably trans, hiding behind indistinguishable names that look like net handles and baffling joke song titles like "assadist pussy got me actin strange" (?). Here's a noise wall archetypical of the genre. It needs to go so hard you cannot think

4. "Compliant Confuse" (Tetrisphere), Neil Voss²

One time I made a serious go at playing "Tetrisphere" for the Nintendo 64. What I found was:

1. Although I was legitimately having fun and seemed to be getting better over time, I never really understood what I was doing.

2. The soundtrack was incredibly hype. Oh my god. Why is this soundtrack so hype

This is some hardcore 1997 tracker jungle, with a nice crispy taste from the N64 sound chip.

5. "BEATS OF THE JUNGLE THAT ARE ANTIFUNGAL!!", Max Sansalone

So like, "Drum & Bass", or "Breakcore", or "Jungle". (I'd be lying if I said I understood the difference on any level clearer than vibes.) By stereotype this is computer music, like, Cubase or trackers. It's just too complicated to make it any other way. There are drum samples, but mostly only like, the one drum sample, the Amen. Maybe Think. No new breaks, canonically.

Max here just decided to sit down and drum some drum and bass. On some drums. It sounds good.³

⬇️ Click below for more Purity Filter and Lauren Bousfield ⬇️