[LOUD INCORRECT BUZZER NOISE]
They still do! And I'm here to get you started!
As a note, drug references pop up on a semi regular basis in this kind of music, sometimes a vague reference in a 1 second sample and sometimes the entire song is about it. Nothing past the break talks about it directly but I'm putting a big blanket CW on that for anyone diving in. Cool? Cool.
"What kind of music is this even?"
Well, it's most likely you're familiar with these kinds of music from video games , so you may be familiar with such bangers as:
Redial, from Bomberman Hero (1998, N64) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNZy9zMmp8A
Killing Moon, from Street Fighter III: Third Strike (1999, CPS3/Arcade) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC9jISKU25E
Time Station, from Ape Escape (1999, PS1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqeaFVsz30w
Or maybe some more rave themed tracks:
Rare Hero 2, from Ridge Racer Revolution (1995/1996, PS1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqpFHQBkW8g
Digital Terror, from Tempest 2000 (1994, Jaguar) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VP7hm1UW6bc
I've always had trouble relating genre names to the actual sound and vibe of songs. I kind of hate them. For the purposes of this discussion, I'm going to generally split the more piano chord, heavily layered, and slightly more melodic leaning stuff into "hardcore" and the more drum sample, rhythmic, and atmospheric stuff into "jungle". You can call it whatever you want, but if I've got to describe a sound to someone I prefer to pull up a song or use labels, eras, and specific artists/aliases instead of genre names.
Alright enough of all that let's get into some NEW music!
Tim Reaper
Easily one of the most prolific producers of this older sounding jungle style. You can find him everywhere, including this wonderful set with Sherelle on yt. This release is a great place to start, and you'll find lots of other great jungle producers showing up on future retro london to branch off from:
Pete Cannon
Guy has a knack for putting out bangers, really BIG tracks. His stuff goes between hardcore and jungle pretty freely with good examples on both ends. Importantly, he has a youtube channel showing all of the old kit he still uses to produce with, as well as the actual songs. Very good watching. Big flashing lights warning on anything on his channel once the music starts, and this particular example has a movie clip with a gun pointed at the camera pretty directly. Kinda wanna know what that's from actually...
And way over on the hardcore end:
And of course the label he runs: https://n4records.bandcamp.com/
DJ Jedi
One of the earlier people to jump back on the vinyl bandwagon in the 2010s, thankfully everything is also available digitally. Very wide range of styles and the bandcamp page is a great place to parooze and see if anything sticks out. This particular release is very good for the more, rave stab heavy early hardcore style.
HyeNRG
This is my friend and I talk him into making rave tunes you have my permission to blow up his notifications even though he's set to private @hiimhugh
Please buy his music he gets real flustered about it. It's good, of course.
Kniteforce Records
Kniteforce has been around in one form or another since 1993, but the current incarnation is just as much a record shop as it is a label. There's a LOT of great stuff kicking around here, and they also have plenty of represses/re-releases/new remixes of old songs, and they sell records for other small labels (usually without a digital copy, be sure to check the listing!!!) and are a good place to listen around and branch off from. Really, there's a LOT here. I had to pick one, so here you go:
I do have to put a bit of a disclaimer on KF. They're focused on vinyl first, digital second. There's certainly a bit of FOMO here with limited releases and special editions, particularly on some of the box set releases, but the flip side is the focus on physical releases has proved to be more profitable than digital only for them (don't ask me how that works, I have no idea) and they've been able to get lots of producers old and new to make tunes on account of the fact that they can actually be reliably paid to do so. It's not ideal, and personally I'm not a fan of shipping plastic around the globe just to get a song... but I like artists getting paid well, and KF has had a good track record of that.
Between me starting to write this and actually posting it I see that they've listed a repress of a ~30 year old release for an external label with a whole ass racist cover in a "washington football team" kinda way. I already wrote all of this so I'll leave it here I guess but damn if that doesn't tick me off. Fucks sake Chris, no reason not to turn that one down c'mon. Almost scrapped this whole fucking post over that.
If you're anal about your file management, be prepared for some extra work on KF's digital files. What you get from them will be, a zip file containing wav files, mp3 files, and full res artwork. The wav file has my preferred file naming (cat# - artist - song name), but the mp3s have IDv3 tags. They also have full res cover art embedded. Realistically you'll be writing a script to roll all of that out into a single FLAC file with thumb sized artwork, tags from the MP3s, and the WAV's file name structure. Or at least resizing the artwork in the MP3s which can and will break some players if left as-is.
Further reading
I've intentionally left out plenty of stuff here because I feel that self research and digging is extremely valuable when learning about genres like this. If you don't like to do that, well you're probably already using a streaming service with an algo that will help out. If you do want to dig, here's how I usually do it.
Discogs : Always the place to start. If you like something, find it here. Check out the label the release was from, and the artist. There's a TON to branch out from just from that, plus Discogs can help you navigate artists that have too many aliases.
Youtube : Honestly, no matter how rare or obscure, someone has probably uploaded the song to youtube by now. This is especially useful if you end up looking at old music that has not been re-released, or just want to hear a full track.
DJ Mixes : We post tracklistings for a reason! Tracking down tunes from a mix is always a lot of fun for me personally.
Ok that's my single high effort post.
