Has anyone noticed.......

[thatguy]

Has anyone else out there besides me noticed that huge upswing in Jungle and Ragga lately. It almost feels like 1996 again or something. There are WAY more producers making rasta sounding dnb, dubwise and jungle. I have also heard a lot more Amen's as of late too.

Are things cyclical? I personally am stoked.



Discuss

[bgrade]

I have noticed a bit more of that stuff lately too. It makes me happy. I don't know about commercial stuff, but I have found a gang of promising jungle producers on soundcloud. I figure it is a sound that has been roots for a lot of people for a long time and there has been a shift away from the techy/neuro DnB sound, in part because the bass music niche has swung a bit over to dubstep. This leaves a void for uptempo bass music to fill.

[sea.envy]

the advent of skullstep finally got me into dnb. if it goes back to the ragga jungle sound of the early nineties... meh. that shit was boring, even on drugs.

[thatguy]

you obviously don't listen to reggae and smoke weed then.

[SkyElectric]

Are things cyclical? I personally am stoked.

Discuss

Everything is cyclical, although I always thought MCed D'n'B would take over and be the #1 style of music, never happened.

[IrisSilverMoon]

Everything is cyclical, although I always thought MCed D'n'B would take over and be the #1 style of music, never happened.

it did in London.

but yeah, DnB in general is making a come back i think (thank god its SO good right now), and I have noticed a few more ragga/jungle one offs popping up here and there, more so than usual.

[cosby]

...skullstep...
I hope this is not actually the name of a real thing.

[bgrade]

yeah, it is really a thing. Not my favorite, but not all bad either.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techstep

Skullstep
Skullstep is a genre that emerged from techstep. While originally it was a derisive moniker for techstep itself (much like clownstep), it is currently used to designate a certain style within the genre: Skullstep follows the instrumentation of techstep, it is characterized by a much more repetitive, aggressive song structure with similarities to Breakcore - the original Skullstep drumloop, pioneered by Limewax, got looped at a dotted quarter beat length. This allows the drumloop to remain syncopated, but achieve a repetitive sound resemblant to hardcore techno. Artists prominent in this genre include Current Value, Donny, Dylan, Limewax, Gein, SNM, The Panacea and Axis & Trank.

[sea.envy]

i actually did a skullstep mix using nothing but tracks from zardonic recordings (free netlabel based in venezuela) label head zardonic actually has a slew of releases elsewhere also which i reccomend checking out if you're into it.

http://media.b4.sonicsquirrel.net/sonic_walker/swm066/swm066-sea.envy-Project_330.mp3

P739 – Surrounded By Evil [ZRD001]
CJ Weaver – Craterface [ZRD003]
Androit – Subject KRK (Zardonic Remix) [ZRD015]
Focal – Sound Of Violence [ZRD006]
Sighnature – I Sell Death Insurance [ZRD017]
Zardonic feat. Linda Mathias – Shred Beliefs [ZRD005]
Switch Technique – Inner Order (Ethmoh Remix) [ZRD012]
Switch Technique – Inner Order (Zardonic Remix) [ZRD011]
Protech – We Believe (Mark Tailor Remix) [ZRD004]
Fizyk – Acid Papa [ZRD009]
Kid Kryptic – Scornful Behavior [ZRD017]
B-Complex – Squelch [ZRD016]
Gasmask 71 – The Punisher [ZRD013]
Zardonic + The Magus – Western [ZRD002]
P739 – Surrounded By Evil (Zardonic Remix) [ZRD007]
Soulie – Walking Home [ZRD017]
Zardonic + Malsum – Natural Born Killers [ZRD014]
Zardonic – White Walls [ZRD017]
Process – The Yard [ZRD017]
P379 – Acid Bath (Bleak Reference Remix) [ZRD007]
Zombie – Springwood Slasher (Remix) [ZRD013]
Switch Technique – The Six [ZRD005]
Identity + Zardonic – Neurotica [ZRD014]

http://www.zardonicrecordings.tk/

[paxus]

I think there's a resurgence in breaks around 140-160bpm in general (dnb
included). There's bubbling up of it from the upper end of electro in labels like
"off my nutter", there's jtek/rave/hardcore breaks and dj fresh's "future jungle".
Quite honestly, they all seem like producers of these different strains are ending
up at the same place but wanting to put a flag up in the name of their genre rather
than ceding it to other artists discovery. I feel like the same thing has kinda hap-
-pened with moombahton and nu-funk/ghettofunk breaks. Meaning they're very
similar in DNA, but all found it using different formulas.

I think i kinda went off the thread topic, but love for all of it anyway!

-&rew
</electronicnerdism>

[bgrade]

^ I don't think that is off topic at all. I think that the broken beat stuff is just making a strong showing lately. I still like some good 4 on the floor, but I feel like the broken stuff is what really seems to be gaining momentum at the moment, and with it, some of the more nostalgic break sounds are coming back strong, jungle included. None of it ever went away completely, but I think commercial interest had waned a bit for some stuff that still had a strong core following.

[Nukegrrrl]

I've been hearing a lot of kids talk excitedly about liquidfunk and I've also been hearing a lot of early/mid 90's techno/jungle 4hero kind of sounds when I'm out and about.

It's neat-o burrito!

[dunnDIRTY]

How is "Skullstep" really different from tearout? Please enlighten me.... This whole umpteen million sub-genre things is really getting out of hand imo.

But to respond to the original post I to have noticed more and more actual Jungle sounds around these days, and am personally fucking hyped about it. Long live the Amen Break!
Hard to say if it's a cyclical thing, but either way I want more. Bgrade may be on to it with the thought that the popularity of dubstep has been pulling producers away from the tech side of drum & bass and it may have opened the doors for the sound to resurface.

[sea.envy]

personally to me it's just drum and bass. i have issues with the fact that every track ever written seems to have it's very own genre too.

[bgrade]

I agree about the "too many subgenres" bit. Not just in DnB either. The highly focused subgenre DJ is at particular risk of playing the same songs as anyone else who spins that specific subgenre. I just mash it all together. My sets come off as kind of moody, but I don't want to listen to hours and hours of the same vibe. With a little planning, you can have super pretty and super evil stuff in the same set and you can make it flow like a journey of the psyche. The dark stuff will sound darker and the light stuff will be more ecstatic and the deep stuff sounds deeper because of contrast.

[paxus]

Honestly, I just now have gotten into the little details that make every
nuance of dnb. I didn't quite understand all the descriptors until i'd been
kind of immersing myself in it. I can get that it all can be very picky, but I
also like the excitement of describing songs in that way. It helps find artists
I might not find otherwise.

The way i've always explained it is: If someone asks you how your day is going,
you could just say "good" or "bad", but both of those words honestly are vague
in terms of the human condition. Are we talking "haven't had coffee" bad? or "lost
my finger in a garbage disposal" bad? On the flipside, are we talking "just ate a
twinkie" good? or "random sex with b-list celebrity" good?

That all said, genre names are hilarious and random too, so you end up confusing
folks even more sometimes. "Yeah, this is a purple kinda shoegaze-y popcorn track
on that illbient bounce footwerk tip".

-&rew

[djsence]

Has anyone else out there besides me noticed that huge upswing in Jungle and Ragga lately. It almost feels like 1996 again or something. There are WAY more producers making rasta sounding dnb, dubwise and jungle. I have also heard a lot more Amen's as of late too.





Discuss



old news.. the NW is sooooo far behind. =0(

[Nukegrrrl]

old news.. the NW is sooooo far behind. =0(I don't know how the DNB scene is doing in PDX these days, but I feel like we in Seattle are so lucky to be in such a large and long-running DNB scene and it's a bit like being in a magical bubble. Maybe we just forget that the rest of the world keeps spinning, without any DNB, outside of that bubble. So when we hear a car ad on primetime TV with liquidfunk in it and it reminds us that the rest of the world is listening to DNB again, and that it's a cool "new" thing for a lot of the kids, it's like a Joey Lawrence "Whoa!" epiphany.