I was just checkin’ out this site called Golden Era Jungle and realized that this year marks the 15th birthday of Jungle. There are a whole bunch of 1993 mixes by DJs like Krome & Time, Remarc, and the one below by Dr. S Gachet.
In Gashet’s 1993 mix you can still hear a lot of early hardcore rave music influence but much of the jungle sound is already there. I’ve also linked to a 1995 mix by Gachet. That was my favorite year for jungle. A mere 2 years after its inception it had developed into a mature and utterly slammin’ sound that I’m still in love with.
DJ Flack and I often reminisce about the era when 2-step garage was pop music in the U.K., and though many of the big hits there were on the R&B side of the fence, our faves were the ragga and dub influenced tracks like the ones on the 2001 compilation Garage Dubs — an obvious precursor to what would become dubstep.
As dubstep evolved it went deep and dark into atmospheric, minimalist territory that’s interesting as listening music, but can be challenging to booties on the dance-floor. More recently it seems that the reggae/dub influence in dubstep is coming back strong, most notably on many of Skream’s tracks like Blue Eyez:
As it turns out, Flack’s been in the Beat Research labs cooking up some of his own dub(2-)step and he’s been so generous as to share his brand new track That Sound:
Hi all–here’s ANOTHER mixtape (and this time it’s an actual tape, as in two sides, totalling 90 minutes) that I made for a Dutch mixtape blog called ‘t Nieuwe Werck…it’s a bunch of Hardcore Rave choons from ‘90 - ‘92. It’s primarily Belgian tunes, but on second listen there’s a fair amount of US & UK material, and even some Italian stuff on there too. Tracklist is formatted as follows: Artist; Title (Record Label / Country / Year).
Fancy!
I know word has spread fast on this one, but for those of you who’ve not heard yet, Jungle / Drum & Bass legend (and BBC host / Prototype records owner-founder) Grooverider was sentenced to a four-year prison term yesterday in the United Arab Emirates. Apparently he had a gig in Dubai, and he got caught bringing a spliff through airport security (he also had some porno DVDs with him, which are illegal in Dubai as well—this aspect of the story has gone curiously underreported). Despite being a fancy international tourist hot-spot, Dubai’s got a super-strict fundamentalist Islam-inspired penal code, and Mr. Rider ended up getting a 4 year sentence for 2.16g of weed. YIKES! He’s still got 2 weeks to appeal, but it’s looking unlikely that he’ll be spared. Consider the following examples of UAE legal proceedings:
Another British tourist (this one a Rastafarian) was arrested in Dubai this year after police used some crazy sci-fi super-sensitive screening device and found 0.003g of marijuana in the tread of his shoe. According to the BBC, 0.003g is “an amount that is invisible to the naked eye and weighs less than a grain of sugar.”
If you heard The Heatwave’s England Story DJ mix for the Bloggariddims podcast you’ll no doubt be excited to hear that the Soul Jazz record label is about to release the tracks from the mix as an album.
From the Soul Jazz Records website:
An England Story - The Culture of the MC in the UK 1983-2008. Featuring a who’s who of the stars of UK Dancehall/Grime/Hip-Hop/Jungle over the last 25 years up to the present. Roots Manuva, Papa Levi, Stush, General Levy, Estelle, London Posse, Tenor Fly… and the list goes on! Double CD plus 2 Volumes of super-loud double vinyl - this is a killer album…
This release is gonna be absolutely wicked. So needless to say, I was beyond honored when The Heatwave asked me to provide a remix for the 12-inch single featuring Warrior Queen. The original track, called Things Change, features The Heatwave’s Piano Riddim underneath the Queen’s bubbling vocals. The single features that version along with the Piano instrumental and my remix, and will be released ahead of the album, next Monday, Feb 18.
In honor of that release I’ve worked up a couple remixes of my remix for your downloading pleasure:
Alright folks. If you’ve been working on remixes of the Zulu a capellas and you want to send them in to us for possible inclusion on the upcoming DJ C & Zulu mixtape, Gods and Robots, You’ve got till the end of this week.
Here’s the original post:
Zulu is one bad-ass vocalist. That’s why producers and DJs are always asking for his vocal tracks. Well, y’all are in for a treat. Zulu has generously offered up not one or two, but an entire album worth of a capellas for free download.
Here’s what we want you to do. Download - Remix - Upload: Take the vocals, produce your own track with them, then upload your finished product using MediaFire or a similar file-hosting service, and contact us with a download link so we can listen to it. A team from the Mashit camp — including Zulu himself — will compile our favorite tracks to be released as a Mashit ablum.
Please have your tracks submitted to us by February 15th.
You may have heard this one in a couple of my mixes; I’ve been spinning it for quite a while now. It’s stayed in my crate through thick and thin while numerous others have been tossed aside. You may have already found it too; it’s been available for free for at least a couple of years over at Soulchampion.com.
The rhythm harkens back to my favorite period of the U.K. garage era. Before dubstep took hold with it’s minimal beats and stark sounds, there was an up-tempo swing in the popular 2-step garage tracks that I loved. Thankfully that bouncy vibe is coming back. You can hear it in recent dubstep tracks like Benga & Coki’s (seemingly soca influenced) Night. Not to mention the 4/4 Bassline stuff which digs back even further, recalling 2-step’s predecessor, speed garage.
Benga & Coki; Night Video
This week’s track is by Unknown Souljah, and as the name suggests, I had no idea who this was when I originally got it. But then I recently ran into G Notorious who runs Soulchampion.com — and who I’ve known for years — and I asked about Unknown Souljah. “That’s me!” he said, and I was like “Damn, man! I’ve been playing your track at almost every gig and didn’t even know it was yours.” It’s a 2-step garage remix of Kanye West’s Jesus Walks and it’s sick. If you’ve been sleeping get it here:
I was just checkin’ out this site called Golden Era Jungle and realized that this year marks the 15th birthday of Jungle. There are a whole bunch of 1993 mixes by DJs like Krome & Time, Remarc, and the one below by Dr. S Gachet.
Hi all–here’s ANOTHER mixtape (and this time it’s an actual tape, as in two sides, totalling 90 minutes) that I made for a Dutch mixtape blog called 
I know word has spread fast on this one, but for those of you who’ve not heard yet, Jungle / Drum & Bass legend (and BBC host / Prototype records owner-founder) Grooverider was sentenced to a four-year prison term yesterday in the United Arab Emirates. Apparently he had a gig in Dubai, and he got caught bringing a spliff through airport security (he also had some porno DVDs with him, which are illegal in Dubai as well—this aspect of the story has gone curiously underreported). Despite being a fancy international tourist hot-spot, Dubai’s got a super-strict fundamentalist Islam-inspired penal code, and Mr. Rider ended up getting a 4 year sentence for 2.16g of weed. YIKES! He’s still got 2 weeks to appeal, but it’s looking unlikely that he’ll be spared. Consider the following examples of UAE legal proceedings:
Another British tourist (this one a Rastafarian) was arrested in Dubai this year after police used some crazy sci-fi super-sensitive screening device and found 0.003g of marijuana in the tread of his shoe. According to the BBC, 0.003g is “an amount that is invisible to the naked eye and weighs less than a grain of sugar.”
. Well, y’all are in for a treat. Zulu has generously offered up not one or two, but an entire album worth of 
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