1990s

In the early 90’s the UK was the epicenter of a new genre of music: rave. Otherwise known as breakbeat hardcore, UK hardcore, “rave” was an amalgamation of US techno with UK acid house. This was before the music branched off in to house, breaks, techno, trance, and jungle. This was an era when taking a couple E’s and dancing all night in a dirty warehouse was a new thing. If you like any genres of current dance music, it pays to know where it came from. Its also Friday. This music will literally make you flash back … the last time you heard it was in 1993 and you were on a tab of acid and a couple hits of E.

Bomb Scare – 2 Bad Mice:

This is the prototype of all breakbeat-orientated tracks to come. It was a dance music first- produced at home in someone’s bedroom and not in an expensive studio with racks full of equipment. It gave hope to anyone with a synthesizer and a sampler, that you COULD produce a track that would be played in clubs all over the world. This tune was limited by the technology of the time: 8 second mono samples. It works though. This tune blew up, to this day its played in clubs. Pretty good for no budget bedroom production.

Goldie – Kemistry

The sweeping synth lines of this tune made it stand out to listeners. Rave music gets pretty. Its still slow, but gives a hint as to what dnb will be in the future.

Top Buzz – Living in Darkness

This seminal tune from ’92 incorporates a 4-on-the-floor “house” style kick with breakbeats. Genres like hardcore and gabber took the same formula, distorted the kick drum, and sped it up. Very innovative for the time. Its about 143 bpm, about the speed of modern day breakbeats or trance.

Rufige Cru – Terminator

Ok, so even as a DJ who specializes in breakbeats, I’ll admit that a lot of tunes are unforgettable and are meant to be thrown away after six months or a year. A lot of production is driven by the new *hot* sample cd, or synth lines are taken directly from the presets of brand new synthesizers. The early 90’s had a revolution in how music was produced due to cheaper and more powerful samplers. Before 1980 the only way to play a sample (a snippet of audio) i.e. the cash register sound in the Pink Floyd tune “Money” would be to either play it off of analog tape, or actually hold a cash register up to a microphone during a live performance. In the early 80’s samplers came around. A sampler is basically a computer that you can record a snippet of sound on to, that’s triggered when you hit a key on a keyboard or synthesizer. Early samplers could only hold small amounts of sound … we’re talking 8 seconds, maybe … at a resolution between “crap” and “1920’s telephone.” In the 80’s samplers became affordable as computer processors became ubiquitous, and those 8 seconds of crappy sounding sound could now be 20 seconds of tape-quality sound. This tune is important because of the drum sample (the breakbeat during the breakdown.) Notice how it plays at a very low pitch, then keeps pitching higher and higher? If you were to play a sample with an 80’s sampler, the only way to make a sampled sound increase its pitch would be to increase its speed. Increasing its speed doesn’t really work if you’re making dance music that’s trying to keep a constant beat. This tune was THE FIRST ever piece of music to have a sample that increased in pitch, but its speed stayed the same. This blew minds in the early 90’s. Cher’s song “Believe” was the first to use autotune as an effect, this tune was the first to use pitch adjust. It wouldn’t have happened if the producers hadn’t bought a brand new, top of the line sampler a couple of days before they produced this tune. Not only was it something that ravers got down to, but audio engineers bought the crap out of the tune to listen to it and be BLOWN AWAY by the drum beat pitching up. Yeah, kinda lame now, but trust me, it was a BIG deal.

Q Project – Champion Sound – Alliance remix

This tune sort of epitomizes the stripped-down ragga sound that would become popular in the UK during the mid-90’s. A ragga vocal sample, a breakbeat, and a HARD bass was all you needed. “Rave” became serious right here. (UK Electronic Dance Music always had sort of a Jamican thing going on, but this tune made a lot of Black kids get in to “Jungle”.) A note on the “Jungle” term. At this point people weren’t referring to tracks like this as “Rave” but rather “Jungle.” “Jungle” is synonymous with “Drum and Bass” however most people will agree that “Jungle” tends to be more stripped down, incorporate Ragga/Hip Hop samples, and isn’t as “techy.”

LTJ Bukem – Atlantis (I need you)

Most of the tracks I’ve put up have so far been sort of … hard. This tune proved that not all breakbeat had to be hard and in your face for you to dance to it. A “chill” breaks tune? NEVER!

Origin Unknown – Valley of the Shadows

By this time, there was “house” and “trance” and a separate “jungle” room at raves. This was the TUNE back in the day. A vocal taken from a US Space launch, a cheesy Brit sample that could be about taking drugs (more like seeing God or an angel or something) coupled with a BOOMING sub bass. The synth used here was a Roland Juno-106, one of the classics of all dance music. They really went wild with the arppegiator, but this tune is still rocked, in its original form, today.

Aphrodite – Summer Breeze

Aphrodite was/is known for producing a whole heck of a lot of jungle hip hop remixes. Kind of nice that he took an old (lame) Seals + Croft hit from ’72 and re-worked it.

Omni Trio – Renegade Snares – Foul Play Remix

The drums. Every effect that the most modern samplers could throw out was used in producing this track. Like Terminator before it, it blew minds. Heck, it even charted in the Pop charts in the UK. Pretty nice for a vinyl that was being sold out of the back of someone’s car. UK Pirate stations by now were playing pretty much all “Rave” music, and Jungle/breakbeats were a staple.

Deep Blue – The Helicopter Tune

That intro is clever synth work, not a helicopter sample. These guys hit it out of the park in terms of drum programming. Listen to this tune, and one of the earlier ones, and the first thing you’ll notice is the fidelity. Whereas the first tunes sounded like they were being played out of a speakerphone, the drums on this tune are crisp, clear, and have some depth. You can thank technology.

Alex Reece – Pulp Fiction

Gone are the synths, the pianos, the over-enthusiastic MDMA references. Jungle was here. Stripped down, deep, dark, moody, and danceable. Jazzy too! Breaks were never the same after this tune. Live Jazz musicians started having their drummers bang out drum and bass beats. You can’t go to a jazz concert nowadays without hearing an “amen” break. This beat is indicitive of a “2 step” beat, which spawned the “2 step/garage” fad to come at the early 90’s.

DJ Zinc – Super Sharp Shooter

In the 90’s, “urban” stations didn’t play UK hip hop, they played stuff like this. Jungle. Samples are taken from “Release yo ‘Delf” by Method Man and “It Gets No Rougher” by LL Cool J. UK hip hop labels SCRAMBLED for producers to remix US Import Hip hop after this release. This tune also completely started the whole “Jump Up” Jungle craze.

DJ Zinc – Ready or Not (Fugees Remix)

This tune was so massive it got airplay on US Hip Hop stations. When the whole “Mash Up” genre started to get big around 2006, some jackasses tried to press up copies of this tune and pass it off as new. Sorry! After this tune, DJ Zinc was booked at raves worldwide. Hey, its fun!

Congo Natty – Junglist

Okay, so by this time, it wasn’t “Rave” music. It was “Jungle.” Congo Natty is a group of rastas who were associated with the Greensleeves Reggae/Ragga label, who branched out to Jungle when it got hot. They were sort of notorious. Usually when one presses up records, you’ll press up a batch of say 1500 or 2500 and send them to record distributors for consignment. A distro then holds on to them, sells them, and sends you money at the end of the quarter. These guys made distros pay UP FRONT, and instead of charging like $3/record they charged something like $5. As a result, a lot of distros didn’t carry Congo Natty releases. That didn’t stop this record from completely blowing up, because it increased its value. You could go to shops in 1995 and they’d be selling this plate for $40. It was outrageous. However, people LOVED this tune. I remember even a couple of years ago people asking me if I could play it at clubs. This record did have negative consequences though. Every raver wearing camo now became a “Junglist” and a lot of Black Jamacians in the UK took offense to its supposed racial undertones. “The Jungle” was a part of Kingston that a lot of these guys were from, they coined the term, and it had no racial “Black people are uncivilized and from Africa” meaning, but still, shortly after people started calling this music “Drum and Bass.” “Rave” was dead.

So yeah, that’s Drum and Bass until about 1995. Those tunes are in roughly chronological order and they’re some of the standouts from that era. I’ll be posting more stuff to annoy your neighbors with later on!