Influences: Snøw

Shy FX is an absolute king when it comes to jungle. He has got classics for days on end and still puts out super high quality records to this day (in fact, something amazing just hit the inbox today!) This one doesn’t often get mentioned much, I love this one coz it feels like a Bristol vibe!! It sounds like it should have been on Dope Dragon Records but at the same time you can hear Shy’s signature vibe too. Pure no frills jump up jungle, rolling pitched breakbeats, couple little vocal samples and a big saturated 808 bassline!!

Dope Dragon Records was the sister label to Bristol’s Full Cycle Records. Everyone used an alias and even nowadays there is a special kinda cult mystery about the label. I think Mask was Roni Size, Swabe was Die, Gang Related was Krust. I think 3 Way may have been Die Krust and Roni all together but I’m not 100% sure! I feel like a lot of the Dope Dragon records were just quick bangers made to play out on the weekend and thrown out on limited press with minimum fuss. They have this kinda raw magical energy to them, really loose and dirty. Most of the tracks on Dope Dragon were very limited and rare. A lot of them aren’t even on YouTube, even this version is super low quality! If you can seek it out though there is so much gold in that catalogue – it’s crude, unadulterated jungle music in its purest form.

This one is just an Amen break monster!! It reminds me of listening to DJ Randall tapes. The relatively smooth intro, featuring MC Fats, the voice of so many of my favourite jungle records. The smooth pads and vocals lull you into a false sense of security and build the tension for what feels like forever… then all of a sudden with barely any warning, A-Sides unleashes this huge Amen Break with a naughty swooping 808 b line and it is absolute carnage! One of my fav Amen break tracks.

Total Science made so many great records in this era. They literally seemed to release something new every week and the quality was always very high. Their drum processing always sounded so sick. This one, on Goldie’s seminal Metalheadz imprint, is definitely one of the most worn out vinyls in my collection. I love the badboy vocal chop (it may have been sampled in my track ‘Headzy’ from the new EP!) It’s so rude and so percussive and the mentasm breakdown in the middle takes the vibe to another level just when you thought it was done.

Dillinja… what can I say man, this guy was next level. In my early days of DJing I used to buy all the Dillinja tunes but not play them in my sets because they just sounded out of place and nothing you can play after would sound good at all!! His production levels were leagues ahead of everybody to the point where his music just sounded alien!! I could pick Dillinja tunes for days but this is one of my favs, I love the filtered chords and those dutty 808s.

One of my first attractions to DnB as a young kid was the darkness! Bad Company made sounds I had never heard in my life before, sounds that got me so excited. They had the duttiest dark bass noises always accompanied by these vast brooding cinematic atmospheres. Their tracks were like sci-fi horror soundtracks at 170 bpm! I recently got to produce a track with Bad Company for their latest album ‘Ice Station Zero’, and it made the 18 year old obsessive record collector in me very happy and proud to be on a project with my early heroes!! I could pick loads of Bad Company records but I feel like this one is probably my favourite.

Future Cut were some of my fav producers back in the day. Their catalogue is incredibly diverse. As Un-Cut they produced a massive crossover DnB hit ‘Midnight’ with Jenna G and then went on to produce a lot of Lily Allen’s first album and become huge pop producers. Back in the day though they made filthy rollers on the incredible Renegade Hardware label. This one sampled the famous Psycho theme tune, but for me it’s all about that throbbing b line and the energy in the drums. My fav part of this tune is when the ride cymbals come in 16 bars after the drop – ENERGY!!

Like Bad Company, Ed Rush & Optical were famous for the darker, cinematic side of DnB, but their tunes also had so much funk to them! They sounded so futuristic at the time but also had this real organic feel. The drums on this one just roll for days, they have so much groove and the fills are amazing. This track also has the ride cymbal loop drop 16 bars in like the Future Cut track above – that was a real feature of this kinda techy roller subgenre of DnB back then, the 16 bar splashers!! And what about that bassline – the filters are so nasty, so gritty and huge but yet somehow still understated too. It’s hard to explain now when we live in a world where dirty basslines are everywhere but hearing sounds like this as a kid just blew my mind!!

I could have easily done a list of DJ Die tunes, he has so many of my favourites! This is just the archetypal classic Bristol Roller, the ultimate DJ tool. Simple, super rolling beats, with that chopped classic Dennis Coffee ‘Scorpio’ conga loop and the ultimate warm Bristol b line… It’s one of those tunes that was just so much fun to mix as a DJ because it’s so simple, it doesn’t seem to change at all, but if you listen carefully the the subtle sound fx are actually really intricate, everything has been meticulously placed within the arrangement for a reason. I was lucky enough to work a lot with DJ Die when I was young and one thing I really learnt from him was to pay attention to the tiny details.

I used to love mixing with Brockie & Ed Solo tunes. I was going to choose their track ‘Represents’ but I feel like everyone knows that one. I taught myself to mix with two copies of ‘Represents’ – the beats in the intro were so chunky, if you were out of time you would know about it quickly! This track ‘Outboard’ and its flipside ‘Stampede’ were two of my fav DJ tool records, they mixed well with so much stuff. Much like DJ Die’s, Brockie & Ed Solo’s music around this era was always really fun to DJ with because of its simplicity. For that reason I think their music was always a favourite for MCs too. The drums and bass were super heavy but they had space for other tunes to mix with or for MCs to flow over. Brockie and MC Det were just the perfect combo – two of my fav people to listen to in a rave or on a tape, proper UK legends!