DRUM&BASS

FUTURE STREET SOUND

DRUM&BASS SOUNDS LIKE IT CAME FROM THE FUTURE BUT IT IS ACTUALLY THE MUSIC OF TODAY, FLAUNTING THE PARADOX THAT THE FUTURE HAS ALREADY HAPPENED... IN FACT WE ARE LIVING IT RIGHT NOW.

Emerging from the breakbeat and Hardcore movements of the early 1990s, Drum&Bass hijacked the mindless caravan of breakbeat and Happy Hardcore, and inflicted upon it a voodoo curse. Jungle, the first prototype, was the collision of two cultures: one European, and the other Afro-Caribbean. Naturally enough, South London was the crucible from which this concoction was born.

I was there at the beginning, more or less, the genesis you might call it, at the infamous Heygate Estate in Elephant&Castle. It was the full projects, London style: broken glass in the corridors, and lifts that smelt of piss. I was dossing there with two mad brothers, J. & J., both unemployed and constantly bickering. Unlike them I had to work though and every morning I would trudge off early to the Tube, where it seemed like I was the only white guy there. Certainly the only Australian. Returning home one evening, J. was playing a mixtape...

…

Burning Up

I was well acquainted with techno with its throbbing pulse but this beast was different, hyperactive instead of hypnotic, jarring, syncopated.. Like a gamelan played by a gang of ragamuffins, just with garbage cans instead of gongs. It was only after getting stoned one night, sitting in that bare living room, that I understood.

The snares dropped away, and a synthe began to play minor notes eerily, three subdued notes, trending down. There was something Arthurian about it, Dickensian, Victorian... the menace of the streets. A church bell tolled, grimly.... Over the top, a diva warned: "Girl I am starting to lose it...

I was soon to learn this was a "drop"... and that sample, an ecstasy (and horror movie!) reference. There are many samples in D&B, horror movie references, drug references... but that it not why I dig it so much. It was those eery synthe riffs what got me, so to speak. The drugs were just a gateway.

Drum&Bass is the musical equivalent of anime, or manga… a cartoonish celebration of the modern world, and the triumph of technology. Strokes of darkness and the light. The dark stranger, and all that jazz.. it has got that.

Jungle: perhaps London itself was the jungle, the urban jungle, the concrete jungle, with all its competing tribes. Rude bwoys in Jamaica, bad boys in England. Police in helicopters, police sirens the background of our lives. And the law of the jungle is the law of the gang.

Come 1997 the mood was darker, more clinical...

It is like the Borg, in that it assimilates all that it comes into contact with: jazz, soul, reggae, funk, hip-hop, you will be assimilated. There is a touch of blues too...

Like an endlessly mutating virus, tracks are sampled, and resampled. Elementary samples, like "Only you can give me what I want // Oh baby // Yes // I Feel for your touch, oh baby!". First you say yes, and then you say no. Tell me to stop, and then say to go. What kind of fool are you looking for?

I need you I want you.

Breakbeat: Two Bad Mice.