Week 14 – Complicated

Riverside fair, Nottingham, 2015

I love and care for all the work I do here, but perhaps for this one especially.

Drum & Bass: one of the first genres of dance music I learnt to really love and appreciate. Actually, I was in to it before it even was drum and bass; before rave music split down the middle, forking into jungle on the one hand, and happy hardcore on the other.

Musically, I have retained many things from those early days – perhaps most of all the love of the harmonic structures that defined hardcore. They’re still there in lots of my work.

I’ve really enjoyed paying homage to the club nights in the Sanctuary, Milton Keynes, and have this week is influenced more than a little by the work of LTJ Bukem.

I’ll also tell you a story. Last year when I went to Drumcode Halloween in London (the music that inspired week 5 and week 6), some guy from Japan shouted loudly in my ear – for there was no other way – that he didn’t think people my age like this sort of music.

In the UK for University, perhaps his eastern upbringing lent him a deference to people older than him; he asked pleasantly enough, and perhaps clubbing in Japan is more geared towards those in their 20’s. I’ve no idea.

In turn, I asked him how old he was. When he told me, I was pleased to let him know that I’d been into this sort of music since before he was born.

And back to the present, it’s taken me nearly as long to get good enough to do justice to the early jungle pioneers.

3 Comments

  1. Oh, this was very very much like LTJ Bukem (my long time favourite in the nowadays old school dnb genre). Nice!

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