Cadence in the Chaos: Why Listen to Jungle Anyway?

Cadence in the Chaos: Why Listen to Jungle Anyway? I think that's a question often asked at least once by every soul that encounters Jungle for the first time. Even those of us who live for Jungle had to ask ourselves before we went head-long into Junglism. I can assure you there are reasons a-plenty. However, which is most suitable? Follow me come go downtown...or at least that's what I always thought this seminal track said. Pretty sure the secrets to Junglism are in there somewhere.

Phuture Assasins - Future Sound - 2 Bad Mice remix

Before we dive in let’s fill the pool. One may think Jungle came from Drum and Bass, but it’s quite the opposite. DnB was more of a mellowing of Jungle around '94 to '96 as snare rhythms became more steady and melodic, and in a way, began resembling the pulsating rhythms of techno and acid house songs that birthed Jungle. I wasn’t there at ground zero when all this developed, so I won’t speak too heavily on the history, but Jungle was also a label for certain types of Reggae long before acid house and techno cused mentasms. Later on in the early 90s, crowds showed a taste for more extended funky breakdowns in acid house songs and producers crafted breakbeat tracks with Reggae and Hip Hop influence that came to be called Hardcore (or ‘ardcore if you knew what time it was.) 

©Suburban Base Records

When the Reggae based tunes started to meld with Hardcore, well, producers of the era lost their minds and pushed the boundaries of those brave little Amigas. Pulsating boom-bats became complicated Amens, basslines started to develop a drawl in a good way, and a genre was born that was wild, beautiful, experimental, melodic, brutal, chaotic, inventive, retro, future minded, original, sample heavy (sometimes downright plagiaristic), and wholly it’s own animal. You really can’t pinpoint the birth of Jungle, although a few have claimed to have invented it. (Not Al Gore, oddly.) Here are a few early tracks I feel are seminal and show the birth of Jungle well. 

Bizzy B and Cool Hand Flex's Come Back 2 Me was experimentalism at its finest, lots of change-up, new sounds, raw samples, you name it. I adore this song and hope others would find it equally intriguing.

Kick the tires on this one next.

Urban Shakedown and Micky Finn's Some Justice is not Jungle per se, but the breakbeat was more complex than other songs of the era, and that long-winded, low-slung bassline flew in the face of everything of that era save, maybe, Earth Leakage Trip's No Idea.

That one is good in a weird way and maybe weird in a good way too. 

D'cruz's Heaven is lavished with amens, atmosphere, patient cadences, and beautifully haunting. It really showed that Jungle can be a raw beauty without being a dance floor stomper. This one is in my top 5 easily for all time tunes along side Come Back 2 Me.

I think the pool’s full…enough.  

Now, let's look at Jungle from a visual perspective rather than aural. There was this 2 CD set from ‘95 or ‘96 called King of the Jungle and it had this insert with a comic. My copy is long gone, sadly, and I couldn't find the insert images either. I'll do my best to convey the message. In the comic there were two ravers, or Junglists as it would be. They were in this alley and heard the Jungle beats resonating in the shadows and went running to the rave. One was described as a “treble junkie” who loved the snares and high hats, the other a “bass head” who loved the bassline more than anything. I remember reading this comic and wondering who could ever be a treble junkie when confronted with such wonderful basslines. Yes, I’m a bass head, always have been, always will be. You feel bass at the cellular level, not just in the ear canal. Subwoofers appear to me as angelic beings presiding over a celestial plane. I used to sleep between a pair of 12s on a sleeping bag…drove my roomates crazy…I slept like a brick and had the best dreams. Not that I want to apologize for it; I could’ve stole from them or eaten their food or never flushed, but I was just loud and loved bass and we got along famously. Treble was secondary in may ways for me as I couldn’t wrap my head around that aspect of Jungle right off the bat. I liked the synths, stabs, samples, and all that stuff layered on the bass, but to be a junkie for treble, well, not my bag….yet. What turned me around you may ask? Learning to mix and match beats pushed treble to the forefront and revealed new insight into Jungle. Since the basslines were so variable I had to learn to hear that steady cadence of snare magic ticking through the wobble. Treble suddenly had relevance once I allowed myself to break free of my own confines and I owe it in part to a CD insert comic and my DJ sensei.

So, I guess we can list basslines and treble hooks as reasons for listening to Jungle, and we’d be right. We can line them up with experimental freedom, historical veracity, nostalgia, and even profitability. Yes, some artists made a decent amount of money from these underground releases and they presented great business opportunities for some of the most memorable labels that most mainstream pop channels have never heard of, much to their detriment in my opinion. On that note, nobody ever said they listen to Jungle because it’s a right proper business model with considerable growth potential. We just need to admit it was a reason and move on to more engaging pastures.

The biggest, most engaging pasture is arguably the Rave. Considering Jungle was part of the rave culture, and ravers liked to dance and stand near speaker stacks and attempt conversations, dancing and standing could be valid reasons. It was pretty hard to pick apart a song while you were dancing, you were just looking for a rhythm and melody that kept you moving with minimal interruption. Tricky thing is, with all that change up, all those breakdowns, all the air gaps, all those atmospheric interludes, how could one keep dancing to Jungle? Well, we did amazinly, as the various interpretations of rave moves allowed room for break dancing and what some said resembled skanking circa the Ska scene. DJs brought in a new level of turntablism to complement the Jungle beat, the tempo started to increase a few BPMs, and MCs, horns, whistles, and screams from the crowd filled in the gaps and kept us moving. So we listened to Jungle to dance, to yell, to be wowed by DJs and MCs, to blurt horns, rampage ears with whistles, and all that jazz. Speaking of Jazz, talk about a perfect marriage to Jungle that persisted into DnB and remains a force, DJ Krust's Jazz Note is a worthwhile stop on our Jungle safari. Here we get that DnB steadiness of snares coupled with the rolling basslines and lush synths of Jungle.

Getting back on track, raves were not the only venue for Jungle as they were supported heavily by radio...pirate radio. Pirate radio allowed the home-bound, the travelers, and the brave rogues to experience Jungle right where they were. It was an honor to have your new Jungle track dropped on pirate radio before it landed in a rave or a club. Eventually, pirate radio became synonymous with Jungle and the listener base expanded. I wish I could’ve been there, but I’ve heard some recordings of the broadcasts that survived and they had pure fun free from advertisements, corporate invasion, and billboard lists. On top of that, they had a code of speech that gave directions to illegal raves that allowed promoters to swell crowds beyond the 2,000 bodies needed to prevent the constables from sending everyone home. I always appreciated that level of savvy. They never incited violence with those adverts, but they sure stuck it to the man. So some of us liked listening to Jungle because it was counter-culture, edgy, disobedient yet peaceful, underground, rude, and shocking. Those are some great reasons, if you ask me.

We must concede, at least this far in, that listening to Jungle just because it has anti-hero qualities is about as uneven as liking it because it has a good business model. I like it better than the business model since it's badass, but I bet there’s more to it still.

I think the last realm of reasoning to listen to or like Jungle is the way it sounds. That sound is a cadence within the chaos that defines Jungle. The sound is what we dance to, what we soak in, what draws attention, what really sets apart Jungle from acid house, ‘ardcore, hip hop, techno, and reggae.

Take another moment for J Majik's Your Sound before we continue, please.

Admittedly, when J Majik was laying that sample into the song, they were speaking to the ravers of the day that were building the Junglist community. In that community, superstars graced the turntables bringing raw tracks from fledgling studios that were usually pressed by punk labels since mainstream distributors wouldn't touch the stuff. To the Junglists, these were not unknown entities, these were members of their community, from their neighborhoods, big names, pirates, gods amongst the humans. These songs still have clout today, still have an edge, and are still as underground as it gets. If you look at Dubstep, which spawned from DnB in many ways, which spawned from Jungle in many other ways, then you can see how Dubtep became a mainstream genre while Jungle stoically peered out from behind the foliage long enough to decide it was more fun deep in the shadows. Jungle is not underground because it sucks or is under-produced, it’s underground because it wants to be dammit. We want to be underground. Underground is where the roots are, where the nutrients are, where it’s cool, where it’s rich with symbiotic life. Yeah, I’m pontificating, but so what - it’s true about the underground life. In another way, if you take dirt and pull it up into the air at the surfce and leave it there it will dry out and become dust. So why drag Jungle up to the surface to become popular only to have it dry up? Keeping Jungle underground and letting it support itself is the only way...dare I say...Proper way to treat Jungle. The underground sound sounds the way it sounds because it "pumps the vibe and keeps it alive so people can understand it" as noted at first in Future Sound. If you didn't listen that far previously, take a moment to go back and do so and I'll save your place here.

One great thing about Jungle is that producers still craft new sounds and develop them further; they create new sub-genres, set new trends. It’s still Jungle, but it’s basically new or oldskool or fresh or classic. Nobody tells Jungle how it should sound, it just comes out from a collective mindset. Check this new Jungle label, Hi-Fi Jungle, that Drum and Bass Proper highlighted back in December '24. They brought the oldskool flair with up-to-date audio fidelity, wicked snares, and rolling bass. 

On the flipside, a modern Jungle track that paves it's own way without much reference to oldskool methodology is Jon Tetly's Myst. I feel like this is one of the sharpest, most groovable cadences available in the genre currently.

These days we see songs rehashed, restructured, and reinvented on a regular. Maybe not all the songs are top tier, though I'd say those beats above are top tier, but with an “anything goes” mindset Jungle does get to meander and define itself even with itself as the base.

Let’s wrap it up. We have history, originality, some Frankenstine business, some skullduggery, hive minds, balls out raves, pirate radio, artists, beat junkies, business plans, heritage, and a bunch of other stuff that explain why we listen to Jungle. You probably thought of a few more along the way you wish I’d written out. It’s okay, I can’t read minds unless it’s dark and my eyes are closed, and it’s bright in this room and my eyes are dry from staring at this screen so long. 

To distill this idea, maybe even encourage more to give Jungle a shot, I’d say all the reasons above settle into this one reason: We want to listen to Jungle. It's really that simple. Sorry to keep you waiting for a fortune cookie response. But really, who listens to something they don’t want to? Oh yeah, a lot of radio station listeners that suffer until a crumb of a song they like pops up. Other than that, I’d say wanting to listen is the best reason and allows for all those subordante reasons to resonate. If you went to a rave, you’d usually have to decide which room to attend. The Trance room? The House room? The Trip Hop room? The Ambient room? The Jungle room? I know I gravitated to the Jungle room on a regular, even went to massives where Jungle was under a bridge with crappy speakers. It was still pleasurable, and it occurred to me there that Jungle was even underground in the underground world of raves. That’s bad ass. That’s Jungle. 

Remember that Come Back to Me track up there? That wasn’t the first Jungle choon I heard, but it was the reason I fell for the genre. It was such an affront to my senses at first. (Don't tell Bizzy B. Or do. It could spark a great conversation between us.) I just couldn’t believe someone would stop and start a song so many times. The grand irony was that it stuck with me the next day, then the next, and so on. I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I could hear it while I walked to work or school. Heard it when I heard other songs. Heard it in the gentle rustle of a diesel engine at midnight. It had taken root, brought it’s own gremlins, poured water on them, fed them well, and took over the hardware store of my mind. That’s when I knew I wanted to listen to Jungle more often. I knew I wanted others to hear Jungle. I knew - in part - what others had known some years before as they heard the first Amens roll across the warehouse. We wanted to hear Jungle's cadence any chance we got. That cadence is what filled the rave, heisted the radio waves, pushed our speakers to the limits, elevated vinyl discs to trophies, and spawned the "Junglist" movement. Why listen to Jungle? Well... 

Want - desire - choice - gremlins - all great reasons that encompass the cadence in the chaos.