Hello internet pals of music. Today’s song is a genre classic by a producer who ushered in a whole new sound in the early days of Drum & Bass.
Compared to the frenetic dancehall reggae meets free jazz mayhem of Jungle, with its choppy snares, pulverizing bass, and gunclap gangsterism, the sound LTJ Bukem created was a paradigm shift. Genre micro-titles are always awful (Dungeon Synth, anyone?), and the infinite sub-genres of Drum & Bass come with names that are terribly dumb at describing them, like Jump up & Neurofunk. Bukem’s music was saddled with the frustrating Intelligent Drum & Bass, as if a Rude Boy track like the delirious Original Nuttah by ShyFX & UK Apache somehow had to be separated from this more meditative style. It’s a schism that feels based a bit in that old British adherence to class, which also played a role in Jungle being snubbed by critics and club owners, who were increasingly concerned with the violence (real or imagined) that became associated with it (the same would happen a decade later with genre offspring Grime). Britain’s NWA moment, I guess.
This is all a very basic introduction, and I’m sure any True Junglists, or anyone British for that matter (particularly those who were there), would likely laugh this clunky anthropology back into the Drafts column of this blog / newsletter / journal to the void.
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Mostly though, what Bukem helped create was a way for Drum & Bass to find a home in headphones as well as bass bins. Because I was nowhere near a Bristol sound system, and because in 1993 Drum and Bass had still not achieved much recognition on the shores of landlocked Austin, TX, Bukem’s style suited me perfectly, as I spent my time before class, or in the library with the Logical Progression compilation on repeat in my ears, my headphones drowning out all the monotony of my fish out of water experience of community college. It’s hypnotic and tonal, and even when it does get chaotic there is a level of control at work that reins everything together.
You have some essays to read? You have some data to crunch? Are you at a noisy Starbucks trying to write another blog entry? I suggest this. But I don’t want to divorce the brain from the body. This is still dance music. Heavy, ethereal, futuristic, subsonic Black dance music.
Do you remember Pre-Millenial Tension?
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Musik Klub: “Everythang’s Workin”
all seven minutes of this is my ringtone which is why it takes me a while to answer
Take your Wilco and your girlbosses and your ham sandwiches and move to a different table please I need to listen to LTJ Bukem drink three espressos write my substack and save planet earth