Soul Jazz releases Rumble In The Jungle!

New on the Soul Jazz radar is Soul Jazz Presents Dubstep!

OK just picked this up ... early thoughts:

1. liner notes are the worst shit EVER. either you're to justify jungle to the straight no chaser set ("jungle was and is a multiracial music" ... uh, as opposed to what? house? techno? rock?) or ... well i can't even figure out what else they might be trying to do with such shitty liners.

2. again, like the "can you jack" compilation, it's probably worth buying, sneering at the liner notes, and then basking in the fucking LOUD LOUD LOUD mastering skills. i mean, it is fucking LOUD.

3. they included the one SUAD track they picked because it is basically a dubstep track. C+D trying to write your lameass "family tree of afrodiasporic popular music 1950-2010", you are worse than degiorgio.

4. the poison chang track and the asher senator track really ARE worth the $20 fee. i mean, they are total headfuck "WOW popular culture actually did peak in 91-95" type songs. especially poison chang, it's got this crazy percolating electro synth running counterpoint (think sweet exorcist's "test one") to the bass bombs that's just ... WOW.

making my gf listen to this tonight, she turns to me and goes "WTF kind of animal is a super sharp otter?"

The whole Cutty Ranks vs. Poison Chang Rumble In Jungle set is fucking awesome (the Top Cat vs. General Levy one is less so.) The remixers are a fucking who's who great junglists.

A1 Cutty Ranks Limb By Limb (DJ SS Remix)
Remix - DJ SS
A2 Cutty Ranks Original Ranks (Just Jungle Remix)
Remix - Just Jungle
A3 Cutty Ranks The Stopper (Kenny Ken Remix)
Remix - Kenny Ken
B1 Cutty Ranks As You See It (Marvellous Cain Remix)
Remix - Marvellous Cain
B2 Cutty Ranks The Cutter (Dub Hustlers & Lenny De Ice remix)
Remix - Dub Hustlers , Lennie De Ice
B3 Cutty Ranks Original Rude Boy Style (Mega Dangerous Remix)
Remix - Mega Dangerous
C1 Poison Chang Love The Woman (DJ Rap Remix)
Remix - DJ Rap
C2 Poison Chang Press The Trigger (Half Breed Remix)
Remix - Half Breed
C3 Poison Chang Over You Body (Dub Hustlers & Lenny De Ice Remix)
Remix - Dub Hustlers , Lennie De Ice
D1 Poison Chang Shot Fe Bust (Marvellous Cain Remix)
Remix - Marvellous Cain
D2 Poison Chang God Head (Bizzy B Remix)
Remix - Bizzy B
D3 Poison Chang Arm Strong (Timmy Magic Remix)
Remix - Timmy Magic

C+D trying to write your lameass "family tree of afrodiasporic popular music 1950-2010", you are worse than degiorgio.

ha ha -- OTM.

"C+D trying to write your lameass "family tree of afrodiasporic popular music 1950-2010", you are worse than degiorgio."

but erm, isnt this all soul jazz comps? isnt that the whole point of the label?

it was much easier to stomach when they were just telling us that early ska dudes listened to louisiana r&b radio or whatever ...

why? ive not read the liners for this yet but whats wrong with trying to show that jungle was a multiracial scene? cos it was - although hopefully thats not a major point in the liners, cos then it ends up like all the stax articles, going on and on abuot how it represents racial harmony. its almost like theyre trying to diminish the black side of it. if theyre just trying to connect the diasporic dots, i dont see how thats so diff from paul gilroy or whoever....

someone explain to me why no doubt by SUAD is on there though... very strange. thats a garage tune. or do the compilers not know the diff between garage and jungle?

xpost, saying that, the whole degiorgio type thing does get a bit taxing after a while... i think a lot of people like the idea of black music inbreeding and only taking influences from inside and never anywhre else

you should read the liners. basically the whole comp is very SUAD-centric (they produced the ragga twins tracks, so their sound is roughly 50% of the music on the disc) and they mention in the liners that SUAD went on to be big garage / dubstep players (no joke) and as an example of a prototype of the garage/dubstep sound here's their track "no doubt" ... see what i mean?

also the liners go way out of their way to present jungle as a british take on DANCEHALL of all things, and go out of their way to minimize the connection to rave. basically hip-hop and ragga get six or seven paragraphs and rave gets ... oh, a sentence or two, and some quotes from PJ and smiley about feeling really out of place at raves ...

sorry, not 50% more like 1/3rd ...

"in the early 1990s jungle was on the rise in the UK. after initially emerging out of the post-rave scene, Jungle had quickly evolved and by 1993 was drawing on the slow, heavy bass-lines and ragga vocals of jamaicana music. whilst many would come to see this era as a short-lived phase in the evolution of drum and bass history, this album counters the theory, showing also that the roots of jungle started much further back, in the UK's vibrant dancehall scene of the 1980s"

1. glad to see it "quickly evolved" out of rave. where's your rave comp, you clowns? i like your cover art but i'd take any issue of moonshine's "speed limit 140 bpm+" over 90% of your catalog.

2. the last part makes it sound like they are setting up jungle the british heir to JA dancehall, which makes sense, because now they're trying to sell dubstep as the true heir to JA dub.

well that sounds a bit agenda-pushing. if it makes them feel better and prouder about it then so be it. but no comp titled rumble in the jungle should have no doubt on it (good track, but still...). theres other tracks that should be on there if they wanna show connections to/precedents of garage or dubstep - JUNGLE tracks i mean, not bloody ones from 2001! just imagine what would have happened if 4hero did the liners or compiled it - it would have been filled with stuff about jungles links to funk and jazz and probably had no hardcore stuff on the album at all! the bias of liners dont surprise me though - guys like 4hero, suad etc have always had problems/their own issues contextualising the music. im not sure about the white producers in jungle but a fair amount of black producers have always seemed to have had this kinda grudging acceptance that the roots of the music arent that clear cut.

xpost yeah the comparison between paul gilroy and soul jazz doesn't make sense to me because

1) paul gilroy ain't that great (my personal axe, ignore it)

2) paul gilroy at least backs his claims up with some scholarship, these soul jazz guys are like "here's SUAD-produced tracks, here's two or three tracks off a greensleeves rave-catch-up cash-in comp, here's three of the big pop-oriented crossover jungle hits, here's one or two unknown classics we dug up with our deep deep pockets ... oh wow, a secret history of underground dance music!!". it's really lazy.

(and yeah i know the links to funk but the sonic relationship of jungle to funk is pretty much like what hip hop is to funk, and roots are sometimes not anything more than that)

i agree that a 4 hero thing might not have been any better.

but why try to totalize a genre? why not just do something like "miami sound" and do small label showcases without trying to fit this into their potted history?

To be fair if you watch docs from 94-95, a lot of the producers (Congo Natty, DJ Ron, Randall) do see jungle as a their uniquely brit answer to dancehall/hip-hop and less a mutant child of rave/'ardcore so that pressure to push this particular agenda wasn't invented by Soul Jazz or anything.

i honestly hear more jungle in newtrament's "london bridge" than in cutty's "Stopper" (which makes sense, because gerald + goldie and lots of those dudes were electro heads, right?)

i think this is the new period of putting this music in the frame of a new lineage. and reappraising it. ie, in the trajectory of black british music. cos people might have slagged it off before, but now soul jazz are kinda working it over and making it seem worthy, or at least part of a 'real' 'honourable' 'tradition' etc what with dubstep out there and its emphasis on the past (both in terms of the raves, whats said in interviews, and the retroish sound itself) all this stuff is getting new attention.

im just waiting for soul jazz to do a ukg comp now!

also, as far as what alex n sf says, i think suad used to claim their music was just sped up hip hop back in the early 90s too, not that diff from dizzee or someone saying their music is just hip hop.

Also the tracklist for this lays out the agenda pretty clearly. 4 SUAD tracks, 3 Jungle Fashion tracks, 2 Greensleeves Jungle tracks. I mean okay "Incredible", "Original Nuttah" and "Super Sharp Shooter" were def. three of the big pop hits, but this is a pretty limited view of the whole scene.

yeah those are the three pop crossovers i was referring to

i find most soul jazz comps pretty unsatisfactory personally. great packaging but the content isnt always as good as it could be.

to make up for their transgressions they need to do a jump-up comp with the aphrodite + mickey finn's remix of "jungle brother" and mulder's remix of "the rockafeller skank"

i think the whole urban takeover / jump-up thing is sooooooo underrated ...

"dubstep's emphasis on the past" <- IMHO the worst thing about dubstep =(

Well their Studio One comps are ridonkulously good, but I'm not totally sure that it's possible to make bad Studio One comps (Heartbeat hasn't figured out how to make bad ones.) The Dynamite series is fun too. They have other moments (That A New Thing comp, Philly Soul, Arthur Russell, etc) but yeah they def. seem to be great packaging, good to meh content for the most part.

Jump-up gets such a bad name! The Congo Natty jump-up remix of "Scalp Dem (Wu-Tang Remix)" is one of my favorite tracks.

""dubstep's emphasis on the past" <- IMHO the worst thing about dubstep =("

yeah thats kinda the thing that annoys me. not that i dont like the past theyre revisiting or dont think theyre doing anything new with it, it just *feels* dead, like theyre trying to do somethnig new with the sources but nothing *too* new just in case it tips the reverence over into something uncharted. maybe its meant to feel dead, i dont know, but it just bores me a lot of the time. theres lots of things i like about dubstep, the bass weight, the darkness, the great production values, but the actual tracks just seem so incredibly boring and repressive. too much 'THIS IS SO DARK ISNT IT?!' type stuff going on, which just one-note.

i love that supercat track (scalp dem). i wish i had that on mp3. ive not heard it in years.

Yeah the worst thing about this comp is that a simple SUAD or Jungle Fashion comp would be REALLY valuable! A lot of the best stuff from both didn't make it to CD and SUAD doesn't seem interested (or legally able) to repackage their old stuff and Fashion folded so if someone like Soul Jazz stepped in it would be a real service.

""dubstep's emphasis on the past" <- IMHO the worst thing about dubstep =("

Er, did you guys know they've done a dubstep comp???

Various - Box Of Dub

Label: Soul Jazz Records
Catalog#: SJR CD 161
Format: CD, Compilation
Country: UK
Released: 25 May 2007
Genre: Electronic
Style: Breakbeat, Dub, Grime, UK Garage
Notes: A Dubstep and Future Dub compilation.
Rating: 5.0/5 (1 vote) Rate It
Submitted by: 110011
Tracklisting:

1 Digital Mystikz I Wait
2 Sub Version (2) Feat. Paul St. Hilaire The Light
Featuring - Paul St. Hilaire
3 Skream Sub Island
4 Tayo Meets Acid Rockers Uptown Dread Cowboy
5 Scuba (4) Subaqueous
6 Kode9 Magnetic City
7 Sub Version (2) Feat. Paul St. Hilaire Rise Up
Featuring - Paul St. Hilaire
8 Burial Unite
9 Digital Mystikz Feat. Sgt Pokes Guilty
Featuring - Sgt Pokes
10 King Midas Sound Surround Me
11 Skream Irie
12 Scuba (4) Respirator

I think there's been some discussion of that somewhere. The Burial on it is really nice. Still on the 2step, bit more dancey than the album.

Yeah there is some talk about it above. It's really really boring.

I've only heard the Mystikz and Kode 9 apart from the burial and yeah. Not good.

I can't decide whether to anticipate the Plastician (gah that fucking name) album or not. Grime and dubstep has been so meh lately.

I would say the opposite actually, but then again I would. I feel that the dark halfstep dominance has definitely ended. New Burial from his album that's meant to be coming out in the summer is sick. TRG on Hessle Audio is nice 2steppy stuff. Skreamizm 3 wasn't up to previous standards but still pretty good and goes off in a dance. Benga and Skream's 4/4 bits, including Skream's Marc Ashken remixes, are really good. Bow E3 by Wiley is one of my favourite grime tracks in ages. Benga is on a roll, though Benga & Coki - Night has definitely been completely rinsed. Tes La Rok "Round the world girls" that's forthcoming on Argon records is ace. New Kode 9 + Warrior Queen track "Fuck you" is in my head most of the day. Magnetic Man and Headhunter are good. Really enjoying some Rusko stuff, including the hilariously corny Cockney thug (with a sample from the Armando Ianucci shows and the cheesiest midi horns ever). Skepta's Stageshow riddim is at the very least interesting. New Bug w. Flowdan "Skeng" is a banger. etc.

I think the Plastic ian album will be great.

Not heard the Wiley album, but talk about it seemed some restrained in its praise. Are we calling the Bug dubstep now haha? "Jah War" is pretty good. One of the (few) highlights from that Mary Anne Hobbs comp.

Actually speaking of the Bug I like the King Midas Sound stuff too, but that seems VERY un-step of any sort.

Bug's definitely umbrella. Like Vex'd. Not really dubstep but they get dropped in the same sets and are definitely connected to scene.

This looks about six million times better than the Soul Jazz comp and it's about half as much money:

http://hosted.greensleeves.easynet.co.uk/bio/biogJungleDub.html

"Build Me 3 Coffins" is probably my favorite track in this entire series.

I listened to the Soul Jazz comp the other week and was kinda bored, a few great songs aside.

"great packaging, good to meh content for the most part"

Jess's review made me feel bad about saying this above. Soul Jazz is a fine label and the content is generally really good, it's just better obv if you are not collector scum (like me!) and a beginner to whatever genre-du-jour they are compiling.

i was gonna start a thread on that new greensleeves comp. i bet it's good