Been wanting to do this mix for years. Drum and bass became a standalone genre around 1994, but there was a period before that, that lasted probably 8-10 months where the sound was no longer Belgian influenced hardcore with stabs from tracks like Spectrum (Joey Beltram) but where the music was being inspired by the Jamaican influences found in London. Artists like WAX doctor were discovering beats but DNB was not yet a genre. Tracks like Rocket by EZE-OZO, or “This is not about hate” by Clive “flash” Gordon are from 1991! It was going to be a full 3 years later that the first release of Metalheadz was going to come out. 3 YEARS! You want prototype jungle; you need to go back. You’ll find a guy called Gerald, that two years before is writing acid house with 808 states to writing breaks and sampling dancehall and mixing it all together. Sometimes this music sounds lost and without format (and try mixing it on vinyl!!), but remember that you are listening to music that was being created from a complete cauldron of sounds, in bedrooms and dropped onto vinyl. Chucked in the back of car and sold in shops in London (“yeah the records are warped because they were on the back seat of the car and took sun while I was driving around, sorry!”). 1991 was undoubtedly the greatest year ever in what is called dance music or EDM today. We did not have genres we simply had music that we young people listened to. 6 months after many of these tracks were released, another up-tempo shift happened where BPMs increased. That meant that many of the tracks in this mix were never heard again. Despite being slow on BPMS these are some of the hardest breaks that were ever written (Check Konspiracy at 35m, utter filth!). For the purists, yes, I did slip in a track by Roger Johnson near the end as it just rolls so perfectly into Jack n Phil. Mixed down on the Allen & Heath Xone32 with 1200 MK2s fitted with ortofons.

You’re going to here: Micky Finn, Eze ozo, a Guy Called Gerald, Top Buzz, 2 Bad Mice, Kev Bird & Wax Doctor, DJ Mayhem, Hedgehog Affair, Konspiracy, Roger Johnson, Jack n Phil, and some other white labels.

The photo on this mix is the Four Aces Club in Hackney. Now it's a set of apartments, but it was one of the clubs that drove the genre forward.

Proto Jungle Sound - The Birth of Jungle (1991)

I begun DJing in 1990 back in the day when people were producing tracks in their bedroom and it seemed as though there were more bootlegs on the market than general releases. The labels didn’t have a clue what was going on and D-construction was a small dance label that was signing acts like N-Joi rather than Kylie. I did two years in the smoke playing sets to crowds of 2,000 party people that really knew their music.

If you were a DJ playing old records, you’d get booed off the stage, or the crowd would leave the room and go upstairs. I kept it close with my crowd, people would come up to me and ask if I had this tune, if it wasn’t in the box I’d play it next week. But it wasn’t a case of these people making jukebox requests but rather that they wanted to feel a part of the scene and know that they had some hand in making the night.

Out of the club into another, the nights were long and people just kept on going. 200 cars in convoy going down the A1 that was a real feeling of unity. You’d end up in a field with or without a generator, but someone would light a fire and, in the end, you might be dancing around a car stereo but it still sounded good, people believed that they were part of a new expression, a new movement.

Roll that musical clock forward and by 2011 what remained was a shrink wrapped corporately packaged scene that got its kicks from re-releasing and remixing tracks created from back catalogues of labels from the 70s and 80s snapped up for next to nothing. The majors took over distribution and the public channels of expression for independent producers has got even harder. Take a trip down the lane of the tracks that defined our genre and you won’t find too many happy faces. From Rappers Delight, through to Grandmaster Flash - Larry Heard, the man that gave you Fingers Inc - went off to become a programmer. LARRY HEARD!!! 

Back in the day a DJ would take two tracks and blend them to make a third with a mix that could last up to 4 minutes. That for me has always been a part of what a DJ should do. It's much easier now as all you have to do is push a button to beat sync it, whereas if you were mixing over the quartz lock crest of the 1210s you'd be moving it over and below the green light as you were mixing it up!

Music has today become much more disposable in the digital age, reducing people’s creative art to a click. Skip through it, break it down to a stem, no sleeve notes, no artwork visual dimension to the artists creation. All you get is track01 - 4.5MB! Do you want to download? That's today, but for me sleeve artwork for dance music has always been something special too.

DJ equipment is now cheap much more accessible – my Numark 1762 cost me nearly £400 back in 1990. My current Xone32 is still stupid money but you can’t beat the analogue circuitry inside.

The period 1988-1994 was to dance music what the 1960s was to free love. Either you were lucky to have been at just the right age to have been a part of it, or you missed out. We were the last generation to get a youth culture before the smartphone made the youth look inside instead of the world outside.

Music will take centre stage once again at some point in the future, but for all of use that were part of it we know we were part of something special, and this idea of one love guides us to this day. 

My thanks to the following people:
JJ Slide at St. Matthews Church in Brixton
Goa Nights at Tyssen Street Studios  in London
Global Dance 3,4 and weekly nights of Exposure at the Stour Centre in Kent
Buzzbys on a Friday night
SpiralTribe Sound
Chocki and the boys
Nicki Blackmarket
Ratpack
Fabio and Grooverider
Ellis Dee
Truelove productions
Heavenly Recordings
Blapps Posse
Break the Limits
Reinforced Recordings
K-Klass
Zoom Records (Camden)
Horace, (Camden Market)
Resistance D
P. Slaghaus (rip)
Leigh303 (for showing me the dance light)
K-Alexi Shelby....to understand means a way of life...

Keep listening.....to everything

PORN ACCOUNTS WILL BE BLOOKED AND I HAVE NO PROBLEM BLLLOCKING YOU.  P.L.U.R I will keep on Believing in God and keep on RAVING. 

Proto Jungle Sound - The Birth of Jungle (1991)

DJ Ace | EH