lovers jungle

droid

Well-known member
The yearning uncertainty of this number... Jay must've been going through some relationship issues in '95. From his last good record.

 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Kinda touched on this in the '95 thread. Romantic jungle is most explicitly personified by the full female vocal... the 'proper' song, of which there are very few quality examples.
Thats the thing with this stuff- its seems like a sub genre rich in possibilities, the few quality examples attest to that, but its a path that wasn't fully taken up cos garage happened
 

boxedjoy

Well-known member
this idea of "song" versus "texture" is part of what draws me to garage and 2-step - I find a lot of jungle technically impressive and sonically thrilling* but my poptimist leanings mean I find the fact that garage provides similar excitement but in a song framework so much more engaging. I know this is my own biases showing - jungle isn't big in my city, my ears are tuned to ~130bpm, garage was the sound of pop in my early teens - the problem is me and not the music.

(*the jungle I enjoy, I enjoy on a textural level, but I'm on record as finding it as a genre hard to dance to)
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
What about this that's only just come out? I know its not jungle and not particularly mindblowing or anything, but...

 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
I know, it's not very good, but now and then I hear faster tempo r&b or pop tunes with a jungle/dnb inspired beat and they're always underwhelming or annoying or a bit lame, but it makes me think, I want something like this, only good.
I had similar feelings with stuff like Rudimental - Waiting all night when that was big.

I do think theres a potential there but for whatever reason it just never quite gels, it's quite frustrating.
 

boxedjoy

Well-known member
A lot of the crossover stuff is aspiring to be Pendulum more than anything. Which isn't to say it isn't good at what it does (I think it can be even when I know it isn't designed for me) but it's a very different purpose and function to what's going on here.
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
A lot of the crossover stuff is aspiring to be Pendulum more than anything. Which isn't to say it isn't good at what it does (I think it can be even when I know it isn't designed for me) but it's a very different purpose and function to what's going on here.
Yeah, as I understand it the 'lovers' part of the thread isn't just referring to romantic/sexy songs but explicity to Lovers Rock and the whole reggae/soul soundsystem lineage into jungle proper, which has nothing to do with any of the later pop crossover stuff. Which just leaves us with a handful of really great records in this vein, and we've probably posted them all already.

Whats interesting/frustrating/ tantalising to me is, on paper, rnb/pop/dancehall plus jungle songs (not just sample snippets) could be a great idea, and the tunes posted here are proof it can work and be amazing, but it just seems to be confined to the 90s, a path never taken. It's never gone anywhere interesting, afaik. I'd love to be proved wrong though.
 

daddek

Well-known member
This has the more muscular ambition of post 97 dnb but still has something, a more successful hybrid of rnb and techy Chicago ambience with jungle. A space which instantly calcified when fabio and them forced an ugly brand around it. “Liquid”. Blugh. The word applied as a genre sounds awful, slimey, putrid almost. Jungle is a tree of dead branches, like an almost beautiful but badly tended garden, yeah it’s frustrating.
 

blissblogger

Well-known member
wasn't specifically thinking of lovers rock, just anything in jungle that could be plausibly taken as love song

this is borderline - could be a paean to a lover, could be a paean to a pill

 
Top