The Wire 300: Simon Reynolds on the Hardcore Continuum #2: Ambient Jungle (1994)

“Those looking for the next revolution would do better to watch for what crawls out of the Ardkore morass than to carry a torch for Detroit...” So I rashly prophesied in The Wire back in November 1992. Hardcore is both a scene and a sound. Subculturally, it’s the hard core of rave culture, working class kids from inner city estates and suburban nowheresvilles who live for the weekend. Musically, Hardcore is a London and surrounding counties based offshoot of Techno that’s defined by sped-up, looped breakbeats as opposed to the programmed rhythms of Trance and House. Always more multiracial than other post-Rave scenes, Hardcore got “blacker” as hiphop, Ragga, dub and Soul influences kicked in, and by 93 it had evolved into Jungle. By this point, Hardcore/Jungle (the terms remain interchangeable) was universally scorned by dance hipsters and banished from the media. But the scene thrived thanks to a self-sufficient network of small labels, specialist record shops, pirate radio stations and clubs.

This year, the press, record industry and legal radio stations like Kiss FM have finally woken up to Jungle. But so far the focus has been on rudeboy Ragga Jungle, while coverage has often been sensationalistic, alluding to unsubstantiated rumours of crack abuse on the scene. Certainly, Ragga Jungle is highly significant, as the musical expression of an emergent black-and-white underclass in Britain. It’s this nation’s equivalent to gangsta rap; the rasping insolence of the patois booyacka chants, the ruff beats and stabbing sub-bass, embody a ghettocentric survivalist toughness. But because attention has focused on the likes of M-Beat & General Levy (whose “Incredible”, despite the hype, failed to become Jungle’s first crossover hit), Hardcore’s progressive vanguard has been neglected – artists like Metalheads, Omni Trio, Foul Play, LTJ Bukem, Neil Trix, making a sound known variously as ‘Ambient’, ‘intelligent’ or ‘deep’ Hardcore. Music of such undeniable beauty and innovation that even Trance-heads and Detroit-nostalgics are starting to turn on to it, while electronica units like Orbital and Bandulu are incorporating junglist elements into their sound.

First, some history. Back in late 92, the dominant Hardcore sound was still ‘happy’, i.e. sped-up helium-shrill voices, nutty oscillator-riffs, 150 bpm jitter-beats. But the seeds of Hardcore’s future were already audible. 2 Bad Mice’s “Waremouse” trailblazed the ‘drum ‘n’ bass’ sound, a minimalist, DJ-mixable mesh of breakbeats and sub-bass; Metalheads’ “Terminator” invented ‘dark’ with its eerily processed beats and bad-trippy samples. Through the first half of 93 these overlapping sub-genres – ‘dark’ and ‘drum ‘n’ bass’ –increased hardcore’s isolation. Alienated by the moody, loveless atmosphere the darkcore sound generated, many ‘happy hardcore’ fans defected to the more clement climes of progressive House and Garage, where the old-style hands in the air euphoria and togetherness of early rave survived (albeit in muted form). But in retrospect, it can be seen that dark opened up a vital space for experimentation. With its premium on headfuck weirdness and disorientating effects, darkcore was the improbable return of early 80s avant-funk. Tuning into the pirate stations, you’d be astonished by tracks that sounded uncannily like PiL’s Metal Box, 23 Skidoo, early Cabaret Voltaire. As for drum ‘n’ bass, its multi-tiered percussion and rhythm-as-melody approach took the ideas of hiphop and dub into the 21st Century.

From mid-summer 93, there were the first glimpses of a new direction in Hardcore: away from the dark side, towards a new optimism, albeit fragile and bittersweet. From the influential Moving Shadow label came bliss-drenched, Ambient-tinged releases like Omni Trio’s “Mystic Stepper (Feel Better)” and “Renegade Snares”, Foul Play’s “Open Your Mind” and “Finest Illusion”. With tracks like “Music” and “Atlantis (I Need You)”, LTJ Bukem invented oceanic Hardcore. “Atlantis” was Jungle’s “1983, A Merman I Should Turn To Be”: over a whispery sea of beats float languorous quiet storm-style diva “mmmm”s and moans, rippling harps and strings, scintillating motes and spangle-trails of sound. “Atlantis” showed that speeding up the beat until it bypassed the body altogether could transform hardcore into relaxing music; rhythm itself becomes a susurrating, soothing stream of ambience, a fluid medium in which you immerse yourself, while the body responds to the half-speed, heart-murmur bassline.

Perhaps even more radical than “Atlantis” was “Angel” by Metalheads. With “Terminator”, Metal-man Goldie had pioneered the use of timestretching, a technique that gave breakbeats an eerie metallic crispness. Timestretching also makes it possible to stretch a sample (vocal, whatever) so that it fits any beats per minute ratio, without changing its pitch (thus avoiding the cartoon chipmunk effect that gave happy hardcore its charm but also made it easy to deride). “Angel” fused Diane Charlemagne’s live, jazzy vocal with 150 bpm breaks, samples from Byrne & Eno’s My Life In the Bush Of Ghosts and daemonic synth-vamps. The result – an astonishing soundclash of tenderness and terrorism – showed that Hardcore could become more conventionally ‘musical’ without losing its edge.

In 94, the floating ethereality of Ambient Hardcore has eclipsed the febrile frenzy of dark. Pioneers like Omni Trio and Metalheads are still at the forefront, but close behind are a legion of new contenders--artists like Roni Size, E-Z Rollers, Jo, FBD Project, DJ Crystl, Low Key Movements, Da Intellex, DJ Nut Nut & Pure Science, Peshay, Myerson. Listen to pirates like Kool FM, to Kiss FM’s Wednesday 9-PM Jungle show, and every week you’ll hear new twists, glimpse fresh futures.

Omni Trio is actually just the one bloke. Rob Haigh grew up on an avant-rock diet of Pere Ubu, Pop Group, The Fall, and above all the Krautrock triumvirate of Can, Faust and Neu!. “I liked the way the German bands abandoned formal song structures and experimented with sounds and textures... the repetitive nature of the music, the shifting layers and patterns...” Later Haigh was exposed to Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew, the dub of King Tubby and The Upsetters, and formed an avant-funk band called The Truth Club. Like a lot of avant-funksters, Haigh turned onto House in 89 –Derrick May, early Warp, Orbital. He was even more excited by the first hardcore tracks using hiphop beats. When rave’s great parting of the ways occurred (the anti-ardkore backlash of late 92), he “couldn’t abandon the breakbeats, and go back to the 909 kick and hi-hat pattern of House”. Haigh stuck to his guns, and thus avoided the cul-de-sac of trance and Ambient that suck(er)ed in so many avant-funk vets.

After the harrowing bliss overdose of Omni Trio’s debut Vol 2 (tracks like “Mystic Stepper” and “Stronger”), Haigh’s work has gotten steadily more movie-themey (John Barry is a big influence). Tracks like “Thru The Vibe”, “Rollin’ Heights” and “The Soundtrack” (from Vol 4) are a bit like Saint Etienne at 160 b.p.m. Haigh’s songs are epic pop-as-architecture constructions that move expertly through build-up and breakdown, orgasm and afterglow. He orchestrates sampladelic symphonies out of moondust harps, seething bongos and congas, and soul-diva a capella beseechings. “Renegade Snares” (from Vol 3) is Omni’s biggest tune: gushing, Ecstasy-ravaged vocals and mellotronic strings swoon over a beat that’s like a cross between James Brown’s “Funky Drummer” and an Uzi. Like all Haigh’s breakbeats, it’s an original construction, built up from ‘single shot’ samples – kicks, snares, hats, shakers, toms etc.

Omni Trio’s latest four track EP, Vol 5: Soul Promenade showcases what Haigh sees as a crucial innovation in Jungle, the soul-step. “When a tune is rollin’ at 160 bpm the first and third beats are emphasised. This gives the illusion that the tune is running at 160 bpm and 80 bpm at the same time. It gives the music room to breathe, and is much easier to dance to.” Like the half-speed reggae bassline, the soul-step has made Jungle smooth-grooving, wind-your-waist music, sexy even. This change from manic to mellow accompanies a shift in patterns of drug use: because there’s not so many nutters hammering the E, and more of a smoking vibe, hashed-out languor has replaced speed-freak palsy.

Another Moving Shadow act, Foul Play, has played a crucial role in the rise of Ambient Jungle. Their biggest tune, “Open Your Mind (Foul Play Remix)”, wafts billowing soul harmonies (sampled from Kleer) over viciously crisp breaks, but its killer hook is a shimmery ectoplasmic sample-riff that’s the closest I’ve ever heard to an aural simulation of a shiver-down-the-spine, a shudder of luv’d up rapture. Dominating airwaves and dancefloors in late summer 93, “Open Your Mind” signaled that darkcore’s days were numbered, that Ambient was the coming thing. “Dark got silly,” says Foul Play’s Brad (Stephen Bradshaw). “Some of it was alright, but a lot of it was definitely rock music” (i.e. music for crackheads, people smoking rock cocaine ). “Open Your Mind” and the equally goosepimply “Finest Illusion” were like the return of Happy Hardcore, only grown up a bit – the callow euphoria now tinged with poignancy, a bittersweet foretaste of the comedown after the high.

Since then, Foul Play have kept a low profile (partly owing to the departure of founder member Steve Gurley, who’s formed the more Ragga-inflected Rogue Unit), apart from their thunderquake remixes of Omni Trio’s “Renegade Snares” and Hyper-On-Experience’s “Lords Of The Null Lines”. But now Brad and partner John Morrow have an EP, Vol 4, in the pipeline, and a long term pet project that will involve the use of real violin, flutes and harps. “We’re writing a score for a performable piece involving us, a vocalist and a 20 piece orchestra,” says Brad. “Hopefully it’ll make people accept that what we do is music.”

When Goldie from Metalheads talks about Hardcore, the word that crops up the most is ‘mature’. Goldie used to be a graffiti artist in New York (he still daubs canvases - the above image is a detail from his painting Wildstyle), and just as aerosol-wielding B-boys transformed vandalistic ‘I am SOMEBODY’ rage into signature and style, so he turns the delinquent aggression of Hardcore into artcore. But there’s much more to Metalheads music than Goldie’s roots in hiphop; he’s a fan of David Sylvian, Brian Eno, Pat Metheny and 80s Miles Davis. These jazz-fusion and Ambient inputs have helped Goldie revolutionise Jungle not once but thrice. First there was “Terminator”, then “Angel”; now there’s “Timeless”, a 22-minute Hardcore symphony.