Premiere: Dissect, Sicknote & J.Bionic 'Celestial (Spirit Remix)'
Spirit, the revered drum & bass DJ and Inneractive label boss, delivered a stomping remix for the Paws Recordings crew before he sadly passed away in August last year. Now Dissect, Sicknote and J.Bionic feel the time is right to release it to the world and we've got the exclusive first listen for you.
Real name Duncan Busto, Spirit was known for his work on renowned labels like CIA, Metalheadz and Commercial Suicide, and in particular his long-running production partnership with Digital.
Get To Know: Coco Bryce
Coco Bryce may be a relatively new name to most in the UK, however he’s been plying his trade for around two decades. Hailing from Breda in the south of the Netherlands, it was back in the ‘90s when he first became enamoured with the sounds of breakbeat hardcore and gabber — the latter, he feels perhaps inevitable for a Dutch kid, despite it being at odds with the skater culture he was also a part of.“The raw energy just grabbed me,” he says.
Premiere: Dexta & Iliad 'Popcorn Riddim'
Dexta, boss of experimental drum & bass label Diffrent Music, teams up with Iliad, aka one half of Conduct, to deliver ultra-hype anthem 'Popcorn Riddim'.
Coming via the new 'Pick & Mix Vol. 1' compilation on Diffrent offshoot Sweetbox, the track is the very definition of a club banger, purpose-built for multiple rewinds.
Dropping in almost immediately, a tidal wave of hammering breaks and ruthless bass wubbs is unleashed, barely letting up for the track's four-minute run-time. The choppy arrangement, however, means there's a bouncy, upbeat groove throughout.
Get To Know: Doctor Jeep
‘I make a bunch of different kinds of music’ reads the description on Doctor Jeep’s SoundCloud page, and that pretty much hits the nail on the head. Real name: Andre Lira, the New Yorker works within the bassier end of the club music spectrum, but is hard to pin down to a particular sound.
Premiere: Coco Bryce 'Come 2 U'
Coco Bryce drops a full EP of original material on Western Lore this month, and we've got A1 cut 'Come 2 U' for an exclusive first listen.
The 'Beats Like This' EP will be the Dutchman's first full solo release on the label — which is run by Bristol stalwart Dead Man's Chest and was nominated for Breakthrough Label at our Best Of British awards last year — though he appeared on the imprint's 2018 'Blunted Breaks Vol. 1' compilation.
S.P.Y. is bringing classic jungle into the future
Everyone’s a junglist these days aren’t they? You’re a junglist. Your dear old dad’s a junglist. Even that nice little old lady next door and her dog claim to be junglists. Everyone’s a junglist, marching into a bleak future to the tune of a hundred foghorns, skanking towards the light at the end of the tunnel to a parade of amens, saying they were there in ’92 when they weren’t even born, and inflating the price of second-hand Reinforced 12”s in the process. Everyone’s a bloodclart junglist.
JUNGLE EXPLORATION
Benny L is one of the most in-demand names in D&B right now
Patience is a virtue, possess it if you can. It’s a quality that’s seldom, if ever, found in a modern-day drum & bass fan. For proof of this contemporary proverb let us examine the case of Benny L. A man subject to some of the highest levels of dubplate impatience in years, he’s had to reinstall Instagram more times than Andy C’s won Best DJ trophies due to high levels of inbox pester pressure. Link me this. I beg you that. ID? ID? ID? Oi oi oi...
His brother never took his passion beyond house parties, but Benny was biding his time. First, he had to wait an age to actually experience the music in the environment it’s intended for. From age 10 to 18, he absorbed the culture through his brother’s vinyl collection (early favourites included Dillinja’s remix of Adam F & DJ Fresh’s ‘When The Sun Goes Down’ and Krome & Time’s ‘Ganja Man’), magazines, online interviews, videos and early dabbles in production. Only once did he try his luck underage.
Premiere: Razat 'Simplicity'
Razat — the Portuguese bass producer, who sadly died last year — has a posthumous release coming via Alix Perez's 1985 Music.
Real name Baltazar Gallego, Razat was known for experimenting across mutiple genres, from dupstep to hip-hop and drum & bass, the latter of which saw him release on Flexout Audio and Vandal LTD.
He passed away in August 2018 following a long battle with cancer, he was just 31.
Young Urban Arts Foundation is changing lives through music
“I can’t go to my other studio ’cause I’ll get shanked,” says Mike, who proves to us that he can sing Afro-swing melodies as well as he raps drill flows, while we talk by Young Urban Arts Foundation’s multimedia bus. His friends giggle awkwardly, two of them wearing rolled-up balaclavas, but he’s not joking. “I appreciate this bus because it’s warm, let me not lie!
In the controlled YUAF space, under the patient guidance of producer and singer Mister Lees, the studio sessions functioned not only as a medium through which the teenagers could benefit from caring, meaningful interactions with our team of trained adult staff, and work towards a shared creative goal — they were also a constructive way they could spend time, away from the hostile norm of London’s increasingly unsafe roads, as youth violence continues to spiral out of control.
Get To Know: Harriet Jaxxon
Harriet Jaxxon epitomises the dream of the self-made DJ. Born and raised in the small Kentish town of Whitstable, when she was just a child her jungle-loving father’s record collection led her to the sounds of DJ Ron’s ‘African Charm’ and Roni Size’s ‘Sound Advice’. “Those two tracks are the ones that for me stick out as two jungle tracks that I discovered before I knew what jungle was,” she tells DJ Mag.
