Feature

Leftfield Drum&Bass

By yegor23 Aug 20066 min read

If jungle culture was ever like that, it is now, unfortunately, a long way from it. In its true underground form, dubplate culture has everything except commercial viability, even if the popular clownstep hits can still sell a few thousand copies worldwide. But in the underground, what is the difference between pressing 500 12-inch records and cutting a limited-run dubplate? Most fans of this music play it mainly for themselves or their friends, at small parties or at home, and sometimes it seems there are exactly as many producers and DJs as there are fans. The culture is spread far and wide geographically, but there is no unified club circuit to speak of until it takes in, say, Belgium, Shoreditch, New York or even the Russian "provinces".

People involved in the leftfield drum & bass scene sometimes feel as if they are picking up S.O.S. signals from every corner of the world. Old-timers in the genre will most likely look down on a culture that exists in such a widespread yet highly illusory form. Compared with Kingston dancehall, London grime or the Berlin techno sound, leftfield drum & bass can look like a half-genre that brings people together only through the simplicity and accessibility of the internet (rather than through shared club nights, as you might expect), pirate radio, or a chat with a salesperson at the online record shop Hard Wax.

All of this is part of a post-rave world in which electronic music has long meant less to mass culture than it did in the '90s. Like dubstep (concentrated mainly in London, but with very prominent representatives far from it, in New York, Texas and parts of continental Europe), drum & bass makes people get moving and travel to events in other cities: if the mountain will not come to Muhammad, Muhammad must go to the mountain. You will not find these records in your nearest music shop, and you will not be able to cut the listings for upcoming events out of the first newspaper you pick up.

Old records, new ears

One of the things most guaranteed to make scene veterans grimace is a DJ playing old records. The basic principle of Phil's "genetic engineering" is that records more than a few weeks old are too old and have no place in a DJ bag. Let's evolve! Leftfield drum & bass DJs, however, often get into the habit of playing whatever sounds good, from 1995 through to 2005. The set by Fracture & Neptune from the February Technicality party (available, as always, from Inperspective) ends with a dubstep track, which, incidentally, had at least two cover versions made after Klute's version the previous year; one of them later became very popular.

"This is a temporary interest, and there is nothing surprising about neglecting it," explains Jon from Subvert Central. In his email he concedes that the actual release date of a record does not matter that much, and that you should not be afraid to look back in your musical tastes, which is heresy, at the very least, in the world of mainstream drum & bass.

Subvert Central

Subvert Central is best known as an internet portal, subvertcentral.com, where many drum & bass fans meet and discuss practically everything, sometimes even drum & bass. Subvert Central has also released one physical record, a "non-commercial, anti-industrial album" featuring tracks by Alpha Omega, Blue and a long-standing hero of many publications, Pieter K, who brought his signature sound to the album: sharp drums plus tender, floating atmospheres. Tracks by Fracture & Neptune, Sileni, Dissident and many others were also being prepared for release.

Beyond that, SC also exists outside the world of physical things, selling 320k MP3s by leftfield drum & bass names such as Macc and Dissident. (Macc's tracks catch the ear thanks to the "naturalistic" sound of the drums: many of them were recorded live by Macc himself over previously recorded bass and other sounds, including the gut-tickling sub-bass.)

MP3 distribution is still a subject of debate among junglists. Even many of those who despise the culture of vinyl dubplates view MP3 DJs with suspicion, and they take an even dimmer view of illegal downloads of tracks that can barely pay for themselves. But all of them should appreciate Subvert Central's credo: "We are a global community with a pluralistic attitude toward drum and bass music, in which all substyles are welcome, although preference is given to experimentation and the development of so-called sonic adventures."

Offshore and Commercial Suicide

Speaking of MP3s, practically the complete back catalogue of Offshore (one of the most interesting and dynamic labels on the leftfield drum & bass scene, translator's note) is available on Bleep, so for around $70 you can pick up the label's entire collection. Offshore has also released three new records this year, but none of them is on Bleep yet, because for now they are being distributed in the more familiar vinyl format.

The second collaborative release on Klute's own label, Commercial Suicide, pairs a Klute & Pieter K track full of soft strings, hypnotic backgrounds and razor-sharp drums on one side with a track on the other from German producer Martsman, whose techno sound is rougher than traditional neurofunk. On the other record, OSR015, the fifteenth Offshore release, presents softer, broken drums combined with distinctly dancefloor-oriented material.

The Offshore website has also recently featured some very tempting previews from a soon-to-be-released EP of remixes of "Twitchy Droid Leg": the first by the label's long-time resident Graphic, the second by Titonton, a musician well known on the broken beat and techno scene. In addition, Clever (the owner of Offshore, translator's note) is making a mix for the new issue of the monthly magazine Knowledge, but I promised to keep the tracklist secret (in reality I simply deleted his email by accident), so no hints.

Author: Jess Harvell for Pitchfork Media
Translation: Jssa