The tag Bukem never asked for
Few tags in jungle have been worn so reluctantly. Intelligent drum & bass was the name hung on a melodic, jazz- and ambient-leaning strand of jungle and drum & bass, and it was already circulating by the mid-1990s. LTJ Bukem, the figure most associated with the term, dislikes it, and has argued that his side of hardcore was no more proper than other styles. Plenty of heads feel tags like intelligent or atmospheric sit awkwardly on the music, which was one exciting thread among many.
The wording has a traceable history. In spring 1994 Moving Shadow was being called the UK's leading intelligent hardcore label. By 1995 the intelligent drum & bass tag, with Goldie and Photek cited as examples, had won over non-junglists as well as the music press. Photek is best known for his role in developing intelligent drum & bass, and ambient jungle was another name in circulation for the same patch of ground.
On this site the style overlaps with Atmospheric, Liquid Funk and Soulful, and with Jungle for the earliest records, without being identical to any of them.
Jazz chords, sci-fi pads, chopped breaks
Bukem's label put out atmospheric, sci-fi-inspired drum & bass blended with jazz and soul. His approach was a cerebral alternative to the rough-and-tumble jungle of the time, no ruffneck stomp, all pressure under glass. He had piano lessons, plus early exposure to classical music and jazz fusion.
Photek came at it from the drum side, a pure break-chopper's angle. His records are built on polyrhythmic drums, intricately chopped, edited and multilayered, sitting under intense cinematic atmospheres. Modus Operandi paired fanatically detailed drum programming with spy-film jazz atmospherics and dystopian synth sequences partly inspired by Detroit techno. Proper head-nod stuff, but never a simple rinse-out.
Not everyone was sold. Jazzy drum & bass got scoffed at a lot, and the ambient-jungle phase was felt to have gone too far in the end, right into the fuzak-zone.
From a Stevenage bedroom to the dubplate runs
Moving Shadow and the early ambient sound
Moving Shadow began in 1990 in a bedroom in Stevenage, started by Rob Playford, and its early producers worked with accelerating breaks and deeper bass through 1991 to 1993. The label's own history calls it one of the founding labels of the breakbeat, jungle and drum & bass scene. Among its most celebrated tunes is Omni Trio's 1993 "Renegade Snares", the project of Rob Haigh. The catalogue also included E-Z Rollers.
By 1994 Bukem's "Music" was already being credited with pioneering an ambient hardcore sound. The golden period of ambient jungle was dated to late 1993 through 1995, when darkside music blossomed into artcore and ambient jungle.
Good Looking, Speed and Logical Progression
Good Looking Records traces back to Bukem's "Demon's Theme" (1992), after earlier releases including "Logical Progression" on VMR Records in 1991. Formed in the early 1990s, Good Looking ranks among the most essential labels in the history of jungle and drum & bass, and its roster included Source Direct, Peshay, Photek, Blu Mar Ten and Total Science. A sister label, Looking Good, launched in 1995 with "Horizons".
Fabio says he helped start the club night Speed with Bukem in 1993, recalling that he was unhappy with the way drum & bass was going. He remembers about 40 people for the first four weeks, then a huge crowd within about three months. The details of the Speed story split depending on who you ask. One version has a 1995 Speed residency for Bukem and Fabio at Mars Bar in London's West End, while the version tied to MC Conrad puts the Speed residency at the Milk Bar and calls it a foundation stone of the drum & bass scene. Conrad's lyrics on the mic and Bukem's soundscapes are credited with giving the Good Looking sound its edge.
The 1996 two-CD compilation Logical Progression gathered label artists such as Chameleon, Aquarius (Photek) and Peshay, with a second disc DJ mix showing funk, soul and rare-groove influences. Bukem's debut artist album, Journey Inwards, followed in 2000, and by then the dance magazine cover stories he had once commanded were a thing of the past.
Photek, Metalheadz and the crossover with the dark
Fabio recalls that Bukem, 4hero, Goldie, Dillinja, Ed Rush and Photek cut dubplates and swapped ideas at Music House, a cutting plant on Holloway Road. He also recalls that ragga jungle was bringing the wrong crowd into clubs, which pushed him toward a softer, more soulful drum & bass, and he describes Goldie's Blue Note night as the start of the dark drum & bass movement with Ed Rush.
Goldie launched Metalheadz in 1994 with Storm and Kemistry, and early releases included Peshay's "Psychosis", Alex Reece's "Fresh Jive" and Photek's Natural Born Killa EP. Photek, born Rupert Parkes in St Albans, recorded for Good Looking, Basement, Op-Art, Metalheadz and Certificate 18 under several aliases. His debut album Modus Operandi appeared in 1997 after he signed to Virgin, who, he says, wanted him to do whatever he wanted.
The intelligent label also sat in tension with harder styles. In 1995 there was a case made that the purist strain of hardstep was where the real action lay. For the darker styles set against it, see Techstep.
Names to know
- LTJ Bukem, founder of Good Looking and the selector most often tied to the tag.
- Photek, whose debut album Modus Operandi appeared in 1997. Burial has cited the "texture, swing and precision" of his percussion.
- Omni Trio, the Moving Shadow project behind "Renegade Snares" (1993).
- Peshay, with "Psychosis/Represent" (Metalheadz, 1994), "19.5" with Bukem (Good Looking, 1994) and the album Miles From Home (Mo' Wax, 1998; Island, 1999).
- Makoto, whose debut album Human Elements was announced in 2003 for Good Looking.
- Blu Mar Ten, part of the Good Looking roster.
This site also tags Seba, Big Bud, PFM, Parhelia and Deep blue with the style, and the labels Influenza Media and Kos.Mos.Music.
Where the soft side went
Fabio is credited with championing the sound as liquid funk in the early 2000s, and it spread through labels such as Hospital and Good Looking. Makoto represents Japan's drum & bass scene, with 1970s jazz and soul influences and a career in the liquid camp since the late 1990s. In 2017 a reader vote asked whether Good Looking was the label of the decade.
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