It's a Jungle Out There

Drum and bass DJs set up camp in the wilds of Philly.

by Justin Hampton

It's one o'clock in the morning on a Tuesday night at the Club Skyline, and jungle DJ J-Smooth has just begun his set. From the ground level of the club, one floor below the main room where he's playing, you can easily hear the bassline. Hard and grating, with a liberal helping of hip-hop samples scattered around the syncopated beats (or "breaks"), the selection is a good example of the hip-hop-inspired "Jump Up" style of drum and bass.

Justin Geller, who with J-Smooth creates jump-up tracks under the banner GFS, turns to me and says, "Do you hear that track?? That's our track. We made it. And what he's playing is the only copy of it in the world."

Tonight, this club, which is throwing its weekly drum and bass party Next Step, sees several of Philadelphia's drum and bass community pass through it, which over the past few months has grown to include some of the finest talent in the country. Nationally respected DJs such as Method One and Starchild perform frequently within the area, and arguably the country's most popular drum and bass DJ, Damien "Dieselboy" Higgins, has recently relocated to the city in time for the release of his newest mix CD, 97 Octane (Sub Base USA). Joining him from Pittsburgh is Joe Lesesne, aka 1.8.7., who will be celebrating the release of his first album, When Worlds Collide (Jungle Sky), at the end of the month at Club Skyline. Local heroes such as Karl K and MC Dub 2 (real name Joe Sarni) continue to perform out of state, and word has it that the elusive DJ Trace—an already legendary British producer and DJ long respected for creating the dark and menacing "techstep" genre of drum and bass along with pioneers like Ed Rush, Fierce and Nico—is once again attempting to set roots down in the city he's declared his second home. Such developments make Philadelphia one of the strongest cities in the country in the domestic establishment of an American drum and bass culture.

Reclining back on a metal folding chair, Geller takes five bucks from a young club kid decked out in baggy, loose-fitting jeans and baseball cap. Stamping his hand, the kid is lightly patted down by security before going upstairs to the main room, where about fifteen like-minded drum and bass fans, or "junglists," are milling about talking to each other and occasionally moving to the subdued breakbeats and blissful atmospheres of DJ Method One's set.

Geller, a tall and thin young man wearing a T-shirt advertising the New York City drum and bass store Breakbeat Science, scans the list of tally figures indicating the number of people that have passed through the door. Compared to the numbers they've done over the summer, it's not much, and the owner sitting directly across from Geller expresses his wish that more of this crowd were drinkers that could beef up his bar receipts.

For now, the Philadelphia drum and bass scene is still playing catch-up with their British counterparts, both aesthetically and economically.

Originated out of the poverty-stricken council flats of London, drum and bass was developed by Britain's black and non-white population as a mutant hybrid of American hip-hop, Ragga-style reggae and early UK hardcore breakbeat. Speeding up American hip-hop beats to levels as high as 200 beats per minute and layering a heavy and aggressive bassline on top, early British jungle conveyed a strong sense of excitement to a group of listeners excluded by either their race or their musical temperament from the dominant forms of British dance music. As more and more producers became involved with the making of this music, a variety of new folds developed. Because of these rapid shifts, drum and bass has become virtually impossible to pigeonhole.

Scenes from "Next Step" night at Club Skyline.

Photos by Jay Matsueda

"There's so many sub-genres, so many different sounds that fall under the jungle umbrella, that you can't make a blanket statement, like, 'Jungle is fast beats with hip-hop samples,'" says Method One, who along with club promoter Mouse runs Next Step. "There is jungle like that, but that's only one part of it. Within jungle you have your techstep, dark stuff. You have your atmospheric, jazzy stuff—really the only similarities between these are use of beats and bass on occasion. A lot of people tend to define it in simplistic terms, and I think that's a mistake, because I think there's a lot more to it."

Because of this, the music that tends to be popular with the established drum and bass fans, or "junglists," can change drastically from month to month. Currently, because of the efforts of DJ Trace and Philly Hardstep, Karl and Joe's nascent jungle organization, Philadelphia has earned a national reputation for being a techstep town. But with artists such as 1.8.7., Method One (who remixed Deee-Lite's "Call Me") and Jamie Myerson creating material that falls outside of techstep's constraints, this is already starting to change.

"The best thing about where we are right now is that there's not one predominant style of jungle that is the thing that everyone's going out for," says Lesesne. "It seems that in certain areas one style is more predominant than another. In Pittsburgh, jump-up was more predominant; in Philly, techstep was more predominant. But now it seems that things have evened out and everyone can fully appreciate, you know, the whole thing."

DJ Kaos seems to be a bit distracted. Someone has placed a poster of Lil' Kim wearing see-through panties next to the turntables, and his eyes veer towards it more than once as he performs his soundcheck duties. Bespectacled and dressed in a button-down flannel shirt, Kaos is probably the last person most people would imagine when conjuring up a jungle DJ. But for many involved behind the scenes in drum and bass, the music takes precedence over any fleeting fashion trends.

Scenes from "Next Step" night at Club Skyline.

Photos by Jay Matsueda

"One big part of jungle is the concept of representing," says Mouse. "People represent the music and who they are, and the most important part is to keep it real, and not to turn it into a joke."

This statement comes to mind as Kaos segues from one record seamlessly to the next.

"I don't know how I'm going to mix into the next record. The one playing right now is in 3/4. Listen."

He counts in a series of threes to illustrate the record's time signature. Meanwhile, more of the club crowd is growing and they start to move on the dancefloor, undulating their bodies slowly as Kaos slowly counts out the rhythms in time to their movements, "one-two-three, one-two-three." And for a split second, all involved illustrate the concept of representation perfectly, as they give their interpretation of the music that commands their full attention.

Like many other dance scenes around the country, Philadelphia's drum and bass scene is in a stage of transition, epitomized in part from the recent occurrences within Next Step, which for over a year prior to Oct. 1 was known as the Philadelphia wing of New York's famed Konkrete Jungle. Method One describes the breakup as amicable.

"What they have told me is that since they are expanding Konkrete Jungle, they need to take steps to keep control over the Konkrete Jungle name," he explains. "That's why they're getting the whole symbol and everything all trademarked, and getting lawyers in to make sure that everything's being done correctly with the label and the image and the copyrights and all that. It just made more sense just to sort of make the split and continue under a different name."

The name change to Next Step represents, in more ways than one, a symbolic break from the towering influence New York City holds over jungle on the East Coast—mostly due to its size and its status as the birthplace of hip-hop. Joe Lesesne feels that Philadelphia's jungle community has little to worry about.

"The fact that Damien and myself have played all over the country and are in constant demand is a testament to the fact that you can be anywhere in this day and age doing what we do and if your skills are there, it doesn't matter if you're in New York or Chicago. You can be from a smaller place," Lesesne says.

"What I think is most important is that no matter where the producer or DJ is from, the stuff that they put out is quality material, and the stuff that they spin is quality material."

Method One speaks for Next Step when he concurs, "A lot of people have problems with New York. They say New York has attitude, that New York doesn't look beyond its own thing. You can't focus on that. You have to focus on what you're doing yourself? And I think that we're just trying to have a strong weekly club night."

Damien places a stack of vinyl 12-inches on his lap as he whirls around an office chair in the back room of Philadelphia's 611 Records. He's just gotten back from a four-day DJ excursion in North Carolina and Austin, TX, and in his absence 611's jungle selection—lined up behind the cashier counter rather than placed in the bins alongside the house and techno records—is quickly drying up. Calling up one person, he brags good-naturedly about receiving a promo from Josh Wink of the highly coveted collaboration between jungle pioneer Goldie and KRS-1 as remixed by former indie rocker turned junglist Graham Sutton, aka Boymerang.

As America's top jungle DJ, Damien knows the importance of keeping up with the latest releases and having the records no one else has. "This is a really competitive scene, and you have to keep up with it," he explains. "Because you can spin one thing one week and everyone will love it and it can totally change the next week. The kids can be really fickle."

All within the Philadelphia drum and bass scene feel that more work needs to be done to increase drum and bass' exposure within the city outside of the rave crowd that currently supports it.

"[Jungle] has its roots in the rave scene, and the ravers are the ones who gave it the push," says Sarni. "But the ultimate goal will be to turn on older, more sophisticated crowds. That's where the goal is in a lot of different places."

Many have faith in drum and bass' expansive musical breadth to capture newer audiences. "Drum and bass takes from all different genres and music styles and incorporates them into one thing. So obviously it can appeal to an extremely wide range of people, just because it's so multifaceted," says Damien.

"I'm not sure if the crowd is as dedicated to the sound as the DJs are at this point," says Method One, "but this is a progression, really. You can't expect people suddenly to open their eyes and say, 'I'm a junglist now,' and start going nuts to it. [But] people get into the music once they've been exposed to it. It's a gradual process. And it can't be rushed."

And veterans such as Joe Sarni can easily remember times—when jungle first started appearing at the early American raves—"a jungle track would clear the floor. People would seriously get offended. We've gotten to the point now where you really can't go anywhere without people hearing it."

Given the unusual amount of dedication that Philly's drum and bass community has put into the music over the years, it's apparent that Philly's producers, DJs and promoters are not about to give up the fight. For despite the extremely short shelf life of many jungle singles and the tenuous nature of pop music trends, jungle's practitioners talk of a "feeling" that drum and bass gives. When asked to describe this feeling, Sarni offers, "If you were to talk about what our philosophy would be, it's moving forward while still keeping that intense feeling. It's one of the amazing things about drum and bass. No other kind of music can progress so drastically and take so many different turns and still give people who go there that feeling, that intense musical feeling."

And it is this feeling that has, and, it appears, will continue to motivate the drum and bass community here and elsewhere around the world.

"Once you start having something to do with the music, you can't stop," summarizes Karl K. "There's no way you can ever stop. Whether it be throwing parties, organizing events, MCing, DJing, producing, anything, you just can't stop. It's that powerful."