Thread: Hardcore or Jungle?

both.

Originally Posted by jayemcee

( check out dj phantasy's set from helter skelter dec 93. ) my best tune of all time is ramos and supreme 'the journey', wicked breakbeat/jungle with a perfect uplifting piano melody.the best of both worlds. [music]

DLing that right now

cant find

Originally Posted by MikeM3

cant find

http://forum.breakbeat.co.uk/tm.aspx?m= ... 00&mpage=1 look on here mate,page 1,half way down, phantasy helter skelter 3.12.93

Good thread with some great contributions.

My love of hardcore stems back from when I started "raving" in mid 91. I just love the rawness of the tunes from that era. They're not as engineered as jungle tunes. Suppose it all boils down to memories for me as by 94ish I left the scene because of the dark element at places I used to go to. So, I blamed jungle for ruining the scene for me so have never given it a chance until the last year or so. One of my favourite tune is Kev Bird - This Is A Trip, which was late 92 but for a group of tunes put together in a mix, then 91 hardcore is my choice as that's where it all started for me. Stuff like, Timebass - Fireball, Prodigy - Your Love etc. Really raw tunes that wasn't just botched together.

Got to vote for hardcore. But it came and went so fast which was a real shame.

Some of the early jungle was good, but those few years of proper hardcore can't be topped IMO.

Both really. I loved the energy and rawness of hardcore which jungle often lacked, but hated the cheesy synths and chipmunk vocals that became an intrinsic part of hardcore.

hehehe hardcore (90-early 93) for me (as suspected) though i do have a soft spot for the jump up sound of the mid-late 90s and any of the bukem/blame style stuff.

i've always found jungle/dnb to be overly pretentious...and oh so very very boring. tbh i reckon they've just been releasing the same 10 tunes for the best part of 15 years now....

whilst i'm on the attack...what is it about all those annoying shouty mcs?! i could (just about) tolerate them as part of the rave scene as they were there to pickup the vibe. but i've lost count of how many jungle oriented events i've attended where it seems to be all about the mcs and not the music. if you're music needs mcs to get the crowd involved then there's something seriously lacking in your music imo

Originally Posted by haze

whilst i'm on the attack...what is it about all those annoying shouty mcs?! i could (just about) tolerate them as part of the rave scene as they were there to pickup the vibe. but i've lost count of how many jungle oriented events i've attended where it seems to be all about the mcs and not the music. if you're music needs mcs to get the crowd involved then there's something seriously lacking in your music imo

*Swipezster rubs his hands...

without sounding argumentative, but this is what forums are about B-)

I disagree with you about your last sentence Haze. The music developed into a genre where the wannabe (and already established) MCs worked out that they could "make it big" by spouting off 2000 words-per-minute-nonsensical drivel; with you on that one.
But it got to the point where women and other ravers were hanging off the MCs when they entered a venue, and nobody knew who the fook the DJ was when they came in - although the headphones and the record case was a giveaway
I'm being careful here not to contradict myself, but jungle wasn't designed for MCs to blab all over it, it just evolved into something where the mouthy twats could jump on the pussy-wagon, and nobody is more disappointed about that than me

So although Jungle admittedly tolerated the shouty-shouties, there was nothing seriously lacking in the music - on this I am defiant on. No, not as raw as hardcore, soulful - I'm still split on - but for cleverness and tune structure I have to go with the Jungular Techno every time B-)

I still admire Thrash's staement about preferring melodies to high-hats, yet I'm very pleased with MY statement about which anthem set (i.e. hardcore or jungle) would get the biggest response at a venue, regardless of age genres attending.

There's also another element to this which I don't understand but am bursting to post about, but it really is too long-winded for these boards... to be discussed next time we meet, and I wouldn't mind having Curly & Euphs in on the conversation too

both.
hardcore was what i got into the early 90's('91,'92) & then jungle tekno ? that then became just jungle ( & D&B a bit later)which evolved out of the hardcore scene anyway imo.
there was good stuff & derivative rubbish produced in both genre's.

late 93' though till '95 was a bit of a weird one for me,wasn't into happy hardcore (which i regarded as pisstake music) at all ,jungle became to much like dancehall for my taste with gunshots/beenie man booyakka stuff which i wasn't really into either & hard techno (or gabba as it was becoming) was descending into self parody aswell (cliched hellraiser samples).

it was only when i heard a ltj bukem @ love of life tape in '95 that i started properly paying attention again & getting back into it (bit of a godsend at that point) & you could hear the production values,deepness & space of the tunes photek,certificate 18 stuff & so on.

but during that period ('90-'95) techno (particularly from detroit) was my first love musically & that's what sustained me when i couldn't work out which way the uk rave scene was going.

Originally Posted by Curly

for me as by 94ish I left the scene because of the dark element at places I used to go to. So, I blamed jungle for ruining the scene for me so have never given it a chance until the last year or so.

what exactly do you mean by "the dark element" ?

i've read quite a few comments similar to this on various forums,& i just need to comment that jungle did NOT destroy the rave scene.
the darkness in the music '93-'94 (commonly referred to as the "darkside era") reflected & was influenced by the scene in the uk at that time & did not create or set the agenda/scene.
not the other way around imho.

rip-off promoters (charging £25 entry fee whilst putting names on flyers they hadn't even booked),mongy e's cut with smack,drug dealers,crack,gangsters,guns & knives,stabbings,local wankers in clubs robbing or "taxing"people,stingey clubs turning the water off in the bogs,crap heavyhanded security/bouncers,shitty bandwagon jumping producers,money / greed & big business & the CJB ruined "the scene" ... not jungle.

quite a few people in the uk had died from e by 1993 aswell - as more & more people were getting into the scene.
for another example ... i was offered heroin [-x at the first free-party rave i went to when i was 16 (summer of '92).

you can hear the beginnings of darkness as far back as 1990 in early tunes like beltram's "energy flash" & other hardcore tunes circa '91 anyway... so things were starting to go pear shaped a long time before jungle came along.

& if you want to get really analytical about it... there was darkness even in tunes within the acid scene : bam bam - where's you child,james jack rabbit martin - last voice & so on.

Originally Posted by shuffleup

both.
hardcore was what i got into the early 90's('91,'92) & then jungle tekno ? that then became just jungle ( & D&B a bit later)which evolved out of the hardcore scene anyway imo.
there was good stuff & derivative rubbish produced in both genre's.

late 93' though till '95 was a bit of a weird one for me,wasn't into happy hardcore (which i regarded as pisstake music) at all ,jungle became to much like dancehall for my taste with gunshots/beenie man booyakka stuff which i wasn't really into either & hard techno (or gabba as it was becoming) was descending into self parody aswell (cliched hellraiser samples).

totally agree with this

it was only when i heard a ltj bukem......

.........and this is where you lost me.

not got time to go into this right now but i will pick this up later on. i feel some chin strokers may disagree with my opnion but meh. thats what forums are about, as disco stu said

hehe notice you didn't take objection to my earlier line stu "tbh i reckon they've just been releasing the same 10 tunes for the best part of 15 years now...."

each to their own etc etc....

personally i never saw the stuff Bukem played as "chinstroking",nor do i consider myself a chinstroker.
it was just a bit more of a discerning or mature sound (i.e. a refreshing change) at a time when there was a lot of foolishness going on.
it definately had jazzy or progressive elements,so i can see why the chinstroking accusation might occur.

when you're young & angsty you just want something - anything loud to piss off your parents with,as i got a bit older my tastes changed & personally what i liked about the stuff Bukem was playing was that you could actually listen to it,chill to it,aswell as dance to it.amen breaks + smooth pads.it was kind of like a deep house equivalent within the breakbeat/rave scene.
laidback but rocking at the same time if that makes any sense,distinctly British aswell.

[youtube:3l1rdkb9]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMoDI6sr7Gs[/youtube:3l1rdkb9]
[youtube:3l1rdkb9]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q04DRroyTAQ[/youtube:3l1rdkb9]

wicked tunes imo

I like both, but as im a bass lover i gotta pick Jungle

Originally Posted by shuffleup

both.
hardcore was what i got into the early 90's('91,'92) & then jungle tekno ? that then became just jungle ( & D&B a bit later)which evolved out of the hardcore scene anyway imo.
there was good stuff & derivative rubbish produced in both genre's.

late 93' though till '95 was a bit of a weird one for me,wasn't into happy hardcore (which i regarded as pisstake music) at all ,jungle became to much like dancehall for my taste with gunshots/beenie man booyakka stuff which i wasn't really into either & hard techno (or gabba as it was becoming) was descending into self parody aswell (cliched hellraiser samples).

it was only when i heard a ltj bukem @ love of life tape in '95 that i started properly paying attention again & getting back into it (bit of a godsend at that point) & you could hear the production values,deepness & space of the tunes photek,certificate 18 stuff & so on.

but during that period ('90-'95) techno (particularly from detroit) was my first love musically & that's what sustained me when i couldn't work out which way the uk rave scene was going.

Originally Posted by Curly

for me as by 94ish I left the scene because of the dark element at places I used to go to. So, I blamed jungle for ruining the scene for me so have never given it a chance until the last year or so.

what exactly do you mean by "the dark element" ?

i've read quite a few comments similar to this on various forums,& i just need to comment that jungle did NOT destroy the rave scene.
the darkness in the music '93-'94 (commonly referred to as the "darkside era") reflected & was influenced by the scene in the uk at that time & did not create or set the agenda/scene.
not the other way around imho.

rip-off promoters (charging £25 entry fee whilst putting names on flyers they hadn't even booked),mongy e's cut with smack,drug dealers,crack,gangsters,guns & knives,stabbings,local wankers in clubs robbing or "taxing"people,stingey clubs turning the water off in the bogs,crap heavyhanded security/bouncers,shitty bandwagon jumping producers,money / greed & big business & the CJB ruined "the scene" ... not jungle.

quite a few people in the uk had died from e by 1993 aswell - as more & more people were getting into the scene.
for another example ... i was offered heroin [-x at the first free-party rave i went to when i was 16 (summer of '92).

you can hear the beginnings of darkness as far back as 1990 in early tunes like beltram's "energy flash" & other hardcore tunes circa '91 anyway... so things were starting to go pear shaped a long time before jungle came along.

& if you want to get really analytical about it... there was darkness even in tunes within the acid scene : bam bam - where's you child,james jack rabbit martin - last voice & so on.

Nice post, but I gotta say that you're wrong about E's being cut with smack! That's such a huge misconception. It's more expensive on the gram than MDMA so it makes no sense atall to cut E with smack! If you had a mongy pill then that's probably 'cus it contained a high dose of MDMA! Brown speckles = MDMA, trust me I've had MDMA crystal quite a few times, it's brown & if you take too much you end up monged! As for most of the pills knocking about these days, you're lucky if you get your hands on some that contain any MDMA atall.

Originally Posted by shuffleup

both.
hardcore was what i got into the early 90's('91,'92) & then jungle tekno ? that then became just jungle ( & D&B a bit later)which evolved out of the hardcore scene anyway imo.
there was good stuff & derivative rubbish produced in both genre's.

late 93' though till '95 was a bit of a weird one for me,wasn't into happy hardcore (which i regarded as pisstake music) at all ,jungle became to much like dancehall for my taste with gunshots/beenie man booyakka stuff which i wasn't really into either & hard techno (or gabba as it was becoming) was descending into self parody aswell (cliched hellraiser samples).

it was only when i heard a ltj bukem @ love of life tape in '95 that i started properly paying attention again & getting back into it (bit of a godsend at that point) & you could hear the production values,deepness & space of the tunes photek,certificate 18 stuff & so on.

.

Around 97 I went off Happy Hardcore and the Jungle wasn't as good, this was when it was moving away from the Hip Hop influenced stuff of 95 and 96 and more into the early Jump Up (I liked some, but most was generic). I got more into the deeper sounds of DnB. I was also arleady really into LTJ Bukem and also the early Metalheadz (i.e J-Majik, Digital etc), Prototype, No U Turn type stuff. Which I stil love to this day. By about late 96 the Oldskool Revival was in full swing!

Originally Posted by Rogue_D

but I gotta say that you're wrong about E's being cut with smack! That's such a huge misconception. It's more expensive on the gram than MDMA so it makes no sense atall to cut E with smack! If you had a mongy pill then that's probably 'cus it contained a high dose of MDMA!.

oops :-\ i was misinformed then ( & there was quite a bit of misinformation floating about in those days ) ,maybe it was ketamine i was thinking of ?
could have sworn some e's were getting cut with something naughty in the early 90's ? either way - big money was involved.
not like the 50 for a fiver (or whatever it is these days).

anyway... it was the music [music] that i first gravitated to,not the drugs.

Originally Posted by swipezster

I naturally voted for Jungle

I do like Thrash's statement that he prefers melodies to Hi-Hats, there's no arguing with that

After I found my feet a bit on this forum and realised that I didn't know about hardcore as much as I thought I did, the likes of Thrash, Curly, Haze & Rog got me into the hardcore sound, and I had a bloody good go at it but I just find it too damn amateurish x_x

I'm sorry if this offends people but I love the rolling amen sound with sub bass and deep (& moody) pads, and I'm sticking to it I could go on about rubbish production techniques, but I think that it comes down to a technological improvement with time, so it's not really hardcore's fault
I will say however that I have heard some truly awful hardcore records that make me laugh that someone was willing to spend money to get them onto wax! Even Jimmy who runs Oldskool Daze in Brum says that for every 10 hardcore vinyl that he gets in, only one track is decent and the others are rubbish.

I'll also put this to you:

At an event, a hardcore anthem set is dropped, aswell as a jungle anthem set. I know for a fact which set will get a bigger response

Gordon Edge - Compnded anyone?

Right, I'm hardcore-bashing now, which goes against the grain and vibe of this site, but let's not forget that Jungle is oldskool too

If any of you lot have been a bit scared but curious of a bit of heaviness, you're more than welcome to take a trip to the VIP section and see what makes me tick. Shit me, I'll even upload any tunes you request as I've nicely uploaded a notepad file of all my tunes

I do think I'm quite cool though as I'm one of those rare breeds that know and appreciate hardcore, jungle, drum & bass, trance and a little bit of techno - a bit of a broader spectrum, if you know what I mean?

As for the Techno, I still owe many thanks to Thrash for getting me into that sound that I missed out on originally. Just glad that I physically got to shake his hand for it [imgay]

Donk anyone?

Respect your views mate, though I have a different perspective.

I was around Manchester in the early 90's, and dropping a jungle tune usually made people go and take a breather from what I remember.

Also, yeah a lot of shite hardcore tunes were made.

I honestly believe that the ratio always was (and is) far higher for jungle though.

I have heard so much shite jungle over the years that it beggars belief - the good tunes come along way over 1 in 10 for me!

I'll put this in context by saying that I'm not a huge drum n bass fan - which obviously explains my point of view.

For me, Jungle was too full of attitude, then too pretentious, and often just down-right boring.

I do love the crem de la crem of the oldskool jungle tunes, but for me it's got to be that or nothing.

despite what i wrote in my first post i'll actually give anything a listen / fair crack of the whip,& i've dipped my toe into most musical styles since the early 90's so i'd like to think i was fairly open minded musically & not too snobbish hopefully.

i've got a younger brother who was into gabba,happy hardcore,club kinetic,diehard,helterskelter technodrome,north etc. & so i was exposed to all that sort of stuff through him,so do i actually like some of it (in very small doses).
he had a Slipmatt tape from Diehard 1995 which was wall to wall happy hardcore classics - it was just one of those tapes,classic set or whatever & it wasn't too bad actually.i was a bit cheesed off when he lent it out & lost it.but generally speaking that was more his thing & wasn't really where my head was at by the mid 90's.
in fact i was only saying to him recently that i would have really liked to have gone to the technodrome with him,until he told me it was roughly about the size of his bedroom & was full of sweaty skinheads with their tops off

also i was looking at the back of some of his tape packs the one time & i saw this dj name called 'Death Machine' i suddenly felt old.

basically i think "hardcore" means different things to different people depending on when you were born.

Hardcore for me

Theres maybe one or two jungle tracks that are ok , but it killed the scene so I dont listen to it out of principle.

Some EXCELLENT posts by shuffleup & payney - nice one, very interesting indeed :ymapplause: w

Will go so far to say that I think about the whole hardcore/jungle thang a bit differently now

Originally Posted by swipezster

Some EXCELLENT posts by shuffleup & payney - nice one, very interesting indeed :ymapplause: w

Will go so far to say that I think about the whole hardcore/jungle thang a bit differently now

There's been some interesting comments on this I must admit.... s'pose my dislike for jungle stems from the fact it's when I turned my back on the scene due to the moodiness within the music. Pretty much never given jungle a chance after that.... was more into my techno & progressive house by the middle of '94 when jungle was in it's pomp!!

Still prefer melodies to high hats though!!

Originally Posted by mattyc

but it killed the scene

care to elaborate on why you think it killed the scene ?

Tricky one! how about Jungle Hardore?

No seriously, Jungle all the way!

loved it all........ but i ticked the jungle box......

why 2 words....

TOY TOWN...