In Pittsburgh CoverStory - April 17,1997
by J. Mikel Ellcessor
There is an almost ubiquitous cry in underground music that "We only do it for the music!" and that attention to individuals or personalities subverts and dilutes the impact of the art. Jungle, with its re-named operators, reliance on the Internet and aesthetic that favors faceless, abstract design, is a musical form in the underground dance scene that forces you to interact almost exclusively with the music. Rarely is there a hint of who is turning the wheels and pulling the levers behind the curtain.
There are many, many people active in the community that constitutes the Pittsburgh junglists. The layers of community bisect, intersect and swirl like a computer-generated mapped chaos algorithm. Preparation for this story included receiving recommendations from every participant about the next person that I had to speak to. This is remarkable because most music communities act like communities up to the point where the opportunity for notoriety appears. Then profound, well-meaning declarations about the importance of developing the scene and unity and co-operation are quickly swept aside in the dash to jump in front of a wider public eye.
The junglists that are written about here are not the only operators in Pittsburgh. They are, however, three individuals who have all established themselves as leaders in their respective areas. Several of the major proponents of jungle in the U.S. live in Pittsburgh and the city has a reputation for being one of the essential North American hubs for the music. Damian Higgins, who spins and produces under the name dieselboy; Joe Lesesne, a musician and producer who goes by 1.8.7; and Toby Houser, WPTS's Farmer Tea, are dedicated to making jungle the bedrock music of the millennium.
Remarkably, these three individuals, as well as the other Pittsburgh junglists and the underground dance scene as a whole, are willing to continue without any discernible mainstream recognition or validation. The systems are in place. The method and madness are in agreement. The amazing thing about it all is that the world is really catching up to the junglists and now they have to deal with all that ensues.
Breakbeat
Jungle, or drum 'n bass, is a form of underground dance music that originally came from the UK. Its main characteristic is a "breakbeat" used instead of a straight BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM, four-to-the-floor beat that characterizes house music. The beats are electronically generated, either by using digital samplers that have natural sounds stored on them for manipulation and playback or by using drum machines.
Junglists hear the drum rolls that inhabit drummers deepest nightmares, the fills and accents that musicians devote their lives to creating in real time. The beats are often metallic, edgy constellations of snare, hi-hat and kick drum that are closer to audio emulations of synaptic activity than imitations of conventional trap set drummers.
While the beats move at around 170 beats per minute (bpm), the basslines are moving at half speed (85 bpm). Consider, for the sake of comparison, that the average house tune is around 125 bpm. These complex polyrhythms makes jungle one of the most complex forms of music today.
The remaining components of a jungle track are usually synth washes and samples and the textures that are layered onto the rhythm depend on the style of the cut. This could be just about anything as jungle is now drawing influences from almost every other style of music imaginable.
You don't hear jungle on commercial radio in Pittsburgh and rarely at all in the United States. The recent tangential use of jungle rhythms and production techniques by David Bowie, Nine Inch Nails and Everything But The Girl has caused a blip on a wider radar screen for the music.
Jungle first gained mass popularity on the rave scene in the UK in 1991/1992. In the self-cannibalizing search for the new sound, dance DJs and producers started utilizing sped up hip-hop "breakbeats," piano breakdowns and heavily altered vocal samples to form the foundation for what would later become jungle.
Dieselboy relates a key element of the later stages of jungle's development: "Back in '91/'92, there was a lot of stuff coming out called "breakbeat house." It was house speed breakbeats with electronic samples over it and that's what eventually became jungle in '94. At the time there was a lot of ragga stuff coming out and jungle just went hand-in-hand with the ragga sound. Ragga is the perfect blend of reggae and jungle sounds. A lot of people don't realize that jungle didn't just appear one day. It's actually been a progression from house and techno to breakbeat house and ragga to jungle. It's an offshoot that just kept growing and changing and developing into what it is today."
Today, jungle ranges and morphs around three major styles: "hardstep" or "techstep," "dark," and "mellow/jazzy" although these are targets that move incredibly fast in a genre that reinvents itself overnight.
Pittsburgh Parties
Pittsburgh jungle has reinvented itself many times since the parties in the early '90s thrown by Deadly Buda and Controlled Weirdness. These parties featured the original breakbeat and techno and shaped the sound that people are familiar with in the area. Dieselboy was 19 when he started showing up at these parties and began the process that would shape him into one of the most sought-after jungle DJs in the U.S.
Early house parties, some guest spots spinning techno on WRCT and many hours practicing his skills led dieselboy to his first out of town gig in 1993. An information sciences major at Pitt, he practiced the business of music by promoting himself through the Internet and by networking small parties. The final selection of a working name came when Damian noticed that "Diesel," his regular signature on the net, was also the name used by a Pittsburgh graffiti artist.
"People were always asking if that was me," he relates, "so I added the 'boy' because I looked kinda young at the time and I felt that kind of described what I was into, you know, video games and that kind of boyish stuff." There is nothing immature about dieselboy's current workload, however. The Pittsburgh-based DJ is in high demand and spins as many as 150 nights per year. His DrumandBass Selection USA mix CD for Sub Base, a UK label with US distribution, is one of the top-selling American jungle collections.
Joe Lesesne, aka 1.8.7., has a boyish air, as well, but that emanates from his unrestrained display of enthusiasm for life and his work. Starting in 1993, Lesesne started chopping and slicing together rhythms into tracks and putting up samples of his work on Hyperreal, the major Internet rave culture site. More electronic promotion and the dissemination of almost 300 tapes resulted in Lesesne's work being selected for several samplers including Jungle Sky, Liquid Sky's jungle imprint. In 1995, 1.8.7. scored a huge coup when he was asked to produce a remix of Blondie's "Atomic" for a Chrysalis 12". 1.8.7. is one of the few jungle artists in the US who has also crafted a live show to complement his recordings. He expects to play out about 45 times in 1997.
In 1991, Toby Houser, another computer sciences student at Pitt, started a reggae show on the campus station, WPTS. The program reflected his tastes in reggae, both current dancehall sounds and the more traditional roots styles. The program took a brief hiatus in 1994 and when it returned that fall, Houser's developing relationship with Original Bubbles and Militant Barry, the driving forces behind Wilkinsburg's First Class Sound, a collection of dancehall DJs, MCs and promoters, shifted the style and emphasis of the program. In 1994, the international dance community couldn't get enough jungle and Houser started hearing tracks that the First Class crew would access through their London contacts.
According to Houser, who works under the name Farmer Tea for all his radio and DJing, "Back in '94 it was still breakbeat or hardcore, whatever you want to call it. Once the reggae influence came into it they called it ragga jungle, back then they just called it straight jungle and that's when I started to get into it. The sound system that I work with is First Class. Those guys have been a big influence on where I hear my beats coming from, like reggae and dancehall. Early '95 is when I started to introduce a jungle segment to my show," he says.
"The way we do it now is roots for the first hour, a half hour of dancehall and a half hour of jungle. That first hour is all the foundation, it's where the music is coming from and then Bubbles is bringing in [dancehall] tracks that are never more than a month old and it's the same for me with the jungle segment. In early '95, when we switched up the format some and started spinning some jungle, at first it was like, 'what is this crazy shit, I want to hear Shabba Ranks again.' But after awhile I would meet guys, like old dreads that probably haven't heard that much before, start to say they like the jungle segment on the show. Now, they might not listen to the whole thing, but they'll listen for awhile because they can hear the samples and they know where all the sources are and it's enough of a novelty that it breaks up the groove."
Farmer Tea sums up the First Class radio experience neatly: "I have a couple of hours every week to show how 20 years of the music all fit together."
Jungle Ground Zero
While Farmer Tea, 1.8.7. and dieselboy are the focus at the moment, there are many other key players in the scene. John Dwight, for example, is a local jewelry maker who has also carved a niche for himself as the primary jungle events promoter. The organizer of Tunnelvision, the legendary Corliss Tunnel party, and Free, which took place in the Eastland Mall, Dwight also threw Jungle Warfare, which took place in Pittsburgh in January of 1996 and was the largest all-jungle event in the U.S. to date.
Soy SOS of CFI Massive, DJs Sine and Ruffian, and the Bass Kulture crew are some of the people who round out the sound of the Pittsburgh jungle community. Bass Kulture, of which Farmer Tea is a part, has thrown parties at Kaya and has brought in New York Illbient artists like DJ Spooky and WE.
Farmer Tea is also quick to note that, "I have to give a lot of respect to Milton Barry and Original Bubbles and First Class for being there and being part of the family." The dancehall devotees, like the ravers and the electronica fans, are all touched by the extended reach of the Pittsburgh community.
The Future Is Now
With a sound that cuts such a broad swath across the city's music groups, it is no surprise, then, that the junglists have an equally expansive reach into their world. The relationship the junglists have to the progression of culture and the movement of life is as unique and unfamiliar to the ear as the triple-time snares.
The global technology community exhorts us to embrace the "future is now" relationship to the merging of expression, culture and technology and all three of our junglists place themselves squarely in the midst of the international digital information stream.
Dieselboy and Farmer Tea both work as technical specialists with computers. 1.8.7. is an electronic musician who sees technology as one of the integral components of his expression. "Just like punk rock made rock accessible for everybody who wanted to do it, I think you're going to see the presence of all of this technology in everybody's lives allowing all kinds of people to make this music. This music can be created by anybody who sits down at a music work station or computer with a good sound card. I think in the near future you're going to see a lot of tracks coming from a lot of strange places. I think that's going to be a good thing," he says.
"When I'm working on a track," 1.8.7. continues, "I want it to sound like you're hearing something from the future. I get a lot of my ideas from science fiction. I love soundtrack music from movies like Bladerunner and Terminator.
Dieselboy explains the sound of jungle's variety in another way. "It can contain so many different elements from so many different places that it can simultaneously sound completely familiar and totally alien at the same time. It just sounds like you're hearing something futuristic. It sounds like you're hearing something new."
Science Fiction, manga comics, designer gear from DKNY, Nautica, Adidas and a dozen smaller fashion houses and other influences all weave themselves into drum 'n bass culture. Dieselboy points out that, "especially with the really fresh-sounding, up-to-date jungle, there's almost a whole lifestyle that goes along with it. It's very computer-oriented, there's video games, hard-core Japanese animation, the whole lifestyle is to have the most cutting-edge stuff surrounding you. This music is a soundtrack to that way of living. People are trying to live like they're in the future as much as they can."
Electronica Harmony
The rapid ascent of jungle and other styles of electronic music gains momentum as hip-hop and alternative guitar rock continue to flail aimlessly in ever-shrinking artistic cul-de-sacs. 1.8.7. notes that, "Jungle is an anti-retro music. So much of what is happening now with both alternative and hip-hop is just people borrowing from the past to make what's in the present. While there might be a familiar sound in a jungle track, jungle itself doesn't sound like anything that's ever come before. I'm seeing white kids that are bored with alternative and black kids that are bored with hip-hop both turning on to jungle."
John Dwight, the promoter, has noticed that jungle has "no racial overtone to it. It doesn't appeal to any race in particular. That's one of the main things that I like about it it brings races together. If we can relieve some of the racial tension in Pittsburgh at a young age then people can grow up without the kind of influences that give us stuff like the KKK coming into town."
The merging of communities is far from finished however, as Farmer Tea explains. "In London (jungle) crossed over, there's no dividing line. In America, it's mostly white kids are junglists, black kids are dancehall fans."
While it would be easy to quibble over the exact racial composition of the audience and what that portends for the growth of jungle, there is little doubt that the music is rapidly growing in popularity. In Pittsburgh, the growth seems to be fueled by three factors: the overall improvement in the quality of the music and its acceptance by a broader base of musicians, the increasing sophistication of the regional practitioners and the addition of the music to the club scene.
"The sound has matured enough and the production quality has gotten so good and it has progressed so far that it is right now one of the only really unique forms of music that is going on," Diesel says. "Anything alternative has been sucked up by MTV and bled to death. Right now it has familiar elements to it which get people into it but at the same time it's so weird and fresh and original sounding that it's getting people interested in it. Besides the fact that the production on it has become so clean."
steelcityjungle
The appearance of locally-produced dub plates, limited-run vinyl pressings that allow artists to get their music out to DJs quickly, are adding to the music's momentum in Pittsburgh. Farmer Tea, who through his position at WPTS encounters virtually all of the area's jungle releases, notes that it's with the release of its own set of dub plates "that Pittsburgh will make a name for itself, when all of us who are creating tracks on computers start releasing dub plates. Besides 1.8.7.'s releases on Jungle Sky and the tracks Damian released awhile ago, there hasn't been that much released. There are a lot of people making tracks, but not many of them have gotten it together enough to press it onto a dub plate. For Pittsburgh to truly make it, we'll have to roll up with our pile of dub plates and be able to play things that nobody else has."
The additional component, the clubs, are receiving more attention than ever from the junglists. "You almost need clubs to help make things go in the scene," Houser says. "A lot of raves are getting busted and the law in a lot of towns don't like raves at all. You'll get your party busted for no reason. Raves have gone from being underground to being as legal as possible and they're still getting busted. Because of that you need the clubs to help keep things moving along."
It is that imperative, "to keep things moving along," that Steel City Jungle (or steelcityjungle, in the design vernacular) returns as a regular party in Pittsburgh. The revival of steelcityjungle takes place Tuesday, April 22 and continues every other Tuesday at Laga on Forbes Avenue in Oakland. The junglists in attendance will be Dieselboy, 1.8.7., Farmer Tea and MC Sphinx and the goal, according to promoter John Dwight, is to use the influences of hip-hop and reggae and the opportunities for cross-over attraction of new audiences to "create a new scene."
Steelcityjungle will host guest DJs for every session, including some of the bigger names in jungle from all over the globe, such as DJ Delmar from Jungle Sky Records and the members of the Koncrete Jungle crew from NYC. Consistent with the high technology thread that runs through the genre, Real Audio broadcasts from the event will be available on the Web the day after the party.
Jon Dwight notes that the return of steelcityjungle is, "a huge opportunity and we just have to take advantage of that. We have the capability to be the #1 jungle city in the U.S."
According to Mateo Segade, a publicist at Sub Base USA, the US office of the label that released dieselboy's mix CD last year, Pittsburgh is already one of the leading centers for jungle activity in North America. The label is banking on dieselboy's continued growth as an artist to fuel their growing stock in the scene. Dieselboy's DrumandBass Selection USA "completely revitalized Sub Base USA," Segade says. "There's now a following for the label in the US and that's because of dieselboy."
A second mix CD by dieselboy will be out this summer and he will release an EP of original material later in 1997. The move from consummate mixmaster, whose focus is wringing every bit of power from another's track, to a producer of original material is an artistic imperative for dieselboy.
"The only way I'm going to get to the next level is to start producing my own tracks. I'm kind of pushing against the skin of where you can go as an American jungle DJ. I have to get my own material out to get the international dates and move on," he says. "When I'm up there spinning, I'm there to give it my all. It's like if you're an athlete or a ballet dancer and it's time to perform. It definitely is a job but I have so much fun with it that I don't think of it like work."
An attitude that allows for work-as-play keeps 1.8.7. moving forward, as well. He is relaxed about having a tight mastery over his material and is willing to share it freely if he thinks it could possibly further someone else's expression or development as an artist. He confesses: "I would love to load samples of my work on the Net and let people do remixes of it. I think some great stuff could come out of that."
In general, though, there is a remarkable ambivalence in the scene about coverage and how it might fuel the growth of the Pittsburgh jungle community. Farmer Tea has mixed emotions about any quick movements. "It was all happening before there was interest and right now the scene is kind of pure. We'll see if that changes in the next couple of years as it becomes more popular and people start getting into it for other reasons."
1.8.7. is characteristically more emphatic about the music's growth. "I think as we get closer to the year 2000, there's going to be a greater interest in futuristic music. I think the millennium is, in some ways, going to be directly responsible for the rise of drum 'n bass and electronic music, in general. That was something that drew me in at the beginning. There's something very down-to-earth about jungle in one way and spaced-out and futuristic at the same time. Whatever future happens is something that is starting now right at this point. Everybody has been sitting around waiting for the future to start happening. I think only now are people starting to realize that there are people creating the future that's going to happen and that it's happening right now and it's all around them."
Pittsburgh-Cleveland Rave-O-Matic's page, maintained by Trout Soup, with dates and locations for upcoming raves can be found at (http://cc.ysu.edu/~s0176326/rom.html) along with a list of a techno and jungle shows on WRCT, WPTS, Radio Carson and a Cleveland station.
For links to Dieselboy (including his official top-ten play list), Hannibal, Farmer Tea and more, go to (http://hyperreal.com/raves/pb-cle/).