photo credit: wouterj

In this interview with Burial for The Wire in 2007, he said something which stuck in my head long after I read it:

Wire: Your tunes connect this time with a different era, one that’s gone.

Burial: I hear tunes, I seek out tunes that used to be everything to someone but they probably can’t listen to them now. I know there are tunes I’ve put on, I’ve seen people cry, Moving Shadow tunes, old tunes, because this music is old enough now for it to mean that. Even a single sound, they’ll hear a sound and it’ll just slay them. And you’re right, culture doesn’t seem to notice this. Where I’m from you’re more likely to be sitting around talking about a Rufige Kru or 4hero tune, how much it meant to you, than some other kind of music. I like normal life. It’s weird now, people die and they’re still on Facebook or whatever the fuck else.

This is how it was for me listening to jungle and drum n bass back then. Some of these tunes would just kill me each time I hear them. The massive drops when the breaks kick in, those creepy sci-fi film samples and those goddamn Amen drums….it just feels like its bringing you to another place, a kind of dark utopia, a dystopic euphoria. Something about the tension between these two contrasting moods really grabs me, especially now listening back to it. That era has long passed, which makes it even more meaningful right now.

Compared to the level of production of music today, the simplicity and naivete of old school jungle had a rough, raw, unpolished, visceral impact that will probably never exist again. Back then, hearing it in clubs in New York on proper sound systems…it was something else.

Props to Burial and Kode 9 for playing Foul Play remix on Mary Anne Hobbs last December, reminding me of how good these tunes are.

The best tunes of the period? Where to even begin….here are a few to start: