Morphing the munglists

Back to rave last week. Czuk and I landed in some stereotype nu jungle jump-off in ghetto rave venue/pubclub Goldsmiths Tavern, a night made palatable by an enthused local crowd even as the music made a standard out of its own bog. Yes the mood was better there than last time, what with laydeez free and the still-liberating deshackler of the madfast jungle, put on by Kings of the Nu School and with Skibadee representing the only known.

His name ensured an MC-led angle to it. Each tune sped past unremarkable by any other characteristic, this functionality emphasised by the treble seeming to be down on the record to give the chatter its space, siren and riff-free. Each time though the 100ish crowd helped to make each lick seem more vital, more edgy than perhaps either the present-day post-garage or four-beat variants. It’s surely time jungle as a music moved on from its psychedelic concrete heyday but this may be unlikely while the spirit changes it in half-death. Maybe it should roughen up the beats again and take a different reality, like these.

On a personalised and selfish note, because I blog like that, the night emphasised the unfulfilled futility of any nights out when the interdependables are back at home. So schooled now in the metaphorical boat-pushing out and barely able to resist the flow in any case, this was made painfully evident by the need to go relatively early, leaving the 171 bus and home as chief loci for the biscuitworkings. No point in going out if the deshackler can’t be accessed, but it was still a welcome few hours away from corpo-reality.