DanceWeekend | A Brief History of Breakbeat Hardcore & Jungle Techno Rave Music

the1950smoon (45)in #music • 6 years ago (edited)

The use of sampled funk breakbeats in electronic dance music goes back to the mid 80's. One example of this, Bomb The Bass's Beat Dis, released in '87, samples a drum breaks from Trouble Funk - Saturday Night Live From Washington D.C. Pt. 2 and DJs like Frankie Bones were utilising breakbeats over the more traditional four-to-the-floor house beats of Chicago and Detroit to create a unique sound that would start to stand out on the dance-floors of the clubs and raves around the world, but particularly in the UK's burgeoning Rave and Acid House scene.

This move to a more breakbeat oriented sound was really truly cemented a few years later at a rave club night called Rage, which was held in London's Heaven nightclub by two young DJ's called Fabio and Grooverider. During their gigs at the big acid house raves that spread across the UK during the summer of 1988 the DJs started to notice that the crowds would react with more energy in swathes as they started to mix in records containing breakbeats into their sets.

Armed with this knowledge they began to seek out more and more breakbeat house tunes from record shops and suppliers and slowly over the next few years they started to transform their sets to this newer dance sound.

In October of 1988 promoter Kevin Millins, previously promoter of the Babylon rave parties, started a weekly Thursday nigh club called Rage, initially with Danny Rampling and Mark Moore and the progressing on with Trevor Fung and Colin Faver as the main residents with special guest DJs brought in each week.

Upstairs above the main club at Heaven there was also a slightly smaller room called the Star Bar, which held around 1,000 people, the main Heaven venue downstairs held 1,200. The Star Bar was usually opened up by John Digweed, who was called JD at the time and after this Fabio and Grooverider were booked to play from 11pm until 3am. During their early sets Fabio and Grooverider would play anything that was new. German techno, Belgian techno, New York house, at this time they weren't really putting any labels on the tunes, they were all just seen as house music.

After a year or so had passed one particular night the two residents downstairs were off sick and the promoters moved Fabio and Grooverider downstairs to play their sets to the larger room in the club.

Fabio: "We were surprised. You gotta remember downstairs was a mainstream house night. We would play a bit more underground. We weren’t sure how it would translate. But we did what we do and people loved it and Kevin gave us the job. We felt bad, but then we thought, “Fuck it.”"

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Right around this time the Hip-House thing was really starting to kick off in a big way and originally coming from the Hip Hop scene Fabio and Grooverider really took to this new Hip Hop influenced more breakbeat heavy sound along with the other New York styles that were using breaks more predominantly.

Fabio: "We came from hip hop as well, we were always into the breakbeat element and found a way to play breaks into the sets. We’d play stuff like Fast Eddie Smith and Frankie Bones. We would take bits of the breaks and put them on top of tunes. It was madness. You know what, I don’t even know how we did it! In dem days our mixing wasn’t that tight…"

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They would take these breakbeat driven tracks and started to mix them over other more uplifting styles of house and techno, like Frank De Wulf, Joey Beltram and Masters At Work, which they would pitch up on the decks, creating an even newer fresher sound that started to drive the crowds wild.

After a while producer started to incorporate this new sound and influence into their productions. In 1991 a game-changer was released called We Are I.E. by a London producer called Lennie De Ice.

Grooverider: "“We Are i.e.” changed the game. After that, people started to talk about jungle."

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Lennie De Ice: "We Are IE" means we are an example to everyone, black, white, Indian, Chinese. I done it in a home studio on a 6-track mixing desk. It was made in 1988 but came out in 1991 on IE Records. I was listening to a lot of Mantronix for the futuristic beats, the way he used to sandwich stuff. A lot of people were using breaks combined with the progressive feel of the house music and drum machines. We started merging things. From there it progressed. We played it at Living Dream, East Way Cycling Centre to 17,000 people in an open-air tent. It was July 1991, it was a lovely, lovely buzz."

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This is the point when people really started to talk about 'Jungle' and gradually the rave sound started to morph into this newer sound as more and more producers started to create breakbeat, hardcore and jungle records.

Fabio: "And then before you knew it, it was a whole movement. I don’t even know how that happens. We were getting more and more jungle tunes every week and the movement happened."

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