The first reference to the term Drum and Bass that I have come across is in
the liner notes of a King Tubby compilation on Blood & Fire records...it is
a transcrition of dialogue taken from an audio interview with Tubby
describing how he created his first dub records...jus de drum an de
bass...something like that...
In many ways dnb is the hip-hop of the UK. From a social perspective it was
a working class, innercity movement and just as hip hop in NY distilled
punk, soul, funk,disco, german electro and jazz into something new, dnb in
London took hardcore, hip-hop, dub, techno, etc and spawned another bastard
child. Culturally dnb took a lot of its trappings from Jamaican sound system
culture...chatterbox mcs, dub plates, rewinds etc...
So the term dnb may have existed before acid jazz, but it seems pretty clear
that acid jazz began as a revivalist club genre while dnb/jungle evolved out
of the renegade english rave scene. They certainly didn't develope in a
vacuum, but if you listen to 4 Hero's "mr. Kirk's nightmare" compared to aj
of the time you will notice they seem worlds apart. It seems it took awhile
for the sound to transfuse...just listen to 4-Hero now!
Well I thought everyone might be interested in how the all music guide
(allmusic.com) defined the genre. Whether you like them or not they are
becoming the definative music resource on the net...I personally have
problems with some of the album reviews but they have completed the
Herculanean task of compilling info on almost every release known to man...
This summary, although it leaves a bit out (hello Norman Jay!), pretty well
lays out the historical (read industry) Acid Jazz genre...
what do you guys think?
Acid Jazz
by John Bush
An energetic, groove-centered variant of jazz for a generation of
club-oriented youth, acid jazz as a style originated in London during the
mid-'80s, fostered by rare-groove DJs who spun their favorite records,
whether they were up-to-par from a jazz standpoint or not. In the clubs, the
only thing that mattered was the groove, and these DJs were inspired in the
main by the '70s fringe of jazz — fusion, jazz-funk and Afro-Cuban, with
secondary elements of earlier soul jazz. This exposure to a legion of
previously unheard records influenced many in the British and American
underground, which fed a pool of live musicians and studio-savvy producers
working within the style by the early '90s. Though British chart success by
Soul II Soul, the Brand New Heavies, and Stereo MC's created a glut of
sub-par artists and compilations in the stores, players in the underground
kept expanding the style, gradually building a global community of artists.
During the early '80s, ever-changing British pop-music trends had seen punk,
new wave, and the mod revival come and go. By the mid-point of the decade,
the hot music for club DJs was rare groove, a style which re-introduced
listeners and dancers to the more obscure jazz-funk and soul records from
the '70s. The style took as its cornerstones classics which jazz critics and
purists had either neglected or dismissed: music from Miles Davis' electric
period, commercial successes like Donald Byrd's Black Byrd and Herbie
Hancock's Headhunters, and '70s Blue Note obscurities from the cutout bins
of record stores. Of the many DJs around London, the one who became most
identified with acid jazz was Gilles Peterson. (Various claims can be made
as to his being the first to use the term as well.) Peterson originally
started by spinning mammoth sets of jazz-funk from his own personal pirate
radio station, located in a garden shed near his home, and later made the
move to broadcast on one of the hottest British pirate stations, Kiss-FM. He
also maintained residencies at several London clubs during the late '80s.
One of Peterson's buddies was Eddie Piller, the former head of Re-Elect the
President Records, and the man who had released the debut album by a Hammond
B-3 extraordinaire named James Taylor (not to be confused with either the
singer/songwriter or the Kool & the Gang vocalist). When Taylor moved to
Polydor in 1988, Piller received enough money to finance a new label, Acid
Jazz Records, as a partnership with Peterson. The company's first releases
were a series of compilations titled Totally Wired, each of which alternated
jazz-funk obscurities from the 1970s with updated tracks from the new acid
jazz.
Peterson later left Acid Jazz Records to form his own Talkin' Loud Records,
which soon became one of the other top labels around; it also generated some
commercial movement by signing former Acid Jazz artist Galliano as well as
Young Disciples and Urban Species. In 1990, another British label, 4th &
Broadway Records, began a compilation series titled The Rebirth of Cool,
featuring an international cast of artists both young and old, including
Pharoah Sanders, the Stereo MC's, French rapper MC Solaar, Courtney Pine and
Japanese production team United Future Organization, among others. Acid jazz
broke into the mainstream in 1991, led by the Brand New Heavies. The group
had released one album through Acid Jazz Records, but then moved to Fffr
Records for their greatest success, the singles "Never Stop" and "Dream Come
True." After the initial British success of acid jazz groups inspired by the
rare-groove revival, a spate of marginal compilations flooded the racks,
leaving many consumers puzzled over what exactly acid jazz was, which
artists played acid jazz, and how to identify the best recordings in the
style.
The confusion grew no less clear in the 1990s, as vibrant acid jazz
communities sprung up in the U.S. as well, in San Francisco (Ubiquity
Records), New York (the Giant Step collective) and Los Angeles (Solsonics).
By that time, acid jazz could encompass anything from the spy-soundtrack
soul jazz of the James Taylor Quartet to Jamiroquai's pop-oriented Stevie
Wonder imitations, from the globe-trotting musical eclecticism of Japanese
producers United Future Organization to New York's Groove Collective, a
ramshackle group of poets, players and hip-hoppers who shared club nights.
The growth of interest in electronic club music during the mid-to-late '90s
appeared to quash much of the power of acid jazz with the buying public,
though many communities around the world remained quite fresh and exciting.
Essential Listening:
1. V/A - Totally Wired (Acid Jazz)
2. Brand New Heavies - Brand New Heavies (Delicious Vinyl)
3. Galliano - What Colour Our Flag (Talkin' Loud/Mercury)
4. United Future Organization - No Sound Is Too Taboo (Talkin' Loud/Verve)
5. Groove Collective - Groove Collective (Reprise)
6. James Taylor Quartet - In the Hand of the Inevitable (Hollywood)
7. Jamiroquai - Return of the Space Cowboy (Columbia)
8. Young Disciples - Road to Freedom (Talkin' Loud/Mercury)
9. Greyboy Allstars - Town Called Earth (Greyboy)
10. Medeski, Martin & Wood - It's a Jungle in Here (Gramavision)
peace
chris Widman
abstract Science
chicago
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