Ahead of that, however, Leke will be taking over Fabric’s Room 2 on February 28 to celebrate the 20 th anniversary of Junglist Movement and his main brand Aerosoul. Just like the movement he’s been immersed as an integral figure in since day one (he was a founding member of Mixrace, an experimental rave/rap act who went on to be signed by Moving Shadow) the line-up covers all bass bases with a line-up of Aerosoul and Jungle Movement endorsed artists: Makoto, Kenny Ken, DJ Ron, Bailey, Zero T, AI, Seba and MCs Verse, Moose and 2Shy. Yeah it has to be. Fashion is very personal isn’t it? So I started creating more products around the Aerosoul brand. And when I was doing that Human Traffic came out and that took things up again. Take one bassline created from the sound of rotating helicopter blades, another that shifts deep rolling funk and dancehall. Add it to a break built from Blowfly’s filthy ‘Sesame Street’ that occasional erupts into a snare roll that echoes the helicopter blades. Add horn stabs, gunshots, discordant strings and a jittering Afro sequence and you’re left with a tune that oozes tension and drips with suspense. A huge anthem in 1993, its metronomic flow had all of the detailed production that would mark out drum & bass in this era. It also offered a different vision to the ragga fused jump-up jungle sound that was dominating things at the time. Definitely. For me collaboration is about mutual respect, when you get that balance the product is going to be dope. All my collaborations come about because we love what each other are doing. Even with the artists who I sponsor, that’s a collaboration for me. It’s not just product placement, it’s like A&Ring. People I’ve sponsored early on are now massive. That’s the A&R side, being able to spot a talent and seeing it if fits in with your brand and whether they’re going to be around for the long game. I ask myself where they’re going to be in five years time or 10 years time and we grow together. The popularity rose so much that BBC Radio 1 gave Jungle a platform with the One In The Jungle weekly show.

We saw how much fun they were having and brought it into our own circles’ ... raving at AWOL in Ministry of Sound. Photograph: Eddie Otchere That’s what rave was about. I learnt from it, though. If I can get that attention then what I’m doing is having an effect and I should take it seriously. So I redefined my brand as Aerosoul because – as you mentioned with the graffiti – that’s what everything was founded on for me. I bought the two together. It was everything that represented me; hip hop culture, graffiti, wordplay, the music, fashion. I hear you. On the flip of that, when you do work with people this is much more than sending an artist a bunch of merch, right? Tek 9 was an occasional solo project from 4Hero’s Dego McFarlane that fused ragga with hip hop to create an instantly recognisable drum&bass sound. His remake of Code 071’s ‘A London Sumtin’ brought the ragga b-line to the fore. Stretching the ‘Feelin’ It’ break from one of rave’s favoured sample sources, the Ultramagnetic MCs’ Critical Beatdown, Tek 9’s remix twists the original’s hardcore thrust into a twisting darkcore meets proto-jungle horror movie. This tune famously caused a rift between Reece and Goldie when the latter refused to license the tune for use on Reece’s debut album on Island. Reece is one of those producers who should have been huge, but after his second album for Island was shelved he gradually retreated from drum & bass production. That unreleased album drew heavily on electro and was far superior to his debut. Sadly, it remains in the vaults

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Terminator’ was the first time that the timestretching technique had been used on the breaks, an effect that allowed you to alter tempo of a sample without changing the pitch. The effect was like an experiment with the temporal flow of music, as sonic futures became historical loops. Time itself simultaneously collapsing in and building out. ‘Terminator’ proved to be a key signpost in the emergence of the cyber driven ideologies of drum & bass tech, while also providing a jaw-dropping dancefloor moment. You just did a collab with Hospital for Hospitality In The Park, too. Do you have any other big collabs you can reveal for 2020? It’s been a consistent mainstay on both dancefloors and raver wardrobes since the mid 90s when designer and founder Leke Adesoye printed his first run of T’s for his crew. His mission was simple; to create garments for the burgeoning jungle community. Founded in Leke’s years of hip hop culture, the clothes a nod for those who know and an alternative to the standard Versace/Moschino style in London or the bright hippie baggies in the raves at the time. The iconic Technics-inspired design hit the spot and its message has remained relevant and virulent ever since; pushing the jungle cause well beyond the confines of the genre. Fans of the brand range from Groove Armada to model Bee Philips via D Double E, Joel Dommett, Ed Sheeran and Ghostface Killah. And that’s before we even consider its presence on the cult clubbing movie Human Traffic.

Fashion is also a very broad church. It’s meant you’ve worked with people from so many industries. Film, sports, not just music… Another of the ‘should have beens’ from the drum & bass scene, Peshay was taken out of action by an illness that left him bed-bound for almost two years. Miles From Home, his debut album for Island Blue arrived too late have the impact he so richly deserved. One listen to ‘Psychosis’ is enough to reveal his production talent. Like ‘Pulp Fiction’, this was a defining tune for Metalheadz with its anxious cries, shrill noises, and jittering drum rolls that build towards the introduction of the Plastic Jam break that dominates from a minute in. The tune instantly evokes memories of a smoky basement in mid-1990s Hoxton. I want to push Aerosoul Africa. That’s part of who I am and my identity. I want to focus more on that as a brand. Afrobeat is huge and Africa’s rich culture needs to be celebrated with products everyone would be proud to wear. I’m working with a really inspiring artist from Tanzania and it’s a big focus for me. Beyond that I’m just making sure I’m making the best products and designs I can and bringing everything together. Aerosoul, Junglist Movement, Hip Hop Movement, Babysoul, Soulero Sista and Aersosoul Africa. Each one is its own brand but all under the main Aerosoul umbrella. We’ve had some great attention recently so it’s about capitalising on that and bringing everything together in-house. Influences from the breakbeat hardcore styles were chopped up and glued together to create an accelerated, rolling, syncopated rhythm; and with the Hardcore scene giving way to their euphoric style of music for darker and industrial samples with faster and heavily edited drum programming in turn gave birth to Jungle. Lennie De-Ice’s ragga-tinged release ‘”We Are I.E.” in 1991 was the earliest prototype of Jungle music and it also laid the foundations for the genre for years to come. Goldie receiving a gold record plaque at the Blue Note, Hoxton Square, London. Photograph: Eddie Otchere

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It’s a really interesting event which also marks 20 years of the film. It’s happening in Printworks, it’s a four day event with different DJs, acts and all kinds of things like pop up shops, scenes from the film set up like Koop’s shop and different areas dedicated to the movie. So I’m involved in that and doing the merch for it. In more recent times he’s designed unique drops with Hospital Records for last year’s Hospitality In The Park, he’s collaborated with the exercise phenomenon that is Flight Klub and has partnered with Human Traffic Live with a new collection exclusive to the forthcoming Lost Weekend event at Printworks in May. Drum & Bass is a genre that spans across three decades of rich musical history. Since its inception in the early 90s, the genre has kept shapeshifting its styles into different eras of music and it has now consolidated itself as a genre that is influencing electronic music in big ways. For a genre so rich in its history, it’s only fair that we narrate its evolution in the way it deserves to be; and through our ‘Evolution of Drum & Bass’ series, we aim to take you on a ride right from where it all began to its place in electronic music in modern-day electronic music. Zinc, Hype and Pascal’s ridiculous hip-hop/jungle fusion that starts with samples from LL Cool J and Method Man, builds through lysergic squelches, dubbed up half-time jazz beats and Sleng Teng meets bleep bass before erupting, in a flurry of gunshots into the double-time Amen breaks and wobbly bass of the main verse. This s one of those tunes that demands physical reaction and – despite it’s age and lo-fi production – still sounds immense today. I lost every booking I’d ever worked for. When the police came to my house they said, ‘so, you’re the DJ everyone hates’. I had no idea the guy had been stabbed but people didn’t believe me,” she told me in 1996. Nonetheless, ‘Mr. Kirk’s Nightmare’ is a pivotal tune in the development of the darkcore scene.

Even for electronic artists less directly linked to the genre, the influence of OG Jungle on this decade’s hitmakers cannot be underestimated. Shy One is a DJ and producer known for eclectic and diverse sets, but she tells me that “being from a raving family”, she recognises the “honour” of sharing a stage with”legendary pioneers of electronic music like Goldie and A Guy Called Gerald”. Speaking to Notion recently, electronic duo Chase & Status describe a career defining moment, “accidentally stumbling” on “one of the many pirate radio stations blasting out Hardcore Jungle” and being inspired to buy an album at random. The record in question, ‘Grooverider – Hardstep Collection 1’. Alongside Fabio, DJ Grooverider is on the bill for Outlook festival this year, as well as Hospitality in the Woods. Whenever we are talking about the evolution of Drum & Bass, there is one common reference that you will most certainly stumble upon, that it was oddly referred to as the b*astard child of Dance Music. From its emergence in the English rave scene in the early 90’s, Drum & Bass has evolved and stood as one of the most energetic and influential genres in electronic music.While the genre was booming in the mainstream charts, the underground side, which had formed the foundations of the sound, kept experimenting with darker, grittier, and more menacing soundscapes and started testing these out in their DJ sets. The morphing continued and producers moved away from the ambient and textured soundscapes to a crispier and refined sound. Aligned with artists such as Degs, DJ Die, General Levy and Colette Warren, no brand is as entrenched in the foundations of this music and culture quite like Junglist Movement and no other aspect of the culture tells a story quite so personal as fashion.

Junglist Movement was the first design. But yeah, other ones I had did attract bad attention. In the rave era there was a lot of piss-taking stuff. That was part of the culture. So I did Roots with the Boots logo and Needafix for Weetabix and Natural Born Players for NBA. Boots and Weetabix weren’t happy. They threatened to throw me in jail! I was young and naïve at the time. They got heavy. That’s why I changed the name from Outrage Clothing.

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Yes! We’re taking over room two at Fabric with Makoto, Kenny Ken, DJ Ron, Bailey, Zero T, AI, Seba with MCs Verse, Moose and 2Shy. We’ve got the jungle and drum & bass. A celebration of everything. The full spectrum of the music and the full spectrum of what I’ve been about. We’re going to shut down London that night. It’s brilliant – it’s time to celebrate the full culture. Junglists belong to what is seen as a predominantly UK-based drum and bass subculture. As a subculture, however, it is not nearly as distinct as goth or punk to the untrained eye, where members can often distinguish each other by their mannerisms and fashion without hearing their choice of music. Many of those who identify as Junglists adopt a mix of rasta, rudebwoy and B-Boy fashions since jungle, drum and bass and hip hop have close ties as subcultures. Conquering Lion was better known as Michael West, aka Rebel MC who’d had chart success with the commercial sound of hip-house. This ragga breakbeat mash-up couldn’t have been further from the mainstream. Like Remarc’s ‘RIP’ this tune samples Saxon Sound and King Addies’ ‘Saxon Vs. Addies Soundclash’ in Bermuda, 1994, but to much darker effect. For West, junglism was far more than a scene, he viewed it as an expression of militancy and subsequently used his profile to raise awareness of the socio-political drive inherent in the music. ‘Code Red’ was a high-octane warning of Junglism’s oppositional fury. Absolutely. I don’t cut any corners with my products and brands, I go on in on it. So when I work with someone I’m creating a connection and relationship between our brands. It’s very tight, it’s a family. From the hip hop side I’ve been working with guys like Rodney P, Omar, Skitz and Ty. From the jungle side I started with Kenny Ken, Moose, Ron. They’ve been with me ever since. I’ve never rinsed it, I’ve kept it as a family which keeps on growing.