D'Cruze – Lonely
Thank the Spotify algorithmic gods, I have rekindled my love for Jungle and DnB, especially the 90s style where it seems like anything is still possible for the form. Since the 2000s, Jungle and DnB ossified into genre constraints rather than platforms for experimentation, with the strong exception of artists like Detboi or Burial, where mood and soundscape using “traditional” electronic instruments take precedence over familiarity and dance club optimizations.
D’Cruze’s Lonely (Spotify link), a 1994 Jungle classic, epitomizes what the genre can be. Spacey, warped vocals over a transcending synth. Punctuated by cut up and variated breaks, occasionally mangled in ways that our modern step sequencers tend to discourage, with sudden left and right stereo movements and glitchy skips and repeats.
Great Jungle/DnB tricks the listener into thinking that these tracks were not made on a computer, but a mysterious and beautifully crafted electronic music device that has an analog philosophy: The same sound shouldn’t really be the exact same sound.
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