Although there's only a tenuous link between grime and jungle sonically, their histories share a heritage that explains at least some of the fanatical reception of Levy in grime's circle of veterans. Most pertinently, both genres are heavily influenced by hip hop; Jungle's breaks are essentially hip hop beats sped up and augmented by additional, micro-engineered drums and grime was the UKs reaction to a US lineage which was beginning to decline. Aside from that, both jungle and grime are inherently British, taking US influence and reshaping them into something completely idiosyncratic; urban music that UK youth can take ownership of without any sour taste of plagiarism lingering in their mouth. They represent two of the last truly innovative, organically home grown exports that we have; our very own musical fish and chips, without the grease and salty regret. Neither of them were particularly interested in literary fiction (“a term I despise,” says Green today); the word-length was 50,000 (about 48,000 longer than anything either of them had ever written before); Green was now up country studying film at Northumbria University. Otchere says he’d never even read a full-length novel up to that point, preferring instead the wordplay and poetry of the sleeve notes on Sun Ra LPs.

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. 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.Long Piano rolls, bouncy basslines, breakbeats, and a lush blanket of vocals defined the Hardcore sound in the late 80s and early 90s. The Breakbeat Hardcore scene did see a steady revival in mid 2000s, but in the early 1990s, the genre slowly started fragmenting into several sub-genres like Dark-core and Happy Hardcore which paved a way for darker moods and melodies to make doorway in the UK Rave scene. But for a genre so influential, where did it all start? While tangibly it all started in the early 90’s, the intangible development of the birth of Drum & Bass started in the 70s. For a long time, Dum & Bass borrowed its influences from a number of genres and the biggest influence came from the birth of the most-used sample in Drum & Bass and now in modern-day music, the Amen Break. The birth of Amen Break came after the release of ‘Amen, Brother’ by American funk and soul music group, The Winstons which featured the Amen Break drum solo, and eventually, this drum solo changed the future of Jungle/Drum & Bass and electronic music in general. The Winstons 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. Since the release of ‘”We Are I.E.”, sounds kept blurring and artists started finding their own niche in Jungle. Some artists preferred softer, ambient, and textured melodies while some preferred darker and heavier sounds which could create maximum sonic impact. Jungle music also became a way of expression for London’s streetwise and marginalized youth. They saw Jungle as “England’s answer to hip-hop”, by merging the Jamaican reggae scene with then 4-to-the-floor basslines and erasing racial boundaries by advocating unification of people from different walk of life through its multiculturalism. 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.

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. 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. 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. 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. The term itself is connected with the origin of the name jungle. During the time of junglists, they were sometimes referred to as "rude bwoii", a slang term originally used by Jamaicans (as rude boy), meaning "gangsta" or "badbwoy" ("bad boy"). The term refers to an inner city area of West Kingston, Jamaica, called Jungle (the subject of the Bob Marley song "Concrete Jungle", from the Wailers album Catch a Fire).

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Exactly. We push the music from a cultural point of view and play a big part in the movement. I do feel that gets overlooked a lot. I’ll give you an example; some very big artists have used my logo and own my brand in their content to get stripes, but not reached out to me and worked with me. That’s a culture vulture move. I might not be on the frontline but my work is out there and I’ve been here in the game for 20 years, just reach out to the originators and work with us positively. Green and Otchere decided on a simple narrative arc: a long weekend, Friday through to Monday morning, in the lives of four south Londoners – Meth, Q, Biggie and Craig – who they based on themselves and their mates. It’s often hard to tell them apart, their voices and personalities melting into a polyphonic mix, a scattershot and bantz-heavy flow of the kind that might be heard on a pirate station. They have minor run-ins with the police as they drive across town in Q’s mum’s Cortina, but this isn’t a protest or a journalistic novel; it’s more interested in inner space than in sociological space, the psychology of urban life as it’s modulated by beats and weed. 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. 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.

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?

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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. No other logo represents this music and culture quite as ubiquitously or timelessly as that of the Junglist Movement brand. The popularity rose so much that BBC Radio 1 gave Jungle a platform with the One In The Jungle weekly show. 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. 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.