7. SplashBabylon
I’m a big collector of hardcore and jungle from 1991 to 1996. I just came upon the white label original of this on Discogs one day. I didn’t know the original ‘Babylon’ song, even though I knew a lot of jungle. When it comes to jungle and hardcore, I don’t necessarily go for the hits. A lot of the time I like weirder, original sounding things, but ‘Babylon’ is so hard-hitting and the production is so perfect – it’s one of those tunes that rules, and those remixes are totally unique. DJ SS is also one of my favourite jungle producers. If I just had to objectively pick one record to play for someone who hadn’t heard it, to show them how great jungle is, I would play his remix. I love how when it’s about to drop there’s a snare fill that you would expect to come before the drop, then it filters out and a totally different sounding snare rises up behind it. It’s so beautiful. I did a fake snare rush on Maya track ‘Zillion’ that was inspired by that moment.
Thinking back, the Red Hot Chili Peppers song ‘By The Way’ was definitely inspired by having been out at a club the night before, and trying to get Chad to play a drum and bass or jungle beat. Once you put chords and melodies with it, it’s not the same thing, but that was definitely where I was coming from with that tune. The main place I used to go dancing at was in Silverlake, at a place that was then called Spaceland. I was drinking a lot of kava and valerian back then – you buy it at the health food store. I wasn’t drinking alcohol, but I would get pretty fucked up off that stuff. Early on, the main communication I would have was if I saw a group of people smoking a joint, I would walk up to them and say, ‘Hey, I will give you twenty bucks if I can take a hit off that’ They would take the $20, and I would take a hit and continue dancing. It wasn’t until 2008 that I started having friends that were really all about being in the scene and throwing raves and illegal parties.
