Jumping on the post-grunge industrial bandwagon with Outside didn't successfully rejuvenate David Bowie's credibility or sales, so he switched his allegiance to techno and jungle for the follow-up, Earthling. While jungle is a more appropriate fit than industrial, the resulting music is nearly as awkward. Though he often gets the sound of jungle right, the record frequently sounds as if the beats were simply grafted on top of pre-existing songs. Never are the songs broken open by a new form; they are fairly conventional Bowie songs with fancy production. Fortunately, Bowie sounds rejuvenated by this new form, and songs like "Little Wonder" and "Seven Years in Tibet" are far stronger than the bulk of Outside. Still, the record falls short of its goals, and it doesn't offer enough intrigue or innovations to make Earthling anything more than an admirable effort.

Volcano follows Jungle’s previous album Loving In Stereo, which proved to be a landmark moment for the acclaimed UK duo. It achieved their highest domestic UK chart position to date debuting at #3, while also achieving their best ever album chart positions in key international territories such as Australia, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands; and in the US it catapulted to #1 on the Billboard Dance Albums chart which led to major Arena shows as guests to Billie Eilish.

Actually a pretty solid commercial dance cd from 1994. Euro-reggae/new jack swing/ballady stuff on CD two but overall a great selection of music, a weak four star! Great stuff.

From the total effect, Do You Know Squarepusher (a brief LP or a good-sized mini-LP) doesn't just pose the question in the title, but practically demands compliance with the fact that Tom Jenkinson can't be pigeonholed. After moving from jazz fusion homage to 2-step satirist during previous years, Squarepusher turns in a record of radically different sounds, all of them well-intentioned but also difficult to focus into just a single statement (or two, or three). The title track is the best one here (in his usual vein), as close to a game of the dozens as a drill'n'bass producer is going to get; Jenkinson cues a monotoned vocal to repeat the title before moving into Aphex Twin territory with digital-piano melodies accompanying a series of brilliantly timed breakbeat trainwrecks. "F-Train" cuts up a vocal that sounds like DJ Spooky reading one of his favorite abstract textbooks, while "Mutilation Colony" comprises eight minutes of musique concrète that would sound familiar to any admirer of early tape-music composers Edgard Varèse and Vladimir Ussachevsky. And coming right on its heels is Jenkinson's first cover, a surprisingly straight reading of Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" (using multiple overdubs of bass/guitar/drums), with a vocal so understated that Ian Curtis sounds like Ian Astbury in comparison.

Jungle’s new album Loving In Stereo is the soundtrack for a summer quite unlike any other. The British producer duo have created a huge disco record for the post-social distancing age, with a life-affirming, dancefloor-igniting, sun-kissed celebration of all the things that make music irresistibly joyful. Both their Mercury Prize-nominated, Gold-certified debut and 2018’s follow-up For Ever landed in the UK Top 10 and charted globally.

Soul Jazz apply keen ears to the ingenious era of UK rave, hardcore and jungle and its unprecedented stylistic shifts of the early ‘90s with a haul of seminal, obscure and killer cuts.