Why Future Jungle is destined for greatness

As some readers of this blog may know, my name is Tariq, I host a weekly online radio show called 'tea with Tariq' for www.radioy.co.uk, a youth station aimed at 16-24yr olds. I've been a follower of the rave scene since 1991 up until 2001 when I got a bit fed up of music in general. When I got into radio recently I started looking for music to play and my natural inclination towards the old skool rave sound led me to stumble across the Future Rave anthems compilations and the 'Rave breaks' sound, I kept googling away to find more material and came across nu-rave.com where the current styles had been categorised into rave breaks, hardcore breaks and J Tek. I eventually came across http://www.topdrawerdigital.com/ where I heard a track called 'Autumn Star' by D Con & Miguel which reminded me of the 1992 Jungle tekno sound and I knew I had found the sound I was looking for to promote on a radio program.

Around about the same time, another style emerged reffered to as '140 Jungle' or 'Future Jungle' , whilst admittedly name tags are undoubtedly problematic for producers as it can marginalise and pigeonhole them. I personally feel that this strand of modern rave music is the closest in spirit to the early 90's sound, not only that but it fuses the earlier sound with the mid 90's 'Jungle/Drum n Bass' and the current 'Dubstep'. No wonder then that dubstep producers are themselves getting involved with some notably fine results many of which you can check out on this blog.

Going back to the old skool thing for a second, when rave/hardcore broke out in the early 90's, it didn't just break out, it made an impact on mainstream radio although I'm sure the men in suits didn't like it and mainstream radio did everything it could to bury it until sadly, they won and by 1993, DJs like Pete Tong who dedicated half an hour of his show to hardcore every week stopped playing it. Future jungle or whichever term you prefer will break out and impact mainstream radio, there have already been tracks played on BBC radio 1, artists like Lucas, Bojcot selectah, Radiokillaz and DJ Twista's remix of the classic 'Crowd control' by Ramos & Supreme have all had airtime on the beeb. 20 years ago, the radio wasn't ready for hardcore but it will be ready for this fresh new re-interpretation and for me, that is an exciting prospect as it will allow a whole new generation to discover the sound, maybe I'm being very optimistic but the signs are there. I for one am 110% committed to pushing the sound albeit on a online station amongst the myriad of online stations, you can catch me every Saturday 6pm on www.radioy.co.uk and don't worry, I don't talk as much as I write!!!

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Tea with Tariq radio shows on www.radioy.co.uk by Radio Youthology