Back to the Future: Ambient Jungle 95–99

The best atmospheric drum'n'bass tunes from the mid- to late 1990s

Rupert Parkes, a drum’n’bass producer in his mid-20s who goes by the artist name of Photek, stands in his home studio, getting interviewed by a Dutch TV journalist.

Pulling out a vinyl copy of Miles Davis’ 1974 jazz fusion album Big Fun, he puts the needle down on the brooding 21-and-a-half-minute tune “Lonely Fire” and says: “I think what we’re doing now is like an extension of what they were doing then.”

At the time, by saying “we” he was probably referring to an inner circle within the UK drum’n’bass scene – a bunch of producers, groups and independent labels who were trying to push the jungle and hardcore sound forward, into the future.

Some of Photek’s tunes from that period still sound like the future – like “T’Raenon”, a timeless track from 1996, which layers ultra-precise drum programming with moody Rhodes chords and floating synth pads.

Back then, drum’n’bass was the most exciting sound in the world. The jump-up raggamuffin styles of the early jungle years were passé, and the tough Metalheadz sound was dominating the mainstream within the genre – but a part of the scene had already been moving towards more subtle, jazzy and spacious productions for some time.

The first Logical Progression CD on LTJ Bukem’s Good Looking label introduced me to the style which would soon be dubbed ‘ambient jungle’ or ‘atmospheric dnb’ or even ‘intelligent dnb’ (as a reference to the ‘IDM’ tag). On the follow-up label compilation, Earth Volume 1, this was mixed with other styles of instrumental electronic music I enjoyed, namely downtempo and trip-hop of the Mo Wax/Ninja Tune strain.

Each week, new 12-inches would arrive from the UK at the local record shop and completely blow my mind. In those pre-millennium days, it truly felt as if the future outlined in the sci-fi movies of our childhood had finally arrived. I didn’t even know what any of those producers looked like. This was pre-social media, and those records didn’t carry much information with them – just the names of the producer and the tunes, and the simple black or white sleeves would feature a sticker from labels like Good Looking or Moving Shadow.

In that golden era of ambient and atmospheric D&B, I graduated from school, moved out of my parents’ house and started going to uni. I wasn’t a club person – there also wasn’t a club in my city that would regularly play drum’n’bass. Naturally I gravitated to those styles of electronic music catering to headphone listeners, zoning out to the music late at night while playing video games in my shared flat, on my Discman during bus journeys or the car stereo of my battered red Volkswagen Golf.

When I moved into a bigger city shortly before the turn of the millennium, I would have been able to go to D&B clubs regularly. But I didn’t feel too excited about the scene’s musical direction anymore. The now dominant styles of techstep and neurofunk captured an ultra-masculine, way-too-muscular version of a music that I’d grown to love especially for its deeper and quieter shades and nuances.

The jazzy/ambient/atmospheric approach had turned into a formula as well, which seemed quite limited in its further potential for ‘logical progression’. That part of the scene either moved on from the genre, or transitioned into the new liquid funk style in the early 2000s – which birthed some great music as well, but sounded much more polished and slick.

In recent years, there has been a revival of that mid- to late 1990s sound, mainly through a couple of great releases on the Auxiliary/Spatial label. Their main producers like ASC or Aural Imbalance have been active since the late 1990s. In terms of their style of production, they obviously stuck to their guns.

I often return to the music from that formative 1995–99 D&B era and have been doing so in the last weeks. For some weird reason, that combination of 160+ bpm breakbeats, walking basslines, ambient synth pads and analogue jazz fusion chords never gets old.

Below the paywall, you will find the link to a YouTube playlist of 50 of my favorite atmospheric/ambient drum’n’bass tunes from the mid- to late 1990s. I highly recommend listening on headphones in shuffle mode.

Feel free to send me your favorite tunes from this sound and era. I’d love to expand that playlist into an extensive archive of this style of music.