When does a genre reach its breaking point? At which step does it fold into history, no one wanting to touch it, until a re-introduction makes it eligible for lost-classic status? I wonder this about jungle a lot lately. I think I already did back when people thought it was a fad, or when the coffee-table thing came around, or whenever trudgestep exerted its all-powerful hand. Trip-hop will never die because you can dress it in all sorts of nicknames: it's a masterstroke in that way. Jungle you can't, not even when you call it "drum and bass." But surely, I figured, people would remember jungle for its mid-'90s tumult, a breathtaking explosion of sonic creativity, and leave alone the past decade's overarching sense of "whatever."

Needless to say, I've mostly been wrong so far. I actually like the more recent stuff when I encounter it, which has been more often lately than it has in a decade, thanks to the BBC Radio 1 Top 30 Independent Singles, about which I've written here before. But this isn't about those songs, but some older ones, and about the very different perspectives they offer on the style—different from each other, and different from mine, meaning not stuck in the past as I am.

Well, that's not strictly true. The first can't be, by design, since everything on it is more than a decade old, and the magazine I found it in nearly as old. Near the end of 1999, the Los Angeles dance-culture magazine Urb put together a series of lists of its top recordings of the decade: the Top 100 albums (DJ Shadow's Endtroducing... on top) and eight separate lists for singles, with hip-hop, house, and techno each getting a Top 25 and jungle, trance, abstract, breakbeat, and experimental each got a Top 10; all were listed alphabetically by artist. Here's Urb's Top 10 Jungle Singles of the '90s:

1. 4 Hero, "Universal Love" (Talkin' Loud, 1994)
2. LTJ Bukem, "Music" (Good Looking, 1993)
3. Jonny L, "Piper" (XL, 1997)
4. Krust, "Warhead" (XL, 1997)
5. Nasty Habits, "Shadowboxing" (31, 1996)
6. Omni Trio, "Living for the Future" (Moving Shadow, 1994)
7. PFM, "One and Only" (Good Looking, 1995)
8. Shy FX & UK Apachi, "Original Nuttah" (S.O.U.R., 1994)
9. Roni Size, "It's a Jazz Thing" (Full Cycle, 1994)
10. Trace, "Mutant Revisited" (No U-Turn, 1996)

I'd seen this list when it was first published—I'm an obvious mark for this sort of thing, and in 1999 I was still doing a lot of clubbing—but had forgotten about it until the end of May, when I made Portland, Ore., the last stop of a month-long road trip via Amtrak and found a copy at a used bookshop heavy on magazine back issues downtown.

Reading that jungle list again, I had a peculiar response: it seemed too American. By which I mean that while all those songs were as often well known as tracks from crossover albums—the kind American listeners discovered the music through—as they were as singles-unto-themselves. Having listened to them again a few times, I was clearly overreacting. Call it identification panic—just because I can ID the albums and comps many of them first reached me doesn't mean they weren't chosen as singles-qua-singles. And call it clinging to a golden age, because the Urb editors got a few of the songs' release dates wrong, skewing the list to 1996-97 on sight, which is the period where things started moving slower. Looking at it with the dates fixed (thanks, Discogs), it's heaviest on 1994, a glorious year for the stuff, with the pre-'93 stuff left for the breakbeat Top 10.

Nevertheless, I have my after-the-fact cavils. I like all the tracks at least some, but the harder, darker stuff here leaves me coldest, particularly "Mutant Revisited" and "Warhead." These are clearly classics, but both records, especially "Warhead," with its wowing low end and hard one-TWO beat, points the way to the shape of boredom to come, and it's hard not to hear them that way. "Living for the Future" is a very good record that I'll never love nearly as much as "Renegade Snares (Foul Play V.I.P. Remix)" or (especially) "Mystic Stepper (Feel Better)."

Cavils are cavils, though, and what I'm most surprised (and gratified) by is how charming much of the more futurist aspects are, even if they've acquired a layer of kitsch now that we're living in the actual future and not the one where ambient drum & bass would take us away like Calgon. I remember vividly the first time I heard LTJ Bukem's "Music," because I hated it. It was precisely the kind of softheaded pap I hated about the dreamier end of the post-rave spectrum; I wanted to be wowed loudly then. Today I think it's remarkable, and for most of the same reasons. You ever see smoke going through laser ring, that weird glassy wisp of green light? The implacable loop at the center of "Music" is the audio version. Back then, this sounded like a bad idea. Today its soupy-eyed idea of the endless tomorrow seems touching, somehow, the way only old science fiction that shows its age can be.

A more recent list is a little wider in its outreach. KMag used to be called Knowledge; it's a monthly devoted entirely to drum and bass, almost always packaged with a cover-mount mix CD. The July issue was its 100th, and in addition to a career spanning mix by Blame (quite nice, this), KMag asked its readers to send in their Top 5 D&B tracks ever for an overall Top 100. Tallied up, this is what the Top 10 looks like:

1. Fresh & Maldini )E|B( [a.k.a. Bad Company], "The Nine" (BC, 1998)
2. Goldie, "Inner City Life" (FFRR, 1994)
3. Konflict, "Messiah" (Renegade Hardware, 2005)
4. Roni Size/Reprazent, "Brown Paper Bag" (Talkin Loud, 1997)
5. DJ Marky & XRS ft. Stamina, "LK" (V, 2002)
6. D-Bridge & Vegas, "True Romance" (Metalheadz, 2004)
7. Omni Trio, "Renegade Snares" (Moving Shadow, 1994)
8. Ed Rush & Optical, "Gas Mask/Bacteria" (Virus, 1999)
9. LTJ Bukem, "Horizons" (Good Looking, 1995)
10. Shy FX & UK Apachi, "Original Nuttah" (S.O.U.R., 1994)

Given my biases, I should like this list less than I do the Urb one. But I might actually prefer it as a list, if not music. KMag's records aren't better overall, but they present a more interesting dynamic range. Not just because they cover a longer span, either: the Urb list seemed to circle around its era without quite tying it together, while KMag's features items that defined their particular mini-epochs, whether or not I care about them as epochs. (Hello, Bad Company.) I definitely prefer Kmag's Roni Size and Omni Trio selections to those of Urb, which nabbed the far better Bukem track. (Though you could argue that "Horizons," with its Maya Angelou sample—from the Clinton inaugural, how '90s-nostalgic can you get?—and new-age-for-real ambience is more representative of jungle's oceanic tendencies than "Music.") But maybe it's just that this one provides me more of an education. I'll never care for this stuff the way I once did, but it's nice to know it's still around and still moving, whatever its direction.

THE GOOD: Quibble all you like with their picks, but it's still nice to see a publication favor brevity when it comes to compiling their year-end wrap-up lists. Do you really care what some magazine thought was the 76th-best album of 2007? (At least with long singles lists you stand a chance of having time to listen to all 100 entries.) A not-so-well-kept secret: Even professional listeners are largely bullshitting when attempting to seriously rank albums after about No. 20 or so.
THE BAD: All that said, this list is not at all surprising if you're even a little familiar with Urb's editorial remit, drawing entirely from 2007 faves widely-acknowledged by folks from the non-Paste/Harp side of indie, whether it's hip-hop (Wayne, Kanye, the Flosstradamus/Spank Rock axis), dance rock (LCD Soundsystem, Klaxons), or miscellaneous (Battles). Many of these are excellent records of course, but the uniform hipness of it all is pretty suffocating.
THE WHAAA?: Forget placing in the Top 10: There's no way that The Good, The Bad, And The Queen album was the best anything of '07. Except maybe "the best way to give Tony Allen and Paul Simonon a little well-deserved extra spending money."

Seven Singles for '07
Kanye West, "Stronger"
UGK ft. OutKast, "International Players Anthem"
Dude 'N Nem, "Watch My Feet"
Calvin Harris, "The Girls"
Pase Rock, "Lindsay Lohan's Revenge"
Justice, "D.A.N.C.E."
Teki Latex ft. Bitch Bitch Lap Lap, "The Ish"

Best Albums
Lil Wayne, Da Drought III
Klaxons, Myths of the Near Future
M.I.A., Kala
LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver
UGK, Underground Kingz
Blonde Redhead, 23
Mark Ronson, Version
El-P, I'll Sleep When You're Dead
Battles, Mirrored
The Good, the Bad & the Queen, s/t

Best Remixes
Klaxons, "Gravity's Rainbow (Soulwax Remix)"
Justin Timberlake & Timbaland, "Yo Hips, Yo Thighs (Benzi's Ghetto Juke Remix)"
Kanye West ft. Lil Waye, Busta Rhymes & Young Jeezy, "Can't Tell Me
Nothing Remix"
Matt & Kim, "Yea Yeah (Flosstradamus Remix)"
ABC, "The Look of Love? (USA Remix, DUB Version)"

Best Live Show
White Stripes at "Icky Thump Records"
Flosstradamus at the Shortstop
Flaming Lips at Bonnaroo
The Gossip at Emo's
Clipse & Cold War Kids

[Thanks to Michaelangelo Matos for providing the lists.]

I know lots of writers are on this board. If so, please e-mail me.

jgla✧✧✧@u✧✧.c✧✧
thx

— yussel, Thursday, 26 July 2007 23:54 (Yesterday) Link

not sure why it did that weird thing to e-mails.

it's

jglazer at urb dot com

— yussel, Thursday, 26 July 2007 23:54 (Yesterday) Link

btw- this is because i'm looking to purchase an interview for publication.

— yussel, Friday, 27 July 2007 00:37 (12 hours ago) Link

Whether these I Love Music posts are more hijinx from our friends at Urb or just some message board goof makin' a funny, the Ditto/Perez cover has to be leading to a punchline. I'm totally ready to get pantsed on this one when the next issue hits the stands and Matthew Dear or Doc Severinsen is on the cover. Or there's an exclusive 6,000 word interview with Ditto by Norman Mailer. Because otherwise, if that actually is Glazer, what the hell kinda dog and pony show are they operating at Urb HQ? They do remember the words are supposed to come first, right? Especially with photos that ugly.

Posted Thursday, July 26, 2007 @ 08:57 by steph
HATERS!!! don't u wish u were on a cover! Get over yourself!! I LOVE PEREZ AND DITTO!!! RED COVER FOR SURE!!!!!!!!

Posted Thursday, July 26, 2007 @ 09:44 by L Perez and Beth are great. You are all just jealous because you aren't on a magazine cover.

Posted Thursday, July 26, 2007 @ 09:47 by s
i would have to say that i love perez but i really don't care for either picture. Perez you kinda look funny in both, agree with the orange comments, sorry! But keep on dishing the scoop like you do, love ya

Posted Thursday, July 26, 2007 @ 10:07 by kit
Perez,you rock!! Congrats on your 1st cover.I vote silver cause the red is too much.Im not a Beth Ditto fan but Perez is awesome!

Posted Thursday, July 26, 2007 @ 10:13 by Lindsay Lohan
Incredible that one of those things will make a cover! don´t forget to put your magazine backward in the stands. What a awful pair of fatsos!

Now Lindsay, that's not very nice.

Like I said, it's probably Urb's editorial department having a little LOL OMG WTF at our expense. In which case, kudos. Caught me with my righteous indignation around my ankles. But Beth, what are you doing hanging with this smug, leathery, frosted goiter of a human being in the first place? I'm worried about you, but more than that, I'm worried about the type of people you are choosing to associate yourself with now that you're a minor indie rock celebrity. I mean, this isn't the healthy, brassy Beth Ditto I used to see buying bagels at the hippie coffee shop in downtown Olympia:

Dr. Harvell proscribes a good week's worth of sleep and plenty of orange juice. Oh, and also to stop hanging around with bloated ticks like Perez Hilton.

And now back to my hobbit hole until next Wednesday.

Help choose URB's next cover! [Urb Blogs]