r - march 20 2024

jungle’s relationship to sampled breaks is like the dancer’s relationship to their body. ie: they represent imposed limitations that also form the essence of the thing. movements in dance are limited by the finitude of the body. sounds in jungle are limited by the finitude of sampled breaks. to pursue greater mastery in either is to learn to present what is /already known/ and even /fully expected/ with ever greater confidence, emotion, and technical skill.

something like this could be said of any style of music rly. but jungle just fits so well in particular, because it’s almost completely sample-based yet pointedly restricted in its sounds. sampling, taken purely on its own, is not finite - anything can go in a sampler. (ive definitely seen one of you on here compare the sampler to God, but i can’t remember who.) similarly, dancing, taken purely on its own, is not finite - anything can be in, on, around a body in motion. (ive definitely seen one of you on here describe revolutionary political work as dance, and i remember exactly who.) but in both cases, we tend to narrow our focus and space of possibilities to /just/ these few breaks, /just/ the body itself, and work with that. its a nice parallel. for me it helps to make jungle the danciest of the dance musics - which isnt to say the dance music that is /easiest to dance to/, but rather the dance music that /most closely approximates dancing itself/.