Yeah. I was actually listening to Ed Rush & Optical's album "Wormhole" for the very first time the other day, and while it's pretty tame by the standards set by stuff that came after it, I couldn't help but think of how wild it must have been to go from stuff like Dred Bass, Ricky, Terrorist, Maximum Style, etc. to Wormhole in only 3-4 years.

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Here's what I've been mainly working on for the past 2 weeks, first video in a series I'm working on to follow up from the genre guide video I made a while back. Hope y'all enjoy o7

Also, here's a Techstep/Neurofunk track I uploaded 4 weeks ago if anyone's interested:

• GeoCity Junglist - Psionic Assault

Sometime last year or earlier this year, someone in the Jungle subreddit posted a section of a ~~1992/93~~ 1993 issue of some underground rave music magazine from the UK, specifically a section that contained an interview with Pascal & Sponge (who were producing Breakbeat Hardcore/Jungle songs together as Johnny Jungle at the time). The interview was pretty short and not that interesting in the grand scheme of things, but the one thing that stuck with me from it was a brief line from Pascal complaining that the Amen Break was overused lol.

Which is pretty incredible when you consider the historical context. IIRC the first breakbeat to be sampled & used in a song was the Apache Break all the way back in 1980. By contrast, the Amen break wasn't first used until 1986, and only 6-7 years later it had exploded in popularity to the point that some people were already starting to get tired of it. And in the 30 years since then, it's continued to grow in popularity to the point that most casual fans of Breakbeat, old skool Hip-Hop, Jungle, DnB, Breakcore, IDM, etc. are at least somewhat familiar with it & it's history. The Apache Break is still easily within the top 5 when it comes to most sampled breakbeats of all time, and it has nowhere near the same level of casual recognition. Even second most sampled breakbeat, the Think Break, doesn't come close to the Amen on that front.

Edit: Here's the interview, and the relevant quote:

Q: Do you prefer the music of today or the stuff that was around a year ago and what do you see as the future of rave music?

A: I do prefer the music of today. I'm not sure about what the way ahead is though. I do think that everyone should stop using that Amen break because if anything is going to kill hardcore it will be that. People are going to get very tired of it. There are loads of breaks out there, it's just that most people are too lazy to look and find them. Havibg [sic] said that I do think that the Amen breakbeat is the same for Hardcore as the bass drum is to House.

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New best of 2023 mix, mainly featuring Hardcore, Darkcore & Jungle Tekno, hope y'all enjoy o7

Also uploaded a couple new tracks since the last mix I posted:

• GeoCity Junglist - Welcome To Metropolis
• GeoCity Junglist - Amen Dreams VIP (WIP/demo, updated from a version I'd posted a few months ago in "Dubplates & Demos Vol. 4")

"Welcome To Metropolis" is part of idea I had to make a fake video game OST inspired by (and frequently sampling from) 90s FPS games, though I'm also not exactly trying very hard to make all the songs work as a FPS soundtrack tbh, so the "OST" part is more of a loose thematic framing device.

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New best of 2023 mix, this time for Breakbeat Hardcore, Jungle & Jungle Tekno in the 140-160 bpm range. Hope y'all enjoy o7

No

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Finally back with part 2 of the best of 2023 series, hope y'all enjoy o7

Also posted a new track last week:

• DXMTHL - Darkside Dynamics (Dubplate Mix)

It's a free DL on SoundCloud, or pay what you want on Bandcamp.

The inclusion of the "Close Encounters" samples is kinda funny tbh, 'cause the whole reason I even had them was to make a bootleg remix of Siamese Minds - Killer Instinct. I started working on that bootleg around 3-4 weeks before I started on Cyberia '94, but haven't finished it yet. Then when working on Cyberia '94, I had completed the two sections before & after the ambient section with the Closer Encounters samples, but transitioning directly between them didn't sound right.

So that whole section came about just 'cause I decided to bridge those two sections by switching into something completely different for a bit. And the thing I decided to switch into is basically just a rough recreation of a section of the intro for the Killer Instinct bootleg I'm working on (minus the drums & bass), which worked surprisingly well lol.

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Here's the first of my 2023 Jungle mega-mixes. Hope y'all enjoy o7

Would've liked to have made this back in December, but I had ear surgery to repair a hole in my eardrum that's I've had since I was very young, which made it a bit difficult to do music related things for a few weeks. Also didn't help that my headphones broke a week after the surgery, and I didn't get around to replacing them until mid January lol.

I did make a couple new tunes last month though if anyone's interested:

• GeoCity Junglist - Cyberia '94
• DXMTHL - Power (Wicked & Glad)

Someone else had actually uploaded this track to YT a while back. Then about 4-5 years ago it just disappeared for some reason and no one re-uploaded it until this channel did 6 months ago (which tbf, it's a vinyl only release from 1995, so you can basically only get it through discogs nowadays). Don't remember how many views the original upload had, but judging by similarly old Jungle videos, I think it would probably be closer to 10k at this point if it hadn't been taken down.

Not 100% sure, but I think it's the Think Break. Sounds a bit weird, so likely timestretched and/or repitched. Also probably has a low pass filter over it in order to cut out the two extremely loud & high pitched peaks in the 10-20 kHz range that are coming from the shaker, 'cause those will start hurt your ears if you don't tone them down at all lol.