I always said that if I made it to 25 tapes that I would release one of my own mixes from back in the day. I didn't think we'd make it but the support has been phenomenal over the past (nearly a) year with 1000s of downloads and even messages from DJs themselves happy at finding their long-thought-lost mixes here.
But we did make it, so here we are with J.Bo Tape #25... and I have selected a personal favourite from the vaults... J.Bo - SUMMER BASS II: universal music. Recorded when I was still a teenager (before I had status and before I had a pager) in the summer of 1997, this was my annual attempt at summarising the previous 12 months in drum & bass... and with Nightmare Side A focusing on the emerging techstep sound and Dream Side B on a more vocal/ambient/experimental tip, it does a pretty good job of that.
With the techstep sound coming to dominate drum & bass for many years, it is easy to forget that when it first came through, it was truly mind blowing. Every week another record would come out that sounded like nothing that had ever come before it...with the ever reliable Metalheadz and Prototype labels leading the charge. I mean, who remembers Adam F's hoover-bass on 'Metropolis'? Or the first time Dillinja's 'Threshold' made your nostrils and eyeballs vibrate at Blue Note? Or the first time you heard the break-switching produced onto the record itself (it actually upset some DJs who thought "hey, that's my job")? Or just the total insanity of Arcon 2's 'The Beckoning' (still one of my all time favourite records)? All that without even mentioning the other side of things - the abundance of high quality, warm bass and uplifting vocals coming from, amongst others, the Good Looking camp at the same time. 1996-7 was truly an amazing year in d&b history.
I think this tape had an initial distribution of only about 20 copies (haha... I wonder if anybody still has theirs?!?). So this is the first chance for a wider audience to hear the mix, my first attempt at crafting an actual Drum & Bass Mixtape, rather than just a Mix-On-A-Tape. Using the usual two turntables, mixer and tape deck, I also hooked up a sampler for this one - you can even see all the samples used in the full tracklisting! And before you ask, yes, I was spending too much time with hip-hop DJs, listening to Wu-Tang records and watching kung-fu flicks at the time.
You may not know J.Bo as a d&b DJ, but regular readers/listeners of this site will know my taste by now so give it a listen - it features a heavyweight selection of all time classic tracks from the likes of Ed Rush, Dillinja, Boymerang, Doc Scott, Blame, Jonny L, DJ Krust, Roni Size, Photek, Bukem... and it is free! Then let me know what you think in the comments...
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