The Wire 300: Simon Reynolds On The Hardcore Continuum #5: Neurofunk Drum ‘n’ Bass Versus Speed Garage (1997)

These are difficult times for Jungle. If Reprazent winning the Mercury Music Prize wasn’t bad enough (what scene could survive such a seal of mainstream, middlebrow approval?), Jungle has been ousted from its three year old status as the London underground by the advent of Speed Garage. Lured by its ‘classy’-but-torrid R&B vocals and designer-label flaunting, champagne swigging, no-trainers-allowed ethos of living large, much of Jungle’s black audience has defected to this most recent dancefloor mutation. The astonishingly fast conversion of jump-up junglists to speed garage was hastened by the emergence of an earlier mutant breakbeat strain, the essentially white Industrial-like dirgecore of techstep, as typified by the productions of the No U Turn label, which carried Jungle so far from its roots in Rave and ragga that by early this year many scenesters were complaining about a surfeit of ‘disgusting’ tracks, drenched in distortion and devoid of melody.

Ironically, many of the most subterranean producers in drum ’n’ bass have since moved decisively away from techstep towards a new sound – although not one that’s likely to win back the converts to Speed Garage. Hardly known for its semantic restraint, the drum ’n’ bass community has failed to come up with a term for the new style, although some mutter about “nu-dark” or tracks that are “dark but technical”. Since discourse abhors a vacuum, I’m pitching in with my own genre designation: neurofunk. If No U Turn-style techstep is defined by deliberately dirty production, bombastic riffs and an explosive psychosis, this new sound is about obsessive-compulsive cleanliness of production, eerie electronic blips ’n’ blurts, ultra-complicated basslines, and an implosive neurosis. Techstep classics such as Trace & Nico’s “Squadron” sound like a maniac running amok; neurofunk tracks sound like a stalker, furtive and morbidly fixated.

The first hints of a new direction were audible late last year. At the time, Doc Scott’s awesome Nasty Habits track “Shadow Boxing” seemed like a pinnacle for techstep. Actually, it was the prototype for neurofunk, with its glacial, Numanoid synth-motif glowering like some cosmic scowl, and a two-step rhythm that made the track feel like it was jogging along at 85 beats per minute instead of 170. By the time the “Shadow Boxing Remix” surfaced this summer, the groove had stiffened even further – to the point of rigor mortis – while the flipside “March” crystallized the emergent neurofunk norm with its monotonously chugging beat and acrid emissions of synth-slime. Only the low frequency tremors of bassline pressure connected these Doc Scott tracks to the kind of kinetic, hypertensile Jungle he was producing just three years ago.

Just as he crusaded for techstep in 96, Grooverider, as both DJ and label head, has maintained a typically Godfather-like role all year long vis-à-vis neurofunk, premiering dubplates by new producers such as Matrix, Optical, and John B, and releasing their tracks on his Prototype label. Grooverider has also helped codify the neurofunk sound with his own Codename John productions, “The Warning”/”Structure of Red” on Metalheadz, and the forthcoming “Enigma” on Prototype. With its Mace-like squirts of astringent synth and squelchy, non-junglistic groove, “The Warming” opened up a whole new technoid path for drum ’n’ bass. “Warned”, the alternative version of the “The Warning” on the Grooverider Presents The Prototype Years compilation, is even better. Seemingly steeped as much in acid house as Jungle, the track’s viscous, mucus-like textures make you feel like you’re being stalked by some ravenous and implacable snot-monster.