Who Say Reload The Stories Behind The Classic Drum Bass Records Of The 90s

Who Say Reload is a knockout oral history of the records that defined jungle/drum & bass straight from the original sources. The likes of Goldie, DJ Hype, Roni Size, Andy C, 4hero and many more talk about the influences, environment, equipment, samples, beats and surprises that went into making each classic record. This is the story of music forged from raw breakbeats and basslines that soundtracked a culture of all-night raves, specialist record shops and pirate radio stations. It's the story of young producers embracing and re-appropriating new technology, trying to best their peers and create something that would have hundreds of people screaming for a rewind on Saturday night. Photography is provided by Eddie Otchere who has an extensive archive of images from the period in question, having been the photographer at Goldie's seminal Metalheadz nights. His previously unseen visuals capture the essence of the music in a way that only someone who was fully immersed in the culture at the time could, and are the perfect accompaniment to the story being told. Insightful and compelling, Who Say Reload takes you back to the golden age of jungle/drum & bass with the greatest artists of the nineties. This is the book that belongs on the stacks next to your wax.

The historical significance of music-makers, music scenes, and music genres has long been mediated through academic and popular press publications such as magazines, films, and television documentaries. Media Narratives in Popular Music examines these various publications and questions how and why they are constructed. It considers the typically linear narratives that are based on simplifications, exaggerations, and omissions and the histories they construct - an approach that leads to totalizing “official” histories that reduce otherwise messy narratives to one-dimensional interpretations of a heroic and celebratory nature. This book questions the basis on which these mediated histories are constructed, highlights other, hidden, histories that have otherwise been neglected, and explores a range of topics including consumerism, the production pressure behind documentaries, punk fanzines, Rolling Stones covers, and more.

Written by former DJ/producer Harold Heath, ‘Long Relationships: My Incredible Journey From Unknown DJ to Small-time DJ’ is a biographical account of a DJ career defined by a deep love of music and a shallow amount of success. From the days of vinyl, when DJs were often also glass-collectors, to the era of megastar stadium EDM, it’s a journey of 30 odd years on a low-level, economy-class rollercoaster through the ups and downs of an ever-changing music industry. ‘Long Relationships’ is a love letter to DJing and to every small-town DJ who never made it to the big time but whose life was enriched and improved by DJing anyway. It’s packed with tales of gigs, clubs, raves, warehouses, music, record production and record deals, low-rent international travel, shady promoters, dodgy club security, magical dance floor moments and much more. If you ever DJed, if you ever lost yourself on a dance floor, or if you ever simply fell in love with the potential contained within a dark basement, a strobe and a sound system, then this story is your story.

In the summer of 1989, when Trip City was first released with a soundtrack by A Guy Called Gerald, there had been no other British novel like it. This was the down and dirty side of London nightclubs, dance music and the kind of hallucinogenic drug sub-culture that hadn’t really been explored since Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Maybe this is why Trip City is still known as “the acid house novel” and an underground literary landmark. A nightclub promoter returns to town and is thrown into an insidious world of designer drugs, psychosis and murder. Filled with mind-bending hallucinogenic moments, Trip City by Trevor Miller veers into the realm of Alphaville and neo-noir of the French new wave.

Jungle and Drum & Bass was like nothing else the world had experienced before - simultaneously black and white, urban and suburban, old skool attitude and new school innovation. A socio-cultural melting pot of early 90s broken Britain seizing the wheel and taking control of the machine. Originally published in 1997, State of Bass explores the scene's roots through its social, cultural and musical antecedents and on to its emergence via the debate that surrounded the apparent split between jungle and drum & bass. Drawing on interviews with some of the key figures in the early years, State of Bass explores the sonic shifts and splinters of new variants, styles and subgenres as it charts the journey from the early days to its position as a global phenomenon. State of Bass extends the original text to include the award of the Mercury Prize to Reprazent for the New Forms album and brings new perspectives to the story of the UK's most important subterranean urban energy.

Renegade Snares is the definitive book on drum & bass music. Pieced together using original interviews conducted with all the scene's main players, it traces the history of jungle/drum & bass from its early roots in sound system culture and rave music right through to the present day. With its hyper-speed breakbeats, warping bass pressure, and vast spectrum of sounds, drum & bass quick spawned a whole new movement in youth culture. What began as an outlaw street reverberation from the inner cities of Britain developed into a Mercury-winning, chart-topping, world-conquering genre in just a few short years. The frontier-breaking sorcery that emanated from its foundational producers and DJs pushed new levels of sonic science into the music world, and it has influenced all other electronic music genres in assorted ways. From the shock of the new to a global phenomenon, drum & bass has morphed from frowned-upon marginalisation to establishment approval--and back again. A multicultural triumph, it is a story of resistance and resilience that takes in pioneers such as Goldie, Roni Size, Kemistry & Storm, Photek, Fabio & Grooverider, and many more renegade mavericks--even, at one point, David Bowie. With vivid descriptions of key tracks and a detailed lineage of the scene's development, Renegade Snares traces the genre's gestation while also examining its musical twists and turns, worldwide spread, and enduring popularity. And, ultimately, it asks: surely a genre of music with such a significant grounding in black music culture, developed by so many black pioneers in its formative years, could never be 'whitewashed' . . . could it?

All Crews is a comprehensive exploration of jungle/drum & bass. The book offers a detailed and immersive journey into the history, culture, and evolution of this influential genre. Author Brian Belle-Fortune delves into the origins of jungle, tracing its roots back to the UK sound system and rave culture of the 80s and 90s. He also provides a rich tapestry of firsthand accounts, interviews, and anecdotes from key figures. All Crews also addresses issues such as race, identity, and gender within the scene and delves into the global impact of jungle/drum & bass. Initially published in 1999, All Crews was considered the definitive snapshot of jungle's earliest years but quickly went out of print, becoming cult reading. This new edition features the complete updated text from previous books, plus fresh writing about how it continues to grow and recruit new devotees. All Crews captures the essence of jungle drum & bass, making it an essential read for fans, historians, and anyone intereste

Who better to tell the story of the gentrification of a musical genre than the man who started out as Jungle's most streetwise ambassador and went on to collect an MBE from Buckingham Palace? But Goldie's uncensored, hard-hitting memoir is far more than just the story of the house-training of drum 'n' bass. As one of Britain's most influential DJs, producers, promoters, and record-label owners - whose contributions to the UK rave scene in the 1990s defined the genres jungle and urban rave, Goldie is an iconic figure. Hugely addictive, this gonzo memoir is a vertiginous thrill-ride from the darkest depths of the West Midlands care-home system to the snowiest uplands of coke-crazed international celebrity. It is an explosive story of abuse, revenge, graffiti, gold teeth, sawn-off shotguns, car crashes, hot yoga, absent fatherhood, and redemption through reality TV.