Junglist

  Eyes open and I hear the call for the rewind. Strange nebulous underwater sound as the DJ spins that record backwards. Q’s already leaning forward to boost the volume to try and blow his mum’s speakers. I sink back even further into my seat and let Leviticus flow over me. The Burial. Those angel voices whisper and hum. The sound soft and gentle. OOOOOOOO! Hearing it, my spine tingles: I know what comes next. Breath comes quicker, head nodding with the bassline that hasn’t arrived yet. An imperceptible movement. Neck-driven, windassisted. A leaf moving in the breeze. Let the intro go. Hear it for what it is. An intro. A space before the bass, a signature, maker’s mark. Letting you know what’s coming next and who’s coming next. So we sit and wait. Letting it come towards us from the depths of subliminal bass. To heart, overtaking strident patterns of aural imagination. The Burial. As the bass makes itself known, Shaquille O’Neal-style, slamming its way through the speakers, heads move forward in unison, nodding. Getting it. The knowledge that you dance on the bassline, not the beat. The bassline. Bass is all. Going back to the beginning of everything. Our primal tribal roots. Our African ancestry. The tribal notes, the lost civilisation of drum and bass. What makes Black music so special is the bassline. Bass that overrides the heartbeat, that interrupts its normal pattern, its normal rhythm and makes it move to the bassline. Bass is the vanishing point on the horizon, where all Black music disappears back to. The rhythm, that heartbeat which entwines itself around your own, pulsing with it. Taking it to another dimension.

  Heartbeats thumping strong and powerful.

  Bass. The beginning and the end. The rhyme with no omega. Clip your wings and bring you down to earth and show you what life is worth.

  Bass. The heartbeat. The bassline becomes you on a level that is impossible to define, so close are you. Drum and Bass, the engine that drives Jungle. It drives us as we nod our heads to The Burial.

  Before The Burial, there was The Helicopter Tune, Shuffle, Sweet Love.

  After The Burial, there is Warning, Dead Dread, Fire, and they keep coming.

  Anthems for a generation returning to its spiritual home. I let it all wash over me, leaving me limp. Head nodding. Jungle is me and I am the Jungle — no distinction, no separation. Siamese twins joined at the chest, the heart. Try to pull us apart and we die. Can’t and won’t live without you.

  I pull out my phone and turn it on, pushing the address button, scrolling through until I get to the right number, push dial and wait. Connection.

  — Yeah I’d like a big shout out to…

  GUESTLIST

  Mr Meth

  The guestlist is a strange and curious thing. A way of getting into club nights for free, but like everything else in life it has a pose value. A very high one at that. Being on the list shows you’ve got clout, that you know somebody, somewhere. That you are part of the elite who make the money rather than parting with it. The easier you are admitted, the more status you possess. If, like us, you have to wait and queue up like the other plebs on the guestlist, rather than being sped through, you know how far you still have to go up the status ladder. Most are just glad to not be paying huge amounts of money to be getting into a dance. Even though you’re on the guestlist, still don’t make you immune from the search: supposedly for your own safety and to keep the club a drug-free zone. Some places aren’t too bad, others are just out to make you feel small and they might as well be concentration camps. Me, I put my gear and my papers in my sock, if you’re wearing ankle-high boots, you’re free and clear. Carry my cigs in their box, just make sure there aren’t any half-used ones still in there and you’re away.

  I hate queueing. It’s one of the reasons I started getting on the list, so I wouldn’t have to queue, but I find I spend more time queueing than if I’d bought a ticket. But what I hate more than queueing is paying to get in somewhere. After a few times of freeing up with the freeness, I’ve found that I now become distinctly aggrieved whenever coughing up cash to go somewhere comes up. So, in the end, my miserliness overrules my hatred of queueing as I’d rather queue and get in free than spend money and get in immediately.

  Walk around the corner and find the queue’s ten across and thirty deep. Over the other side there’s a queue just as large which seems to be moving a hell of a lot faster. Bowl up to the security guard and try to confirm my suspicions. Look up and down the line for anyone I know. If there is, do a bit of a bounce, jump in with some old friends. We just get the stares, people sizing you up. Male and female. Faces turned away in conversation, whispering into someone’s ear. A gale of laughter rolling down the line. Shoulders hunched against the wind. Breath white on the wind. Hands shoved deep into pockets, feet stamping. The general air of people being treated like cattle. Made to wait and wait and wait. Stand and watch others ushered in.

  Get to the security guard standing there in his black bomber jacket with some security firm emblazoned on it. Standing behind those metal security barriers the police always bring out at Trafalgar Square on New Year’s. Touch his shoulder to get his attention. He’s big — they generally are, I think it’s part of the job description. His neck’s thick and wide from pumping those weights. His muscles hidden but the bulk they have created not. His crewcut hard and savage. He turns slowly and looks us up and down. Slow and easy.

  — Where’s the queue for the guestlist?

  He points back at the queue we’ve just passed and I’m already pissed off. I hate walking down a queue expecting to get in and, when you get turfed, having to make your way back down that same queue. Looking in those faces and having to either slink away or take your station at the end. We walk back and I look over at the queue for the ticket-holders, a surging mass of people being let in in groups of thirty at a time, almost tripping over themselves to get inside. Push and shove, doing everything except sprinting to get ahead of their neighbour. I follow Q and Biggie, meeting any eyes looking at me, not showing any shame. Can’t let ‘em see me get down. Fuckin guestlist. Times like these I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. You want to be inside so badly you can smell the condensation on the walls already.

  The muffled sound coming from inside. A bass so heavy you can still feel it through the building’s walls. Making you want to dance in the line. Whenever you hear a tune you love, it burns in your chest that you can’t be inside listening to it properly. The line moves forwards a few steps here, a few steps there. People join at the front, walk down the queue and jump into it, seeing a friend or two. We just wait — Q and Biggie engaged in a conversation in quiet tones, while I lean back and listen to the voices around me.

  — You should have seen her, she was gonna kill him.

  — Nah it ain’t all that. You want to play Killer Instinct. Game and a half.

  — Never wanted to be anything else.

  — Damn it’s cold.

  — I’m at college now, I want to do a degree next year.

  — What time is it?

  — Can I ponce a cigarette? Cheers.

  — Got a light? Thanx.

  — I seen better-looking girls.

  — What do you mean? If Arsenal didn’t have Ian Wright they would have been relegated long ago.

  The conversations take on a meaning all of their own, creating a patchwork of overlapping lives, events, thoughts and motivations. Everyone a microcosm of reality. A different slant on it, a different take. But everyone comes together at this one point and it feels as if this one point is where they were always bound. That from the moment the sperm hit the egg, they were destined to come here to have their conversations, to spill forth their appointed lines and become part of my reality. Ripples in my pond.

  THE MINISTRY

  The Ministry, the ultimate in sound reproduction. Bass so clear, full and deep, it makes you feel like weeping at the sound of it. Like an angelic chorus. Bass driving deep into the fibre of my being. There’s something just so wonderful about the main room pumping out Jungle while the bar area and chillout room are playing House and Garage. It constan
tly brings a smile to my face. I look up from the contemplation of my boot into Q’s eyes, gleaming at the prospect of a night of Jungle. How his body is restless and impatient to be inside the box, wanting to be in there dancing. Letting the beat get inside you and take you away into the zone, where your eyes close and you’re aware of nothing but the bass. The music and you are one.

  One life, one bass and one destiny. I order you to dance for me. I put my hand on his shoulder and feel the energy running in him like he’s on speed.

  — Calm down, I wanna put my jacket in the cloakroom.

  I have to shout to make myself heard over the music. We’re standing just in the entrance to the box and as we move back through the bar area we’ve already lost Biggie. We’re not likely to see him for the next six hours. Chuck my coat in the cloakroom, letting my eyes roam. Lots of people just standing up drinking. This is where you make eye contact: you see them, they see you and you move towards each other as if an invisible cord binds you. Complete load of bollocks, but some people believe it. At this moment in time I’m not interested, I want to jump up.

  I step into the box, following Q’s square back, the flashing lights reaching out like searchlights, pinpointing me, like tracers streaming through the air, arcing over me and the packed dancefloor. Squeeze through the sweating heaving bodies, whistles being blown constantly, the string wet with sweat. Foghorns held in loose hands, slapping against thighs. Inch our way through, looking for a pocket of space.

  Don’t want to be stuck against a wall, want to be in the thick of things, creating space with your elbows, getting into the zone. The bass is overwhelming, created on planes and levels of which I hadn’t even conceived. Planes of aural sensation, overlapping subliminal bass, thumping into my chest. Freight weight bass rolling over me. The rumblism in full effect. Rolling bass that powers over you, assaults the senses in its intensity, rollin’ like thunder. From back to front a wave of sound, heartbeat-stopping rumblism.

  An avalanche of sound, pushing the edge of the aural envelope, not to be denied. But above it, scalpel-sharp, thin layers of treble, running high and pure. No distortion at all. Presence, soundstage. Bass and treble in complete harmony. High note heaven.

  Slip into overdrive. Put my head down and run. Run on the spot, arms driving loose and limp. Take me up and never let me go. Take me up into the stratosphere on angel wings. Up to the moon, pitted face, craters and the sea of tranquillity. Flashing lights moving behind my closed lids, explosions of rainbow colour as I sway and shuffle my feet.

  Not yet lifting them high. Sliding into it, soft and easy. I just want to let it all go. Let myself disappear into the abyss of sound before me, fall into it, never to return. Layers of blue darkness, reaching a depth of intensity that tears the nerves apart, then splices them back together with a new gene inserted. I’m falling even deeper into a substance, over which I have no control. A substance that rolls forward, taking over me. My destiny is entwined with it. Its ups and downs are my ups and downs. I dance and sway, shuffle my feet and sing along, shouting myself hoarse. The music entering my blood. I dream that it’s spilled out thick and red, running free.

  Nothing to do but to lose myself, slip in and out of it. The bass riding hard on my heart, guiding me down the paths of aural intoxication. Lost in the woods of sound. Bass all around me changing shape and form. Fairies trapped for millennia within the bass. Old as time, they awaken and dance across my eyes, at the edge of my vision. Moving as if blown by the wind. I pull out my lighter and flick it, revealing dark shapes to be people, young people, fresh and free, not worn down by life or weighted down with the unbearable bleakness of being. Not questioning their own mortality or station in the world. What am I here for? What does it all mean? Bullshit meaningless mumblings of a generation ahead, which we will fall into eventually, but right now we have enough energy to create our own path before we become locked to the ones already made.

  Flashing my lighter, I look around, move across the crowded space, peering into faces. Light sparking, eyes illuminated as heads turn and stare. I grin and move on, let ‘em see the whites of my teeth. See her all around, smell of her flower fragrance, sharp, pungent. Powerful, musk-like in its intensity, in its ability to overwhelm the senses, capture them. Tie them to its own covert purposes. Sliding across the nostrils seconds after she’s passed. Déjà vu, reminiscence. Bodies together, her scent on me, my scent on her. Sweat subdued underneath the perfume. Flower scent rolling strong. Attraction smell, forest fire, Jungle desire. Burning within me as I watch the girls dance.

  Heartbeat racing, accelerating, lifting into high gear. Sweat coming off the body, dripping down the walls. Steam in the air. The girls dance, eyes closed, uninterested in you looking at them. Tight hot pants, exposing buttocks you’ve dreamt about lying on. Legs encased in stockings that end at mid-thigh, knee-length boots, with a tower block of hooks for the long lace to weave round, overlaying tight calves. Thighs spasming, muscles clenching and contracting. Long legs taut and cut. An agony of looking, wanting.

  Breasts encased in lycra, nipples erect pushing through the fabric, demanding to be noticed. Bellybutton exposed on a plain of flatness. Muscles moving beneath the skin, hard and to die for. Tongue running along it. Hair flicked from their faces as their arms create abstract shapes only they know exist. They are in the zone. Cut off from us mere mortals who still exist on just one plane of creation. They have been transported to that sphere where thoughts are bound to the music and the bassline is your heartbeat. You become the music and the body you exist in becomes a vessel to be filled by it. So they dance, legs pistoning, feet sliding over the floor, bare legs caressed by the wind. Long trails of sweat rolling down to the ankle where a gold chain leaps a little every time they move. Exposed to the carnivorous gaze, hips swinging, legs locked and straining as they stand there, feet apart, shaking that booty. Buttocks weaving in a circular motion, hands on their thighs bent over ready to be entered, inviting, rotating, one foot lifted, shaking their stomachs, making their butt shake and shiver, ripples of motion sliding beneath the fabric that encases them.

  They dance, dervishes in motion. My heart burns for them. Tight lithe forms, how I burn for you. Like a moth to the flame, my eyes return to watch you dance. Shake that thang. Got to have you, possess you. Make you mine. Make you all mine. I’m a Nineties man. In touch with my feelings, maybe. So I watch, my lust in check as I peer at you through the darkness, occasionally you are silhouetted and I see you truly. I’m here to enjoy myself, enjoy the music — to sweat, to dance in an aural maze, letting the bass-like clouds roll overhead. Ever advancing, moving inexorably forward. No stopping them. Two states of being. Watch that bottom writhe within those golden hot pants. How I love them. Hot pants showing what you’ve got.

  Strong yet fragile at the same time. Duality of nature, being able to have enough confidence to expose yourself to the hungry gaze, but also for it to be there to be attacked at any time and fearful of this happening. Wearing your heart out there on your sleeve, out there for all to see. These girls excite me, entice me, fascinate me, seduce me. The way they dance, the way they move. How they present themselves, aggressive, going out for self and the devil take the hindmost. Able to revel in their own femininity, their own sexuality, making of it a strength rather than a weakness. As the darkness envelopes them and they dance on, asking for the stares, courting them, desiring them, then denying the emotion it engenders. They have made this their playground and you enter it knowing the rules: they can say no at any time and the game stops there. No replays, no extra time, no penalty shootout.

  I leave the box and hit the world outside. Grab a drink and am surprised as always by the extortionate amount of money it costs. You’d think they imported Snapple from the sun at these prices. At least I know that they don’t turn off the tap water in the toilets as they do in some places. Lean on the bar and look out, while the house DUFFs behind me. A nice crowd: all nations all creeds represented. The uniforms in effect, names ro
ll thick and fast, heavy with dollar importance. Ralph Lauren (old Ralphie), Armani, Yves St Laurent, Moschino, Versace, Stone Island, Schott, Timberland, Karl Kani — all of the commanding big bucks. Fashion commandeered by those who don’t have any money but find ways of gaining access to it to keep up with the rollercoaster that is style.

  Fashion out there on the edge of credibility, watch it teeter as it is rebuilt and reformed by those who live the life that fashion so desperately wants to portray, who take what is given and warp it into something else entirely. And then fashion, that huge industrial complex, swings into action and quickly grabs it, bastardises it, and sells it back. Saturate the market. By which time those who created the style have long since moved on, the perpetuating loop rolling on down the block.

  I’m out of the loop ‘cause I don’t have enough dollars to afford them steep prices, and the little jobs I do now and again aren’t enough to cover a major clothes habit. So I save myself the trouble and don’t start down that road.

  Head back to the box, a Snapple in my hand, to immerse myself in the healing sounds. Deep and dark. Step in and I am immediately swallowed by sound. Slipping away into nothingness.

  THREE THE HARD WAY

  We were dead from morning, now it’s evening, shit ain’t changed. In this Jungle we were Nature’s strongest breed, looking down, our Reeboks didn’t survive the battle. Our hearts just took the pain.

  High on stress… babae… We live in Brixton babae’.

  — He’s singing again.

  Only they take from life, in exact amounts, what they put in. Down past the offie, across the tags, past Paul’s barber shop packed with heads, nuff buds a roast in the air, the jeweller’s shop, the butchers (Halal), we move.

  — We live in Brixton… babae.