Gentrification of jungle / death of breakcore [2024-06-02]

Gentrification of jungle

The cultural memory of jungle is being gutted in real time (though don't be mistaken that it's only started happening). Its origins in black and lower-class urban youth are being omitted, while curators and producers treat "vintage jungle" as an era or genre instead of a movement; something to be aestheticized and archived rather than alive.

Jungle has, for decades, been rendered ever more "clean" and disinfected, to be more palatable for the insipid middle-class persons who think 'amen' is the thing you say after prayer to listen at their coffee table. Removing all the elements at its core; the elements of aggression and grit which expressed the disillusionment felt by so many. Jungle was born in pirate radio stations and underground raves by youths handed a crumbling society, too "gross" to be commercialized, and not meant for 'you'. But the machine of mass-consumption must collect, and collect it has. Search "jungle mix" on YouTube and find tens, hundreds, maybe thousands of mixes containing songs my computer could have generated. No politics. No soul. No jungle.

Breakcore, which evolved from jungle and DnB (among other things such as digital hardcore), has itself become nothing more than an accomplice (and a simultaneous victim) in this attack; a funhouse mirror through which jungle is further humiliated; a pyrrhic strike.

Death of breakcore

Modern "breakcore" is not breakcore. Not like the productions of Venetian Snares or Bong-Ra. Even the digital hardcore of Alec Empire and Machine Girl is far closer to real breakcore than what is produced now. Instead, it's all mislabeled (intentionally or ignorantly) factory produced ambient jungle or drum and bass (probably with an anime sample). The reason I hesitated to split this into two sections was because this itself is having a huge negative impact on jungle. There are hundreds or thousands of 'artists' producing so-called breakcore which is some kind of formulaic jungle, thereby not only erasing the meaning of breakcore, but jungle as well. These people have no understanding of the roots nor the cultural significance of jungle, and instead see it as some kind of aesthetic. Genre tourists fetishize (a false image of) breakcore and jungle. It's all sanitized and utterly banal so that the average TikTok user can consume it, the complete opposite of what it's supposed to be. This is not evolution, it's erasure. The meaning and history of breakcore, jungle, and drum and bass has been and is being erased right before our eyes. People will say "just let people enjoy things!" in response to saying X or Y isn't breakcore, but these people wouldn't say that if someone said, "this rock song is great" and started playing gregorian chant. It's intentional ignorace. The issue is that there are still some honest up-and-coming breakcore producers in the current day but with the +1000:1 ratio of slop to music, it's become increasingly difficult to find these unknown producers; they're being suffocated by this.

Is there anything that can be done? Probably not. I think it was bound to happen that eventually breakcore would be dug up and misunderstood by plebians, and paraded around as a cultural capital that makes you "cool" if you like it, similarly to the "Y2K aesthetic" and such. Why write this then? I don't know.

Everything, it seems, (by the second law of thermodynamics) is to become mass-produced kitsch. Until next time (˶ˆᗜˆ˵)