By Benji Chapman, Music Editor
As I discuss with the fellow Metalheadz fans I've suddenly befriended, while I do feel slightly out of place amongst an older audience, my love of the music from a thirty year old record label that exploded during Bristol's rave and free party scene in the '90s is perhaps written in the DNA of this city itself.
Only a few years ago, I would have probably scoffed at much of the music that came out of Metalheadz: the jungle/drum and bass label Kemistry & Storm and the titular Goldie co-founded. Drum and bass music seemed, at that time, like a mindless genre that was essentially a dick-measuring competition in who could make the weirdest and loudest sounds.
Male-dominated, repetitive, and boring. This was at least what I thought before coming to Bristol; admittedly, maybe still fair criticisms of modern jump up subgenres. I'm describing tracks with drops that sound like chairs being scratched across a concrete floor or are generally overladen with monotonous two-step drum patterns.
But in first year I remember this changing when Nia Archives became popular. Acts like Nia and 4AM Kru had done a good job of making more old school jungle music more accessible in a saturated age of jump up drum and bass. Soon I began to become obsessed with the breakbeats that laden their tracks.
I'd grown up listening to acid house, big beat, and hip-house. My dad had been a house DJ in Brighton after all, and so in one way my connection to jungle made clear sense. All the same breakbeats were there in both: the classic 'Amen' break, 'Funky Drummer', 'Think', and of course the 'Apache' break that had been a staple of my childhood while dancing around the breakfast table.
So much like Bristol, I suppose the ingredients of old school drum and bass, like those of Metalheadz's, were very much in my DNA. It was only lying dormant like a sleeper cell, waiting to be activated inside the many raves of Bristol and its enthusiastic nightlife scene.
And maybe this is nowhere more apparent than in the fact that at the gig in question of this review, I had already got chatting to a University of Bristol graduate around 20 years my senior.
Music connects us in a way that really is magical. It makes us dance, laugh, and cry, and can remind us of memories that we had buried for years. We may have even forgotten entirely that a memory took place until we hear the song that soundtracked it. I know I have.
Something about jungle feels connected to this fact of music, in an intrinsically nostalgic way. Maybe it's because the sounds that make up jungle tracks are never recorded live in the studio. They're composed entirely of sampled instruments.
As a result of this, the music critic Mark Fisher said, 'I'll always prefer the name Jungle to the more pallid and misleading term drum and bass, because much of the allure of the genre came from the fact that no drums or bass guitar were played.'
'Instead of simulating the already-existing qualities of "real" instruments, digital technology was exploited to produce sounds that had no pre-existing correlates.' In doing so, Fisher argued, the genre was unrecognisably creative and new yet deeply based on the past.
The fact that entire academic essays like Fishers' exist on jungle only emphasises the fact that this has been a topic of cultural focus, but in a quintessentially Goldie-like response, his own answer to this quandary about the genre is simply to perform it live himself, and in as much style as possible.
Joined by a duet of drummers, two synth players, and a vocalist, Goldie Live was an investigation into the core of jungle. A display of its stripped-back individual parts was an exposure of the more refined side of the genre that I've grown to love in this city.
The performance was also a meditation on how jungle's digital qualities that Fisher highlights give it that nostalgic feeling. Its live rendition was more intimate than a DJ could have mustered, despite the fact that the genre itself is very much reserved for boisterous nightclub play.
As testament to Goldie's ability to innovate, he flipped the genre on its head by rejecting the very essence of its form and still led a crowd of people to a rave afterwards.
While the show itself was more mellow than a visit to a club, the fact it was followed by a DJ set at Clock Factory proved that the esteemed members of Metalheadz are perhaps most notable for their ability to combine more refined parts of drum and bass with the raucous bits too.
Balancing the two, the label has soundtracked my time in Bristol to give it its very own nostalgic sentiment, while itself being a powerful force of connection between me and the new fans of the music that I meet.
Case in point was the friendly couple whom I met at this gig's opening. As we both shared memories and they asked what was next for me (after graduation), I gave them a standard response: either move to London or stay in Bristol.
With laughs, they said affirmatively in response, 'you'll end up staying in Bristol. Everyone does. You can't help it.'
But whether or not I, or any other soon-to-be graduates do end up staying in Bristol, I think that we can all take solace in the fact that it's the nostalgic quality of music that makes memories we bring to it so special. That makes Bristol's music scene just so incredible.
I'll always remember my time in Bristol for opening my eyes to experiences and sounds that felt somehow at once nostalgic and excitedly new. A bit like jungle. And I don't think that's something that will go away wherever I go.
Featured Image: Benji ChapmanWhat has been the favourite genre you discovered at Bristol University?
