The Old Skool Is Back Again: Jungle DJ Pete Dev/Null on Bostonian Junglism and Its Revival

LIFE ON RECORD: The jungle archivist Pete Dev/Null, pictured here with an enigmatic white-label record.

Of the UK’s many imports in electronic music, none has garnered as much attention in recent years as jungle. With rapidly-changing breakbeats, chest-rattling sub-bass, and eclectic samples of reggae, dancehall, techno, house, and R&B and soul, the genre has grown increasingly popular with younger generations. As someone who has fallen in love with jungle and has only recently begun DJing jungle music, I wanted to talk to someone with years of expertise behind their name.

A few weeks ago, I corresponded with Pete Dev/Null, a jungle and drum n’ bass DJ, record archivist and the founder of the archival blog Blog to the Oldskool, one of the foremost collections of obscure 90s jungle tracks. His radio show, BTTO Radio, has had an outsized influence on the scene. Below, he shares a healthy collection of history, advice, and recommendations for anyone curious about jungle:

When did you begin listening to jungle and drum'n'bass (dnb)? Was there a particular moment that made you want to be a jungle DJ?

I started listening to jungle/dnb music around 1997/98 or so. That was a great time for the music in Boston, and around the world - dnb was hitting on a global scale. Here in Boston, nights were happening regularly at spots throughout the city, and a store called 4Front opened right on Newbury Street strictly selling the latest dnb promos fresh from the UK. Honestly, I was buying vinyl back then, but didn’t have a DJ setup, and didn’t consider becoming a DJ and recording mixes until many years later, maybe 2005-2006 or so. Until then, I was just a fan who had lots of jungle/dnb records, and produced somewhat adjacent music (breakcore), but was also drumming in a band and wasn’t committed to playing these records out. 

Getting out of grad school and getting a decent paying tech job pushed me into collecting more + DJing in two ways. On one hand, staring at computers all day at my job made me less excited to go home and then stare at (computer based) sequencers all night while working on tracks. On the other hand, it meant I finally had disposable income to slowly start the painful, painful task of moving basically every single ‘92-’95 [hardcore]/jungle record ever over from the UK.  I’d wanted a lot of these records since ‘98-’00 but couldn’t find them except on relatively infrequent UK trips. With the job, I was able to  make many more of these trips to the UK (thanks to cheap flights to/from Boston), picking up loads of stuff at secondhand shops there as well as buying online. The more records I got, the more I felt an obligation to start recording mixes and sharing my favorite tracks, not because of any particular skill at weaving tracks together or confidence in my DJing (I kinda suck technically), but for the excitement of showing off cool tunes I didn’t see other people talking about. 

How difficult was it to cultivate a jungle scene in an American scene interested in more domestic genres like house?

Honestly jungle/dnb (more so dnb) has always had a die hard underground following in America. From the foundational days of the genre, there have been varying crews and individuals who have supported it and been involved - DB, AK1200, Dara, Dieselboy, etc. Jungle (meaning stuff 95 and earlier) was perhaps a bit more niche in the US. It existed for sure but was more isolated to certain cities (Chicago, New York, Toronto, etc), pushed by certain DJs. But it definitely did exist and some big parties went off for it even back then. By the time DNB was in full swing in 97 though, things were huge across the country. At least by my estimation from going to parties & raves back then, dnb was considered as viable a style as house or techno or breaks, at least in the underground. 

Also, just to be clear, *I* never personally did much IRL to cultivate a jungle scene here. I’ve played maybe a dozen sets out in actual clubs of this music in the US over the past 15 years, and have passed on some of my best spare copies of rare hardcore/jungle records at record fairs, but the people I mention up above did approximately 150,000 times more work than that - running labels, club nights, record stores, etc. My “contribution” was primarily online - interacting on message boards, digging through early real audio clips of tracks, and finally making Blog to the Oldskool, where I could do a weird depth-first dive into some nerdy bits of music which, at least back then, weren’t so easy to find audio for online. 

Much of jungle's rise in the UK was dependent on a network of DJs sharing dubplates and gaining access to cutting-edge tracks. How difficult was it to acquire such releases in the US??

It was much tougher to get those dubplates over here, and in those early days very few US DJs were cutting and playing out unreleased UK tunes. Certainly I wasn’t getting them, and I didn’t really dip into that until many many years later.  But I don’t think US DJs not having dubplates necessarily killed the momentum of jungle and dnb music here. It meant the stakes were slightly lower in the US for regional parties/shows, but the enthusiasm and energy was just as high. Instead of local DJs fighting each other for dubs, standing in line for hours at Music House to cut them before a gig, local kids in Boston or Pittsburgh or New York or Cleveland or any real city would fight each other for whatever best promo releases came into their local record store. I’d say by the later 90s even, most somewhat decent sized cities had their “dance music store” that stocked the full range of DJ 12” based music at the time - house, techno, breakbeat, dnb, etc. Kids would get jobs at these stores and stash the best promo releases (pre-release copies of records that would show up months before the standard release) that came in, for them and their DJ buddies. If you didn’t know the right people, it could be tough to get these, and you’d constantly be scooped by the more “connected” local DJs. This was basically identical to what was happening in the UK, but just on the level of promos not dubplates.

Also, this meant that when actual UK producers + DJs came over with their bags of dubs, the differences in what was being played was like night and day. They had access to loads of tunes no US DJ would, so those sets had an almost mystical quality to them. A lot of the tunes you’d hear at a club night might not be out for 2, 3, 6 months, or even a year. And there’d be way fewer chances to hear multiple DJs play them over here than in the UK where those DJs were residents at clubs playing them out every other night of the week. 

As electronic music shifted towards more anthemic drum n’ bass, garage, et al., was there a sense jungle might have a revival in the future?

I think it’s been pretty clear for a long time. Over the years, there’ve been waves and waves of these old tunes resurging in some way or another - either the original tunes, or in remix form. And it’s become clear that this will continue in perpetuity. Really, you can start to see the earliest days of this back around ‘96-97 when jungle started moving towards dnb. As the music got louder, more distorted, more broey and technical, some artists weren’t happy with this. They jumped ship to UK Garage, which, while not pure throwback music, incorporated a lot of the same sample sources and influences as some of those earlier hardcore/jungle tunes. If you check those early UKG tunes, a lot have the same samples as 1992-93 hardcore tracks. That may not count, but it showed that the influences and vibe of the original tunes were still in demand.  

Later on, around 2000-2002 or so, a bunch of ‘92-95 hardcore/jungle releases started getting reissued on vinyl for the first time. It makes sense, as it had been 8-10 years at this point since these tunes came out, which was sufficient time to consider them “oldskool.” Also around that time, artists started doing remixes of classics, e.g. Total Science’s “Dubplate,” Dylan’s Mentasm remix, etc. Then in 2007, even more stuff started getting dug up. Earlier times I’d wager this resurgence was a bit more on earlier hardcore (92 style) versus 94-95 jungle these days, perhaps because 92 stuff was a bit older? But it seems like all that stuff is back to some degree now. 

Was there a moment where people on the internet were looking at your archival work on BTTO and having their expectations on jungle changed?

I’m not sure I understand the question fully, but I know there’s at least a few people on the net who found BTTO and had their minds blown a bit, simply because they had never heard the music before and my weird selections were a far cry from what you’d be introduced to if you used a more traditional path to introduce yourself to a genre (compilation CDs, mixes by known DJs). On the other hand, you could say people’s “expectations on jungle” were also changed a bit, as I was posting 320s of full unedited tunes up (just one track a release) as was customary with blogs back then. This emboldened a number of people to write to me and essentially demand full archives of all the tunes, and/or for me to send them full release rips instead of just one track at a time, which made me want to not bother with the whole thing. The expectation that this wasn’t for the love [of the genre] and to get people involved but for me to just give out a load of freebies was pretty disappointing. 

Whatever impact was felt, was primarily random people discovering it and digging in themselves to the hundreds of tracks I posted. Ironically a lot of people who found it were adamant about not sharing it, because it was better as a “secret weapon” source whether for DJ sets or sampling or whatever. But there were never any notable articles about it, and only a few DJs of note really shouted it out. Over the years, I think its purpose has waned. Nowadays people can go down endless youtube rabbit holes, or get an endless stream of obscure selections fed to them in massively popular facebook groups. A number of sites popped up doing the same type of interviews I was doing etc. 

Do you think jungle is experiencing a total revival in interest, or rather that the work of an underground scene is being unearthed at an opportune time?

I think it’s both, and those aren’t really at odds. We’ve definitely hit a huge wave of renewed interest, case in point: a singer/songwriter who primarily writes jungle/dnb stuff (Nia Archives) just won best producer in the NME awards. However, some environmental factors are facilitating some of this interest. Changes in music consumption are making average people more (sorry) amenable to this music. Everything from lockdown increasing interest in at-home activities, like, say, collecting rare old vinyl from 28 years ago, to Youtube’s algorithms serving up a select few classic jungle tracks and mixes to massive numbers of people, to the point they’ve almost become memes (Baraka - I’ll Be There, Peshay studio mix, etc.). Even the social reckoning which resulted in some people taking to task the sonic whitewashing of some music styles (mostly techno) gave a bit more focus and credence to multicultural & black music-born styles like jungle in their source form versus later, predominantly white crowd-iterated incarnations (modern drum n’ bass, etc)

Many people have highlighted your BTTO co-host, Tim Reaper, as one of the major jungle producers to bring it back over the past few years. Do you feel as if this diminishes the work of a scene?

Unfortunately I think it’s the nature of these scenes that a select couple of people will end up getting the bulk of the hype directed at them. Die hard fans nerding out in a particular subgenre will want to dig in, but most people who listen to a variety of styles and want to explore “jungle” will do it via 2-3 names which their friends or their computer recommends. Also, online media is desperate for clicks and impressions, so it becomes a bit of a feedback loop once an artist hits some level of popularity. Sometimes it can seem a bit unfair and arbitrary to people who have been plugging away for years with nearly zero interest from the outside world, but it’s the way it always has been. I’d probably have a bit more of a complex about it, if I wasn’t good friends with 3 of the main “big” new jungle acts (Tim Reaper, Sully, Coco Bryce).

Taking Ed/Tim Reaper as an example, I think he is clearly one of the best people for the job, and deserves any opportunities sent his way. He’s been digging into these tunes seriously for years and years and years now - since he was maybe 16 or 17, long before this current hype train was around. That includes both learning the ins and outs of even the most obscure tunes (part of us doing the radio show for years was forcing us to dig deep into the genre beyond what other people were playing), and also learning the production angle. He’s got one of the most intense workrates of any jungle producing artists I know, doing maybe 100+ tracks a year and putting out close to 50 releases including remixes, eps, etc. He’s been very generous over the years collaborating on tunes with people,and he runs a label dedicated to the music where he has a record series (Meeting of the Minds) which must have put out 20-30 collab tunes by now. He’s definitely picky about tunes (never plays any of my tunes!) but he’s absolutely open to new artists and is happy to “share the wealth” if other people in the scene make stuff he rates. So in that regard, I don’t think any sort of collective scene work is diminished. Even though it’s important for people to help each other, most of the influence is coming from decades-old music, not people being inspired by each other’s modern tunes. 

Are there any particular tracks from the jungle revival that you would recommend to a first-time listener?I guess it depends if that person knew about classic jungle, or was hearing it as a style for the first time. If they have no jungle background I’d definitely suggest they start with some classic jungle comps to understand where the music was circa 27-28 years ago, before hearing what people are doing now. Stuff like Logical Progression Vol 1 and Promised Land 1 + 2 for more atmospheric jungle. The Hard Leaders Series (especially volume 3) for earlier darker tunes, Drum n Bass Selection on Breakdown Records comps, classic albums like T Power “Self Evident Truth” etc. Or just some classic 1994-1995 mixes by people like DJ Randall, Fabio, Grooverider etc. Then, when they’re ready to hear stuff from the current wave, I’d suggest: 

Sully - Werk [from the Swandive EP]

Phineus II - Meridian Response (Album) 

Coco Bryce - Ma Bae Be Luv [from the Ma Bae Be Luv EP]

Kid Lib - Living in The Zone [from the Living in The Zone EP]

I have noticed many members of my generation (including me) interested in both producing and DJing with jungle. Do you have any advice as a veteran in terms of listening and choosing sounds, breaks, etc.? 

1. DON’T USE THE “JUNGLEJUNGLE” [BlueMarTen] SAMPLE PACK, or at least use it very sparingly. Many people who are just dipping their toes into jungle production find this sample pack because it’s so prevalent on the ‘net. Instead of having the original source samples as used back in the day, it’s made by sampling sections of the biggest jungle tracks ever. While these samples sound naturally good, and require little work as they’ve already been compressed and EQ’d, they’re ripped from jungle tracks which are already very well known, so dropping loads of them in songs will sort of bug people who know the genre well (and people have been RINSING these samples for a couple years now). Jungle did sample itself to some degree back in the day, but most good stuff didn’t totally cannibalize itself that much, at least not the most noticeable parts of big big tunes ala this pack. 

2. Instead, if you’re trying to make stuff in line with those original tunes, it’s best to sort of reverse engineer what those artists were doing, and use a somewhat similar (sample) process. Check similar sample sources as those early tracks, keep an ear open for music beyond jungle. What samples did they have access to back then? Part of what made it fresh was people taking in samples from a number of different disparate styles and sources of music they had available. 

3. Of course, it is 2022 not 1994-95, so if you want to massively break the rules and make something that’s a crazy fusion of 15 genres and totally not true to the original sound, go ahead - people might love it. There’s some uncanny valley aspect to some of the new-old stuff that gets made now, where people will do jungle stuff that’s almost perfectly retro sounding but then will flub some details with more modern samples, but really that just bugs me and maybe 24 other nerds on the internet, so who cares? Most newer fans won’t know the difference and will just appreciate a cool track, and they outnumber the nerdy old-heads like me 150 to 1. 

4. Pick creative breaks, and layer them. Don’t just loop the original raw [Amen break] sample straight on its own and expect to get jungle out the other end. Do that, or find a really good single layer break but chop it in an inventive way, but in general creative [breakbeat] work is a big part of it at least for me. 

Even if you want to make stuff which sounds “Retro,” don’t feel like you need to invest in retro gear to get that sound. Akai samplers and Amigas can sound AWESOME and their different programming methods can get people excited to work on tunes and slightly bias the results, insofar as their workrate might be a bit different from a standard samples-dropped-into-modern-DAW flow.  But, they’re also crazy expensive, and they’re not going to write the tunes for you. And anything you can do on old gear like that, you can also just do in Ableton or Logic or [FL Studio] or whatever. Over 90% of the work in making a convincing jungle tune that sounds in line with the original stuff is sample and sequencing decisions, not running everything through 12-bit samplers. 

Pete Dev/Null can be heard spinning tunes every other Sunday at 5pm EST on the aforementioned “BTTO Radio” program, which he co-hosts with Tim Reaper on jungletrain.net. His own music can be heard on 8205 Recordings at 8205.bandcamp.com.