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Aka Bu – Jungle Vibes

Here’s another obscurity I dug up a while back, one for the jungle nerds (like me) looking to hear those last few records no one really knows. Since there wasn’t any audio of it on the net, I ripped the whole thing and posted it on youtube rather than just ripping one track for the blog (though I’m including one tune below for the sake of completeness). On first listen, you might think this is a poor rip of the tracks due to the distortion, however that’s how the tunes actually sound on the record. Most likely they seem to be sampled from existing jungle tunes, and looped up drum-wise (not much editing going on with the drums). But they’re still a bit interesting, maybe more for mixing purposes than for listening to a 7 minute jungle song through-and-through.

In my mind, a bit more interesting than the tunes themselves are the circumstances surrounding these tunes: these were made by a producer (possibly associated w/ Afrika Bambaataa’s Zulu Nation movement?) at a Miami Studio, for an Italian label, circa 1994. As far as I know, this producer didn’t do any other jungle, however if they were from Miami the jungle connection could make sense since there was definitely some miami/jungle crossover around then, thanks to people like AK-1200 bringing hardcore/jungle to Florida early on and also the Bass Music scene’s dabbling in jungle/hardcore sounds. You can definitely hear a few classic jungle bits from then incorporated into these tunes – “Worries in the Dance” and “Incredible” being the most obvious.

Finally, if you do track this down (it’s quite cheap), be sure to get a full picture sleeve version, as the art is pretty nice and the b-side has nice graffiti lettering slightly reminiscent of Dave Nodz’s work on some Sub Base sleeves.

The first 2 mixes are pretty similar, with the second one being a bit more trebbly and adding some acid. The third mix is pretty different, a bit less boom-y anhd probably the most solid / the one I’d throw in a mix. They’re all worth checking out though, especially for the obscurity heads.

Aka Bu – Jungle Vibes (Part 3)

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