The From The Archives series continues. Originally Released: 2nd August 2000
If there was a war for the soul of drum and bass, LTJ Bukem – AKA home counties born Danny Williamson – was one of its generals. In the one camp there stood the hardcore renegades, purists from the rave era who saw the rumbling sub-bass and frantic beats of jungle as a triumph of evolution, a successful reinvention of dull, Caucasian techno filled with sex and freaks and sweat.
Bukem/Williamson, himself a veteran of thousand rave and acid house nights and along with Fabio co-promoter of Speed, one of the movement’s first club nights, saw things slightly differently. A self-confessed music disciple, his seminal 1996 album Logical Progression marked a pronounced departure for the genre, a schism in which the lightning breaks were still a part, but in which cues were also taken from soul, hip-hop and jazz.
Critics at the time dismissed even the term drum and bass of course, arguing that in both form and description the shift towards melodics hinted at surrender of underground aesthetics, some going further to hint at subliminal racism. If Williamson himself was concerned, he hasn’t spoken about it. Pointing simply to a love of music that stemmed from learning drums and piano at an early age, his methodology in using real instruments as opposed to well-worn loops was natural, not an attempt to shift a whole movement toward strict organic method.
Coming during the same year as his excellent double album debut Journey Inwards, it could’ve have been that this, the first in his Good Lookin’ Organisation label’s usually flawless Producer series, represented overkill for Bukem.
You don’t however remain at the forefront of a sound for more than a decade by making too many errors of judgement however, and the retrospective nature of ..Producer serves as a worthwhile exercise for both vinyl junkie aficionados and the simply curious. It’s most astute quality is that first and foremost, it’s a drum and bass record. This may seem a little obvious, but any tourists arriving via the lounge workings of the same label’s Earth compilations may feel a little disorientation at first. Old skoolers get what they expect – I think we can at least all agree that Demon’s Theme and Atlantis would be in most people’s back-in-the-day mixes – and it’s hard now to see what all the original ruckus was about. Both are breaks led rather than bass platters, but all the hallmarks of greatness otherwise are there, with the former’s rich inventiveness and kaleidoscopic techno swatches underlining its status as a true landmark moment.
Elsewhere there are shades of the live Logical Progression setup, with the gentle Rhodes and hazy clarinet of Constellation framed by the laid back, stellar rhymes of DRS. And yes, there are moments of supreme, chilled beauty that belong on a deserted beach or sun-kissed mountain top, but let’s also be real: the likes of opener Cosmic Interlude and Moodswings are both as far away as it’s possible to get in their root ethic from the spectral good taste anti-matter of acid jazz.
The real triumph of drum and bass though is one Williamson has mastered more acerbically than most of his contemporaries – hence his longevity as an artist. Rather than jungle’s push to hardcore destruction, its doppelganger has an ability to mix ambience and rhythm together, a melding that satiates both mind and body. Its the perfect striking of this balance which makes Twilight Voyage’s ten minutes plus running time seem to contract down to a few bars, as breaks and synth washes entwine like smoke and fire. If there ever was a battle, in this chapter alone, LTJ Bukem would’ve won the war.
