- Jungle and techno make for interesting bedfellows. This year alone we've had albums like Ipman's Depatterning and Shades Of Black from Dax J, both of which loosely tossed the genres together. There's also been wonderful crossovers such as Blawan and Demdike Stare's remixes of Source Direct. Jungle has been leaving its stamp all over the place, and here it is again on Cage Suburbia's Argument #03, mixed with a hefty dose of acid-punk thrashed out by an arsenal of rundown machines.
Argument #03 is the closing chapter of Daniele Guerrini and Matthias Girardi's riotous EP trilogy as Cage Suburbia. Under solo aliases Heith and Weightausend, the two have plundered techno's noisy, droning nether regions, using Guerrini's Haunter Records as basecamp. The Cage Suburbia project emerged last year, and turned to the naturally aggressive sounds of jungle to deliver a more pertinent and politicised message. This is the first 12-inch in the series (the rest have been on cassette), suggesting that it's one for the masses. And it has a bit more bite to boot.
As with its predecessors, the third Argument consists of single-take recordings pooled together from improvised hardware jams and samples. The process gives it an unmitigated wild-eyed feel, in keeping with the whole crusty raver schtick. The tempos are erratic, the sound is cheap and dirty with feedback. Which is to say it's arresting stuff, but 100% designed to detonate a dance floor. "Copkiller" is your tweeting acid "party-starter," slung low at a steady 120 march. For the junglists out there, "Black Ops" smears the breaks like butter on burnt toast. "The Vault" and "20134, 56 MI" pick up the pace on the B-side. Those two are distorted bangers in the gritty style of fellow techno stormtroopers AnD.
TracklistA1 Copkiller
A2 Black Ops
B1 The Vault
B2 20134, 56 MI