Pearsall's Tunes

Via the excellent Kid Kameleon I found a link to a downloadable copy of 'A London Someting Dis' (right-click, save as). It's fairly low-res but it's still definitely watchable. I remember watching it when Channel 4 first showed it, because that was about the time that I was first starting to really listen to the jungle pirate stations. It's a fantastic look at a particular moment in musical time.

At that point (early 1994) I was only really a casual listener to jungle. It wasn't until about a year and a half later, just after my 15th birthday, that I really became fully obsessed with jungle. I'll probably never be as into a form of music as I was into jungle. I used to daydream about it at school. I'd listen to pirate radio every night. Every week I'd go to Blackmarket Records in Soho to buy a couple records (for a couple years I never ate lunch at school, because I would save my lunch money for tunes).

I like, hell, love, a lot of the music that I listen to now, but I'll never feel as strongly about music again. It was just so fresh, such a pure sound. It was London. I was always an outsider when it came to jungle, being upper-middle class and American (being white wasn't a big deal, as it was very genuinely a multiracial scene - class and nationality were I think a much bigger deal in terms of me feeling on the outside of things). There was just so much energy in it, such an explosion of creativity. I'd go to Blackmarket every week and buy the two or three records I could afford but always walk out of the shop wishing I could have bought 10-15. There was such a huge range of styles being covered, and every week, listening to the pirates and going to the record shops was like being in the midst of something very deep and profound, and even from my vantage point on the outskirts of that scene it was a time that will always be burned into my mind. It's only a shame I was too young and, frankly, too wussy to go to a lot of the events. I did go to a World Dance at Wembley Conference Centre with 20,000 other people on New Year's Eve 1996 (when my parents' thought I was sleeping over at a friend's house haha) and that, as well as some trips to Metalheadz at the Blue Note in Hoxton when I was 16, will always stay with me.

No matter what else happens, I can always look back at my memories of that time.

Anyways, enough waffling, here's some mp3's of classic stuff from that period:
Desired State - Beyond Bass - (mp3)
DJ Hype - Tiger Style - (mp3)
Prizna - Fire (Urban Shakedown RMX) - (mp3)
4 Hero - Universal Love (RMX) - (mp3)
Goldie - Saint Angel - (mp3)