Back catalogue: Drum And Bass

Review: Ja-Ge George is a rather little-known dancehall artist who has turned out only a few releases over the last 20 years. He hails from Japan and is part of the Rub-A-Dub Market crew and now he is back with a new single that comes on Far Eastern label Lawson Entertainment. 'Down Beat Rule' blends new school and contemporary raga and dancehall into a classic-sounding cut with some rhythmic vocal stabs, natty, polished chords and broken tumbling beats to amp up any crowd. On the flip, it becomes a high-energy jungle workout powered by blistering breakbeats.

Review: Jungle Scratch's latest release JS002 is a vinyl-only 12" that hits all the right notes for beat lovers and turntablists. This time, they've taken Hemp Gru's 'This is it' and reworked it with contributions from Cheeba and Sabot, adding their own flavours to the beat. DJ Cent, DJ Vazee, DJ Chmielix, and MAD are on hand with cuts and scratches, giving the tracks that raw, live feel. As a bonus, Mad & Tuse have included a special track made just for turntablists, adding even more value to the release. Each copy also comes with limited edition stickers, and Tuse's artwork rounds off the package, making JS002 a must-have for collectors and scratch enthusiasts alike.

Review: Ilian Tape have tapped up Jichael Mackson here for a double album of expressive and forward thinking electronic sounds. The atmosphere generally futuristic and intriguing, with tracks like 'Shangri La' riding on gentle breakbeats amongst air pads, 'Banana Jazz (Quartett)' is a high speed and live sounding jazz-breakbeat workout, 'A Jichalicious Something' is dubby and IDM inflected lushness and 'Good Morning Sunshine' is an interplanetary trip with distant cosmic pads and organic piano chords soothing mind, body and soul.

Review: New Jersey's standout drum & bass star JLM Productions is a releasing powerhouse, having gone strong since at least the mid-90s with his Reinforced alias - and now with a return to his JLM name, here releasing under ASC's Spatial Recordings. Implied to be a pioneer of a certain subset of atmospheric drum & bass, this new album, Variations On Being, harnesses this credo to brilliant effect, rightly representing Jamie Myseron's craft as one that brings with it a deep spiritual fecundity. With Buddhist, Vedic and Hindu titles like 'Dharma', 'Artha' and 'Kama', backed up by a Hellenic haul of tunes on the B-side with titles like 'Physis' and 'Hexis', each track here riffles with a pulsive energy and exquisiteness, as if to suggest the movement of a pure font of spirit, not bound by the formalisms of much drum & bass (the sound is unashamedly expansive, unafraid of giving way to pad and synth wash at the relative expense of heavy-hitting drums).

Review: Musique Pour La Danse proudly presents 8 Coffins, an essential collection of original tracks by the British duo Dougie Wardrop (of Conscious Sounds fame), and Nigel Lake as Jungle Neck, unearthed from the original masters laid down in the mid 90s. Eight raw tracks span four sides, two tracks each, authentically laying out a quick octave of bodybagging heaters. '8 Coffins' prophesies this (high) octane sequence of hits, ticking the first target off its list with a jungle cut bordering on a muted dub version, with offbeat bubbles and lowpassed vocals sounding as if the melody was being sung behind an ebony, mist-shrouded room divider. 'Kingdom Rise' moves further in this dub/jungle techno direction, working in lasery descensions into a take on Lennie De Ice, while the singular rollage of 'Bodyguard' ups the clarity while matching a sample-spread vox jab to the bass sequence. The inverse record equally dazzles, with its far-Eastern koto against mecha-jungle on 'No Wicked', and rapid snare delays against frank flutes on 'Latin Flute'.