Infrared Schallplatten & CDs

Review: Two ragga jungle ragers straight from the Infrared label. Ablaze with a rhythmic heat burning hotter than a pine forest caked in talc comes the untitled A; the track clears all in its path by virtue of its ultra-dry and somewhat still caked-in-mud breaks mix, which never once settles nor lets up on the oxidisation process. Apparently originally started in the 90s, the track was never finished until now, though more recent revisitations to the track were still doggedly insistent on use of an Akai Sample, just as it was in, you know, the "good old days". Track 2, the equally, mercilessly unsparingly named 'Untitled 8', meanwhile, was allegedly engineered by the crunch-drum maestro himself, Dillinja.

Review: Man like J Majik dusts off the old Innervisions alias for these two straight-up jungle primetimers. 'Ain't Ready' takes a classic vocal sample and whips it up a gear so it playfully teases those pitched up hardcore flavours without ever getting too OTT. 'Adams Rib', meanwhile, rains down the breaks on a biblical level while ice cold pads stir up the sinister flavours in the background. You ain't ready for these ones.

Review: Five years has passed since J Majik made an impressive return with Full Circle, an album that dug right back to his Reinforced/Metalheadz roots with uncompromised futurism. Lo and behold these cuts still smack just as hard now as they did in 2019 (and would have absolutely melted us back in 94) 'The Crow Knows' is total sonic brutalism with it thundering drums and powerful sense of tension. 'Codebreaker' is a much colder slice of the jungle pie. Big elongated pads and a general feeling that aliens are about to land at any minute. Majik doing magic things.

Review: More magic from Majik as he looks back to his evergreen 2019 opus which saw him take things right back to his Reinforced foundations. The title track is an ice cold slab of futurism that essential provides the blueprint for jungle's most dynamic aesthetics. 'Eclipse' meanwhile goes for the heart strings, rips them out and turns them into an orchestral string section as a huge score-level sample is laid gently over surging, urgent break. Abracadabra.