Jungle music

Jungle music is one of the most deviant and punkish forms of electronic music, employing fast tempos (150-190 BPM is common), layering extended and mangled breakbeats on top of throbbing, authoritative basslines, originally borrowed from reggae. Jungle borrows samples and styles from almost any type of music, assimilating them and bringing them into a completely different context.

Jungle is sometimes used as a blanket term that covers drum and bass, jump up, dancehall, techstep, drill and bass, ambient DnB and many other breakbeat subgenres, all with different sounds and esthetics. Jungle of pure heritage often employs an MC's rasta vocals and rapping. Drum and bass tends to be darker, while jump up and dancehall are geared toward dance club environments.

Jungle beats, originally cut from hip hop and funk records of the 1970s and 1980s, developed from their early form as equipment would allow. Many loop samplers around the time of Jungle's emergence would not accommodate beats faster than 150 BPM, and as technology adapted, artists made beats specifically for jungle, often out of beats sampled from old records. Drum machines were also employed, as their design allowed.
One of the original jungle breaks, a classic that is still in common use and misuse today, is the amen break, from a funk song called "Amen Brother" played by The Winstons. The energy and intensity of this particular breakbeat is a perfect example of what drives jungle and drum and bass.

In the 1990s the genre perhaps erroneously came to refer to a genre of electronic dance music which utilized synthesizers and samples but also used live drums, in the style of artists such as The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy and Bomb The Bass. This is the jungle that has played a major part in the contemporary Australian hip-hop scene, bands such as The Cat Empire and Hilltop Hoods.

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