We have an almighty team of superpowered mutated warriors of the dance whose collabs might just save the universe…
DJ Dazee‘s gathered together an unhinged, interstellar ensemble for a new album via Ruffneck Ting: The Xtraordinary League of Junglists, the sampler of which is out.
Or is that ‘Xtraordinaree’, in her case. Either way, look out for A Owl (and associated profanitee)…
How would you prep us for this Xtraordinary album?
Come aboard the RNT space ship and fasten your seatbelts, ready for an intergalactic journey with the XLJ! On your mission you’ll encounter 24 steppers and rollers by xtraordinary producers Aries, Jinx, Cabin fever, K Jah, Vytol to name but a few. But watch out for the fearsome marauding frequencies and Bass Bandits… ha ha.
Take us behind the thinking here?
As you can probably tell there’s a touch of ‘Concept Album’ going on here.
This is something I’ve personally always felt a calling for, probably due to too much exposure to The Wall and War of the Worlds at an impressionable age. But I haven’t been alone creating this mad project. Luckily most of us at Ruffneck Towers are undercover geeks and we have an incredible graphic artist who’s thrown himself fully into this labour of love.
Originally the concept was simply collabs but there was always going to be a comic book story and art accompanying it. To be honest the comic isn’t an entirely unique thing in D&B as Dope Dragon produced a comic with their Wayz of the Dragon in the 90s.
Our album isn’t intended to mirror that in any way, the comic was just a natural evolution of the recurring theme with our releases. Ste – our artist – has always come up with amazing characters for each release since the Jinxbot first appeared on the Stand Up album, RNT030.
Our press releases were always written in the style of a a scifi adventure even before then.
More recently we’ve moved to animated promo videos to take the comic book hero theme even further.
But for all the non-geek junglists out there who have no interest in unlikely heroes and quantum stepper styles, there’s actually a lot of wicked music on this album.
All the tracks are the result of co-labs from some of the most respected names in jungle plus we’re showcasing some new talent such as Haze and Wizwise, Bass Antics and Nino, Danny Lo and Morgan Jay. Without reading the comic or listening to the mix CD there aren’t really any clues that there’s any kind of concept.
Where’d the title come from? At first I thought it was a Robert Fripp inspiration… and he’s West Country!
I’m afraid it’s nothing to do with Robert Fripp’s League Of Crafty Guitarists – I had to google that.
The title – which is inspired by The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen – just popped into my head one day. Originally the album was planned for last Christmas and was going to be ‘The Ruffneck Ting Collaboration Annual 2016’, but these things always take longer than planned and the “Annual” title didn’t fit beyond Christmas time.
The title needed to be something comic-y or superhero-y and suggest a team working together… so the XLJ fitted perfectly!
Who is on here? Aries I note, for one. As you’ve mentioned.
We have an almighty team of superpowered mutated warriors of the dance whose collabs might just save the universe.
They are: the armour clad K-Jah & Vytol, metallic spiderbot and space explorer The Force & Verdikt, the mighty Jinx-bot, galactic bounty hunter Cabin Fever, the scorching mecha-dragon Sterling Sound, mysterious Men in Black Dawn Raid, venerable Aries The Wise, shape shifting undercover agents Bass Antics & Nino, baseball-bot Danny Lo, one eyed space pirate Dazee, almighty time lord Saxxon, trumpeter droid Jon Scott, the bizarre combination of living bass cone, space surfer and galactic psychic that is Bassface Sacha, Fiendsoul and Morgan jaY, two headed junk-bot Habitat, newly recruited powerhouses Haze & Wizwise, reptilian diplomatic wordsmith Kivardo and the alien microphone slinging songstress that is Sic’Nis.
Phew.
Take us into a track at random?
Its hard to choose one as there are so many big tunes by so many wicked artists personal favs include the heady vibes of Jinx and Aries’ ‘Hazy Dub’ and Bass Antics and Nino’s bubbling “all 2 myself”. But for entertainments sake I’ll go for one of my own co-labs with Jinx: ‘A Owl’.
It’s an uplifting roller with an orchestral and harp intro that leads to a big subby bassline and with a nice switch as it progresses.
In the XLJ story my character has a phobia of owls but in true comic book style, we’ve been properly chortling whilst making the track.
Tell more?
When we first rolled it out there was this weird owl sound randomly repeating that we thought must be in one of the samples or fx that we hadn’t tidied up. We have got a classic bird-like sample anyway but this was another bird with bad timing and it was really annoying!
Turns out it was a bird outside probably responding to the bird in our tune. We had the window open. But that wasn’t what made me laugh… it was when Jinx said we should call it ‘A Owl’ after a Phone Shop sketch.
So what nights do you have planned for this?
We’re celebrating the launch on 23rd September at the Attic in Bristol with Cabin Fever, The Force, Jinx, K Jah, Vytol, Verdikt, Sterling Sound and myself and we then meet again for more Xtraordinary Junglism 26th November at PST in Birmingham this time with Habitat, Serial Killaz and Skant added to the lineup.
How do you find the Bristol scene now, compared to the 90s?
The Bristol scene is pretty healthy at the moment – there’s loads of promoters and events and the number of quality club and bar venues has increased… on the downside at times there can be oversaturation, and smaller nights with interesting line ups don’t get the numbers they deserve.
But some weekends the city can sustain three or four big D&B nights. Ok let’s borrow that record box tardis – see the XLJ comic to know more – and head back to the 90s…
We’re putting on nights in any venue that will have us, such as community centres and social clubs like Trinity, Malcom x, The Depot, Easton Community Centre. We’ve got clubs like Lakota, tropic and Blue Mountain but we’re working really hard to make them look or sound good.
We’re lucky if we have a couple of D&B nights in a month so we’ll be heading off to find free parties or raves.
If we can’t find a club or free party there’ll probably be a house party somewhere… and if we can’t find a party we’ll dance round our cars in a service station car park ha ha.
And transporting back to 2016 Bristol… there’s still seems to be a free party scene and the club scene is strong. But I think the feeling of belonging to something unique exciting and underground is something is something we need to bring back from the 90s.
That’s what we’re trying to do with Ruffneck Ting.
Any last thing to sum up the album… what would you say?
While it’s meant to be a fun and adventurous project it’s still a serious album with a big selection rollers, steppers and deeper vibes.
There’s 24 tracks in total, including two free downloads and two exclusive tracks only available with the vinyl package, the comic, vinyl and mix cd are there for the collectors who want to be able to own and touch a physical form of the music instead of just ones and noughts.
It’s out as a Juno exclusive October 10th, all other stores October 17th.
The comic and vinyl will be available from www.ruffneckting.uk mid October.
Various Artists – The Xtraordinary League Of Junglists Album Sampler 1