Pat Thomas

New Jazz Jungle: Remembering

Genre: JUNGLE / FOOTWORK

2LP (Black Vinyl)

Boomkat Product Review:

Pat Thomas redefines jungle nuttiness in this killer 1997 battery, newly reissued on a first time vinyl pressing in the wake of resurfaced jungle experiments by Derek Bailey and Jigen, respectively, from that fecund era of cross-pollinated genres.

Charting one of the maddest mutations of the jungle virus during its creative peak, ‘New Jazz Jungle: Remembering’ arrives on Feedback Moves from a blind spot in the genre that is now coming into sharper focus with likes of Derek Bailey’s improvs over pirate radio, the stone-cut samurai tekkerz of Jigen or Mutamassik’s NYC hip hop-informed collages. Replete with expert liner notes by Edward George (Black Audio Film Collective, Hallucinator), who was immersed in London bassbin and experimental dance culture at the time, the reissue is a shocking reminder of the stylistic freedoms born by jungle’s rupturing of dancefloor time-space, when it emerged from loopy hardcore as the post-bop jazz of the pivotal late ‘90s.

Written and produced by Pat Thomas - a key collaborator of Lol Coxhill and Derek Bailey - on computer plus piano, synth and sampler, it saw Thomas take advantage of multi-track sequencing to orchestrate viscous, rolling, but unpredictable fusions of avant-classical and jazz freedoms on stacked polyrhythms that swivel between unhinged and highly disciplined. Sawn-off snare rolls and springheeled bass detonations smash atoms with samples re-pitched and scaled with serialist strategy owing to Schoenberg or Webern’s tonal systems, achieving a sense of rhythmic psychedelia comparable to 4Hero or Source Direct, yet more feral, ravenous with it.

Between the clattering stepper ‘One Nation’, littered with wild-eyed vocal snippets and angular prangs, and the double nutty recoil of ‘No Surprises’, it sends us reeling at every chop. Whether shredding Remarc samples into hellish strings that would presage Source Direct’s noirest tech-step on ‘Remembering’, or paralleling Mutamassik’s NYC illbient-jazz-jungle swagger on ‘Who Are The Strangers’ and ‘The Reply’, or ruffing up what had, by then, already become too-smooth collages of classic jazz and depth charge steppers on ‘As Well You Know’, Pat Thomas’s endeavours prove to be a totally enduring mutation whose time is really only coming now. Sometimes it just takes everyone else a lifetime to catch up.

2LP (Black Vinyl) (10)