I’ve got two browser tabs open and neither one is work. One is a jungle EP from a speed garage producer. The other is Nia Archives’ second album. Both came out this summer. Both are the reason my neighbours now know what an amen break sounds like.
1. Conducta - Soundboy Johnny
Rolling breaks, Reese bass that wobbles properly, and Conducta’s tag sitting right on top. His Soundboy Johnny EP came out on Nia Archives’ Up Ya Archives label in May, and the title track is three minutes of a garage producer making jungle without losing the swing from his UKG sets — the groove survived the tempo change completely intact. The breaks are chopped tight, the sub rattles, and you can hear the garage in his jungle like an accent he can’t shake.
2. Nia Archives - Vertical
From her second album Emotional Junglist, which landed in July with fifteen tracks and collaborations with Sampha and Jorja Smith. Vertical is the one that grabs first. The synths are urgent and icy, there’s a vocal that carries the weight of the whole record in four minutes, and the drums know exactly when to disappear. The video is Nia walking NYC at night, shot by Dylan Gee, and the framing matches the track — tight, dark, forward. Three years of trying to make jungle a household word and this is the one where she stopped explaining and just played.
Two records from opposite ends of jungle. The genre is bigger now than it’s been since the 90s and it still sounds like it belongs to nobody.