Dillinja is a jungle king

Plus Zed Bias, Panoram, Sem and more

Oslo capitalist energy

“There are only really two kings in this music: Dillinja and Calibre. Everything in between is us.” So spoke Goldie in Drum & Bass Arena’s 2020 documentary, Drum & Bass: The Movement, his right arm raised as if refereeing jungle itself, in a clip that has been viewed almost 77,000 times. 

Fans of 4 Hero, Photek, Roni Size, Krust and Goldie himself might object to their omission. (And I am not going to get into Calibre, a producer I like but rarely listen to.) But it’s hard to fault Goldie on his praise for Dillinja, the jungle producers’ jungle producer and loudest man in drum & bass. 

Dillinja is one of the most skilled producers in jungle, a ceaseless innovator in the studio, king of the mixdown, an intriguing vocalist and the man who brought the reggae sound system into drum & bass. That he scored his biggest hit with Twist ‘Em Out, a faintly ridiculous track that became famous as the theme tune to Ali G, is perhaps unfortunate. But nothing could harm Dillinja’s reputation as a true drum & bass don.

Dillinja is perhaps best known for his bass lines. As he showed on 1998’s Hard Noize, a skulking, metallic monster of a tune and one of Dillinja’s own favourites, the man born Karl Francis can create a bass line as filthily large as anything by Bad Company, Ed Rush or the genre’s typical bass line monsters. (See also Nasty Ways, taken from his 2001 album Cybotron, Friday by Capone (one of Dillinja’s numerous aliases, the song being an excellent example of the quiver bass that was briefly popular in the late 90s,) or, to be honest countless other tunes from his catalogue.)

Dillinja, you see, likes volume. One of his biggest tracks is called It Ain’t Too Loud, from the 2002 album with Lemon D Big Bad Bass. And, indeed, his music isn’t too loud, if you don’t mind the gentle ringing of tinnitus after a night out with the Valve Soundsystem (of which more later.) To this, he added a certain abrasiveness, on tracks like Grimey, a heavy-metal shower of a record from 2002 that suggested giant metallic scissors cutting up the air waves. 

The reaction from listeners could be extreme. In the comments under the YouTube video of It Ain't Too Loud, one commenter remembers hearing the track on the Valve Soundsystem at the Brunel Rooms in Swindon. “No one could light a cigarette on the dance floor due to the air from the bass bins rushing past,” he adds. “It was incredible.”

This seems moderate, however, compared to the experience of YouTube user @mbbx5aw2. “I'll never forget Valve Sound at Stylus Leeds 2004 and Dillinja dropping this,” they recount. “I shit myself that night from the bass. Literally. Had to dash my kex in the bogs and carry on raving.”

Dillinja’s recipe for the bowel-shattering volume on his early records was simple: push everything into the red and worry about it later. “I used to ram DAT machines with loud volumes and the DAT has an analogue-to-digital converter so I was getting my level by ramming the inputs,” he told UKF in 2020. “I put everything in the red. I never looked at any equipment, I just went with my ears. If it wasn’t distorted it was fine. I didn’t give a fuck if it was above zero.”

While this is undoubtedly amusing, it underplays the finesse of Dillinja’s production technique. His bass isn’t just loud, it is extremely well-crafted, full of hooks and fits the rest of his production like a glove. 

There are countless examples of this. But perhaps the most telling is 2004’s All The Things, in which he employs a bass line that is simultaneously utterly sordid, melodically catchy, kind of funny and perfectly tuned into the clattering break, as if bass and percussion are the two sides of the same coin, different and yet inescapably bonded together. That he combines this with a delicate - and even ethereal - vocal (that he apparently sung himself) is an absolute triumph of sweet-and-sour musical engineering.

This combination of extremes also helps to explain why Dillinja is known as the king of the mixdown, his skill in making a track’s disparate elements sit together in the mix evident throughout his catalogue.  (As UKF once put it, “This is the man who set mixdown benchmarks so high, and so early on in the genre, they encouraged an obsessive sonic tradition that still exists in the culture to this day.”)

“You can make a smooth tune, it doesn’t have to be banging, but if the production’s right you can mix it into a hard tune and it won’t stick out like a sore thumb,” Dillinja told ATM Magazine in 2004. “A lot of these weak productions you play them next to a hard tune and it doesn’t fit in at all cos the mixdowns are so weak. The dynamics are just wrong.

Dillinja is also a master of the other key element of jungle programming, the cut-up and elegantly mangled break, delivering Photek levels of drum sophistication at Ed Rush volumes. (Not for nothing does Dillinja have one song called Calculus Beats and another titled King Of the Beats.) Rather than simply use one sample, Dillinja often employs several different drum breaks in his songs, switching up or layering them as the track progresses, adding drum machines and other samples on top. 

You can hear this in his phenomenal string-rush remix of Björk's Cover Me, in which three different breaks pass the rhythmical baton to create one of the most fascinatingly detailed drum lines in jungle. There are numerous other examples of his drum expertise but my favourites include the rippling Amen sorcery of Ja Know Ya Big and the delicately twisted Sovereign Melody, a 1993 / 4 track that is probably Dillinja’s first classic.

Dillinja’s love for both breaks and immaculate mixdowns come from his early admiration for hip hop: “You listen to the hip hop out there and the mixdown is spot on,” he told ATM Magazine. 

“I started off listening to electro, then went to hip hop, I was into the breakbeat stuff, like Big Daddy Kane’s RAW, y’know?” he said in the same interview. “Like all the old hip hop that was using Amens and to me that was it. You could dance to that music. Then, when hip hop moved over to more kicking snares and became all about lyrics, and the gangster shit that’s when I eased off it cos I was more into the beats.”

This love of breaks extends into Dillinja’s desire to push beat sourcing into unexpected places. Sure, Dillinja can cut up an Amen like few other producers. But, as he told ATM, he also likes to go deeper. “I’ve always used breaks but what I’m trying to do now is get more intricate beats. Gotta learn the good bits about a beat first, gotta understand it, then start cutting it up. I’ve heard a lot of new cutting stuff and it’s not cutting right man,” he said. 

“I’m gonna take it to the next level, I can’t be just cutting up old Amens like that. We gotta start cutting new sounds otherwise its gonna seem like the same old thing brought back.”

Growing up in Brixton, reggae was also an influence on Dillinja and, in particular the reggae soundsystems he used to hear out. “I did grow up with a lot of soundsystems around me in Brixton. Especially King Tubby’s,” he told UKF. “I had friends with the same passion as me at school so we bounced off each other. I’ve been obsessed with from a young age.”

The actual sound of reggae may not be as prominent in Dillinja’s music as it is with other jungle producers. But Dillinja channeled this love of reggae into the Valve Soundsystem (alongside his friend Lemon D), the first (as far as I know) soundsystem made specifically for drum & bass, a 96K monster that needed three trucks to take it on tour. 

“I’m very proud of that,” Dillinja told UKF. “Everywhere we took it people really appreciated it, too. People’s excitement and appreciation. So many people saying how they’d never felt bass like it before. People felt drum & bass how it’s meant to be felt. Not heard… Felt.”

(Lemon D, incidentally, very much deserves his own post: his G-funk jungle track This Is LA is a languid classic, while I Can’t Stop brought a very distinctive funk sound to jungle in 1996.)

Lemon D was also on board with Dillinja when they launched their Valve Recordings label in 1997. Valve rapidly became one of the most important labels in drum & bass, releasing classics from Dillinja and Lemon D themselves (including Acid Track, of which more later), putting out post Bad Company records from DJ Fresh and helping to break TC and Friction. (It also released Dillinja’s Fast Car, a song that has divided fans since its release in 2003. For what it’s worth, I don’t particularly like the song, although I think it would be fine if stripped of its annoying vocal samples.)

Somewhere in between all this Dillinja signed a major label deal with FFRR for the 2001 release of his debut album Cybotron. (The name presumably a reference to Dillinja’s own use of the Cybotron moniker in the 1990s, rather than Juan Atkins seminal electro band. Dillinja also recorded under the name Suburban Knights for added Detroit confusion.)

The album is a fantastic advert for Dillinja’s skill in matching drum & bass murk to soulful vocals, on tracks like Nasty Ways, Cybotron and Together (all featuring the wonderfully sensuous Keisha Brown), with Dillinja himself providing vocals on Why?, All Aboard, Human B Bop, Blaze It Down and Go Dillinja, which makes it, I think, pretty unique in drum & bass history. What other big-name jungle producer has provided so many vocals on their own album?

Cybotron is perhaps Dillinja’s most brilliantly cohesive artistic statement. (And shout out to my friend, who was living in Barcelona at the time and made me buy him a copy and send it over.) Commercially, however, the album perhaps suffered from the brief slump in drum & bass (and dance music itself) in the UK and, if pushed, I would recommend the 2004 Valve compilation My Sound as the best introduction to Dillinja’s classic work.

And then, in 2003, came Twist ‘Em Out. The track was originally released on Here Comes Trouble (LP Sampler Volume One) by Trouble On Vinyl, its ear-worm synth riff and driving rhythm making it a big club hit. After Sacha Baron Cohen used the song as the title track for season two of Da Ali G show - known in the US as Ali G in da USAiii - it was then re-released, complete with a vocal from legendary jungle MC Skibadee, whereupon it made 35 in the UK charts. This was not an unknown feat for a drum & bass song but still notable in 2003. 

Such ubiquity has not served Twist ‘Em Out well. With more than 1.6m listens, it is Dillinja’s most popular song on Spotify and has undoubtedly been heard by millions more, many of whom will have had little idea what drum & bass is. 

But the Ali G association and the song’s mainstream appeal means it is not remember fondly by most jungle fans, with the song’s high-pitched and rather screechy synth riff leading to it being associated with the hated sound of clownstep. (See also Shimon and Andy C’s Body Rock, a fabulously innovative tune that also got tarred by association with the clownstep brush.)

Let’s not remember Dillinja for Twist ‘Em Out. For me, the two key tracks for which Dillinja will be forever carved into the stones of jungle history also serve as the perfect illustration of his eclecticism, imagination, production skill and ability to blend together abstruse sounds.

Acid Track, from 1997, is one of the most innovative tracks in jungle, a scalding hot, ultra-hard hitting combination of acidic 303 bleeps and towering breaks that manages to redeem dance music’s most played out sound a decade after Phuture first dragged the Roland bass machine onto the dance floor, making the TB 303 sound genuinely demonic once again.

The Angels Fell, from 1995, is a Metalheadz release that could stand up to label boss Goldie’s finest music, thanks to its combination of scalpel-sharp beat science, heart-tugging melody and futuristic menace, making it an emotional classic of early jungle that never gets old. (Not to mention one of THE great drum tracks in jungle, the breaks slithering around the beat like a python marking its prey.) That The Angels Fell could have fit on Timeless, also released in 1995, is a serious compliment, making it fitting that Goldie himself would anoint Dillinja as one of jungle’s true greats, some 15 years on.

PS I’ve made a brief best of Dillinja playlist on Spotify, which you can listen to here.

PPS You should also definitely check out Dillinja’s take-no-prisoners bass assault on David Bowie’s Fun. 

PPPS I have almost certainly missed some of Dillinja’s best tunes here. If you want some more lists try here, here and here. And also let me know your favourites in the comments.

Some listening

Terri Walker - Finally Over You (Zed Bias remix)

Who better to remix UK soul / jazz / garage / R&B singer Terri Walker’s 2023 album My Love Story in its entirety than Manchester’s Zed Bias, a similarly genre-free wanderer, whose music has been embraced by fans of everything from UK Garage to dubstep to reggae, without ever quite settling in one category? Over the seven remixes, Bias toys with UKG, drum & bass, soulful house, breaks, disco and more with a daredevil edge. But album opener Finally Over You perhaps best illustrates the caustically sweet and sour appeal of Bias versus Walker, with its wobbling bass line, swinging drums and candied vocal.

Panoram - Cameos 

Do Boards of Canada have a sense of humour? I suspect they do although it’s not exactly obvious in their music. If they did let it drift through a little, they might end up with something a little like Great Times, the new album from Panoram on Balmat, which combines a wonderful sense of melody with intricate programming and a slightly skewed sense of absurdity to create the perfect album for settling into an afternoon doze. Cameos, the first single, is a fine introduction to the album’s woozy charms.

NAP - Cumbia Al Sol

Ambient cumbia? 100% in. Cumbia Al Sol, from ACA co-label boss NAP, sounds like the mist slowly lifting over a beautifully lush field as the party energy drops from busting to breezy. You can twitch a lazy limb to it or simply sit back and bask in its The Orb goes to Colombia vibes. It’s taken from the Cueva EP, which is out soon on Bandcamp.

Sem - Phox

If you’ve ever heard Dave Clarke’s classic X-Mix (Electro Boogie) - which you really REALLY should - then you’ll recognise Phox as the gnarled metal opener that sends the mix cascading down the hole into brilliant electro chaos, with its relentless bass riff and air of galactic paranoia. I didn’t know that Sem was Damon Baxter, later better known as Deadly Avenger, but, with the news that the two Sem 12 inches are getting a reissue later this year, I do now. Phox really is an electro classic - tough, unrelenting and rolling - and it deserves a much wider audience. And the rest of the two 12 inches is almost as strong.

Things I’ve Done

Daft Punk is dead, long live Daft Punk: the limits of a brand beyond the band

Returning to my specialist subject of Daft Punk, I wrote this piece for DJ Mag about Daft Punk as brand, how it has helped them post split and the limits of the Daft Punk brand appeal. “Ultimately, the strength of Daft Punk’s music means that demand for any kind of new activity — be it album reissues, merch or live streams — is likely to continue apace, with the clamour for a 25th anniversary edition of ‘Discovery’ showing that demand is certainly there. At the same time, the Daft Punk brand has its roots in quality over quantity, and a refined appeal that is more Chanel than Coca-Cola. Without that, would any of this have the same staying power now? In the insatiably content-driven and consumerist ecosystem that music is now forced to exist in, the lesson for the rest of us might just be that sparing the brand is the key to maintaining the brand, which does feel like a very Daft Punk kind of contradiction to work around.”

Line Noise with Erol Alkan (Part Two)

Last week I dropped part one of the Line Noise Erol Alkan interview. Now part two is here, as part of the Nitsa 30th anniversary celebrations, in which the London DJ talks about Nitsa, playing in Spain and, more generally, the music of the early 2000s, when Trash was really starting to kick off. 

The Sympathizers -  un podcast sobre El simpatizante

Are you watching HBO’s new show The Sympathizer? Do you want a podcast to accompany you, episode by episode? And do you speak Spanish? If the answer to all three questions is ‘yes’, then boy do we have a show for you. It’s our new episode-by-episode review of The Sympathizer, in Spanish, and it is a lot of fun. I promise. I’ve long wanted to do one of these TV recap pods so it was a real delight to do this. Episode one, which naturally covers the show’s first episode, is out now on Soundcloud and Spotify.  

The playlists

How many followers to my two playlists would I need before I can sell them off to Spotify and retire in my new financial security? Probably a lot more than 75 - for The newest and the bestest - and 49 - for The newest and the bestest 2024 - and only you can help with that. I would explain what they do but… it’s kind of obvious, right?