- View the building blocks of jungle through a modern lens.
- Jungle has proven to have a powerful half-life. While other genres like house and techno have steadily rolled along since their inception, jungle burnt bright and fast before mutating into drum & bass and beyond. It's since been cannibalized and mused upon by successive generations of producers, some infected by the initial explosion and others picking up on the residual fall-out. The misty-eyed nostalgia and uncompromising futurism tied up in those downsampled breaks and lofty pads have held a constant allure for artists working in experimental fields—take Lee Gamble and his Diversions 1994-1996 album.
Sophia Loizou also explored jungle via her 2016 LP, Singulacra, smudging out the dominant drum sounds and blowing up the swooning melodies to create a poignant ambient paean to the ghost of raves past. Irregular Territories is different, but no less ambitious in reshaping the ingredients of jungle and hardcore. Singulacra's sense of fun is immediately apparent on the opener, "Loop Of Perception," which rushes through jittery, Shepard-tone euphoria bolstered by a disembodied air horn—it's the sonic equivalent of a sweat-drenched raver raising their eyebrows, puffing out their cheeks and exhaling hard at the sheer enormity of the situation. One gets the impression Loizou crafted this joyful noise from experience.
Loizou then careers through a more opaque sound palette. Her knack for thick daubs of melody remains, but this time they're carved up by splayed, chiseled-down breaks. There's a drop at the midsection of "Memories Of Angels" that feels exactly like a jungle drop should, shelving the orchestral prettiness of the pads and letting the drums and bass duke it out in the cavernous space. One of the most powerful moments on the EP is also one of the briefest. "Frozen Dust" piles on a huge slab of Reese bass, only dropping it out for a processed voice to catch its breath. It's as though Loizou has magnified a serotonin spike.
Steeped in concept and sharply focused in execution, Loizou's latest wistful reflection on rave matches academic degrees of sound design with the pure-hearted passion of a raver. It's not known how much of an ardent junglist Loizou might have been in the '90s, but it's safe to assume she's had her fair share of dance floor epiphanies. She conveys the magnitude of those experiences without nostalgia, instead refracting the building blocks of jungle through a thrillingly modern lens.
Tracklist01. Loop Of Perception
02. Memories Of Angels
03. Shadow Box
04. Frozen Dust
05. The Interior Life Of Another
06. Morphogenesis