INTERVIEW: DEV/NULL

EXPERT-LEVEL AMERICAN JUNGLISM

Just how many old-school jungle records does Dev/Null own? The answer might amaze you. The Boston DJ and producer has been collecting for almost three decades, and in that period, he has amassed one of the most impressive jungle stashes on this side of the… Pond. Though the London-incepted genre has always been a bit of a niche proposition in America, Dev/Null has long flown the flag. He runs a blog and radio show dedicated to obscure rave and jungle sounds. He runs a reissue label. He DJs clubs and raves. He makes music, both solo and with collaborators, among them the new-school junglist Tim Reaper.

I first heard about Dev/Null in the 2000s through his work producing a style of rave known as breakcore. If jungle sounds like the recent history of music—rap, techno, dancehall, dub—supercharged, breakcore doubles down on that impulse. Dev/Null’s music at that time was noisy and chaotic, but he has long made classic jungle and related forms a focus, a move that has kept him relevant with a newer generation of heads. We talked last Friday before his great set later that night at Trans-Pecos in Ridgewood, Queens. Below is our conversation and the exciting reveal of the approximate number of jungle records in his collection.

Do you like playing these younger breakcore, gabber raves versus playing for more purest jungle heads? 

I definitely do, but I don't have that much experience with it. One of my first shows like that recently was playing a Helltekk gig here in June, and I fucking loved that. Those kids are badass. They were nice and cool with me, and everything they were doing was quality. The other sets that night were sick. The crowd I really appreciated because it was way more energetic than I’ve seen from other NYC crowds—kids just going hard for rave music. I DJ’d a couple of times years ago at anime conventions, and it had a similar energy to me—kids not caught up with super specific track familiarity or subgenre distinctions. They just want to hear crazy cool sounds. 

For sure.

I can also see how crowds like that might be more receptive to my sets than older and more “purist” jungle crowds. In my sets, I don’t usually play all too many classics or well known tunes—mostly new tunes I’ve just been sent that I’m excited about, or really obscure old tunes that I think people don’t know or have. Both of those are a tougher sell for regular jungle fans, who expect to hear a lot of their favorite bangers from 25, 30 years ago. There’s exceptions to that, Distant Planet for one, but it’s freeing to just have the crowd loving the sound, less focused on exact tunes. 

Yeah. 

So it can be really cool and free, but then again it really depends. I’ve had a case where I was the lone jungle DJ on a night of breakcore and gabber, and the lower BPM and energy killed the vibe. So yeah, I'm all for it, if it works. There's probably some crazy music crowds that are open to slightly less crazy stuff, where jungle is a breather or a warm-up. Then there's maybe some of the crowds where literally, if you're not playing, you know, 200 plus beats per minute, fuck you. 

I feel like that's the youth energy. Check in with those kids in five years and they might be more open to slightly mellower sounds. 

That's what happened to me. I was looking for the fastest most complex shit possible in 1997. While I was into the drum and bass scene, I also wanted crazier, frantic music because I was really into grindcore and intense stuff and I wanted the drum and bass equivalent of that. As soon as Venetian Snares started posting tracks online, that was my absolute thing. I was trying to do similar tempo stuff. But I'm 27 years older now. I can't hold up with that nonstop anymore. I don't have the energy. 

But in the mid-2000s, you made breakcore records. 

Yeah. 

At what point did you kind of get into collecting rave stuff? 

So all those years, even when I was making breakcore, I was buying drum and bass and jungle. Every tour, when I started being able to go over to England and Europe, I'd buy these used jungle and hardcore records. Every city I went to, finding a record store was top of my list. Which was dumb, because why the hell was I trying to buy UK breakbeat hardcore records in Austria? Breakcore was a fun scene, but I think over time, I started realizing that my shit was not for the dancefloor at all. Even within the breakcore scene, in the earlier days of me playing, like 2001, 2002, it worked because it was still very experimental. Breakcore hadn’t fully codified into a dance subgenre. Over time, there's this crowd feedback loop—everything ends up getting a bit more linear, a bit more streamlined, a bit more slick. 

And so I definitely got to a point in 2005, 2007, where I would play out and I could tell that my tunes weren't really working live. It was easier to keep collecting jungle vinyl while having a busy job than it was to spend a hundred million hours programming 230 BPM music. It just felt a little bit silly at some point. I sort of lost interest. Also, I was like, fuck it, I might as well play jungle records instead of trying to do lame attempts at sampling this stuff because nothing I could make was sounding one tenth as good to me as any of the original ‘93 to ‘95 records I was buying. 

When you were buying records in England in the mid-2000s, were those pretty cheap to get? And how has that price changed over the past 20 years? 

It was a weird thing where some were cheap but then well-known titles were sometimes really expensive. Back before Discogs, you would have all the really obscure rare white labels, most of them would be cheap because there wasn't some easy way to click on your computer and find out exactly what it was. On the other hand, there were some really popular hardcore records where I remember seeing stores try to charge like 100 pounds because everyone knew what they were and wanted them. Even though there were a ton of copies and they weren’t that rare, you couldn’t be like, Oh no, I'm going to go check online and see a dozen other copies for sale for cheaper. 

Things were different before Discogs.

Yeah and in that way it was really cool. There's these used record stores in London called Music and Video Exchange, MVE, they always had great basements full of cheap records. A lot of the stuff I was buying was a lot cheaper, it was a lot of one pound, 30p. Nowadays, a lot of the rare stuff, regardless of how good it is, goes for huge money. Its demand is driven by the fact that it's scarce. Admittedly though, that’s always been a big factor for me, too. I still want all the tunes that other people don't have, as an objective way to distinguish myself and because I love weirdo fucked up tracks that have something wrong with them so they never got much attention. But a lot of that stuff is really in demand now, everyone can pop online and see Discogs stats, how few people have a tune. You’ll see people trying to pay like 300 or 400 pounds for some impossibly rare record, and you'll listen to it and be like, God, why? 

It reminds me of the Northern soul thing, where people are looking for records that sound “bad” in a certain way.

100 percent, I’m guilty of that for sure. Also there might be some sort of inverse Northern soul thing for me, where I would end up in some random part of England trying to dig through unwanted cruft for gold. I would literally bring an entire crate of records back from just a week-long UK trip. It’s kind of a pretentious analogy, but I remember thinking that it was sort of like that Herzog movie Fitzcarraldo, where they carry the boat over the mountain. It felt like I was carrying a boat over a mountain, crate by crate, to get the entire history of UK rave back to America.

Do you even bother looking for jungle records in America? 

I'm not going to specifically go into a store and expect jungle, but it pops up sometimes, and for a long time there was less demand here. Even after Discogs, for years there was a good period where not everyone was clued in or cared as much as in the UK. Coming to New York, I would always get more classic house and techno, but I would occasionally find UK hardcore records, jungle, and drum and bass, and they would sometimes cost almost nothing because not many people gave a shit. Like at The Thing in Greenpoint. 

Oh yeah, crazy store.

That was my jam for years and years. Early on, like, 2002? I pulled some £100, £150 UK hardcore record there that was unplayed, with the promo sheet. It wasn’t even hidden away. A lot of the rare stuff you’d expect is in the nooks and crannies of the shop, but this was right up by the record player, and you could tell it was sitting there for ages because no one was looking for that. 

I remember going to The Thing in the mid-2000s and a lot of the people were looking for funk or disco or rap music.

People would fly over to the US, just here to dig there. I remember meeting someone from a country in Africa, I forget which one, and someone else from Japan, who said they were spending a whole month in NYC just going through The Thing top to bottom… People would dig hard. 

In the record economy, if you like something before other people like it you can really reap the benefits. 

Yeah, that saved me a lot of time and money building my collection. I can’t imagine if I had started even just five to ten years later. But, also, since I still love digging, sometimes there's a bit of regret that I bought so much years ago, ‘cause I already own almost all of the good jungle records. I’m still hooked on checking record shops, and it’s exciting to see records you love in the wild, even if you own them. Occasionally, I’ll buy doubles with plans to resell or trade, which rarely happens, and my buddies will rip on me for that, but some tracks are hard to leave behind. I do feel a bit bad about it though, because I’m depriving someone else of their first copy.

How many jungle records do you own? 

Counting ‘91 hardcore through ‘95 jungle, I have about 7,000. I have around 13,000 records overall. The rest, there's tons of classic house and techno, metal, jazz, hip hop, etc.—stuff like that. 

And there’s kind of a finite stock, right? Like, only so many records were made in that period.

Yeah, but at the same time there was a shocking number of records given the small number of years they were made—like maybe 8,000? There’s gotta be maybe 200 to 500 more than I have total, if you don't get precious about different versions of the records. I finally have caught the new tune and new producer bug a bit though, so it’s not just about 30-year-old tunes for me anymore. I pay attention to what people send me, and look for good new stuff on my own a bit. But also, compare that enjoyment to being in a basement, and digging up a crazy record from ‘93 that's not online in any form, not even Discogs. There’s no contest for me. I'm not even justifying it, but it tickles some sick part of my personality.

No, I mean, that's the digger thing.

Also, I talk about owning all these records, having every jungle record, blah blah. And sure, in a scene of more normal well-adjusted people, I’m probably a freak and an extreme edge case. But within the upper echelon of jungle collectors, I'm nothing to write home about. I have buddies who have been doing this kind of digging since the mid-‘90s, as opposed to the later ‘90s, who actually live in the UK, some of whom were writing and releasing these records back then. Some of them put me to shame, they have tunes I’ll never have. 

The whole point of my record label 8205 Recordings is based on this. It’s recognizing the weird dynamic of me being obsessed for so long, going for rarer and more obscure stuff, trying to get those last rare test presses or dubplates with only one to ten copies existing. It would be me and some other people battling each other to get a copy, trying to pay stupid money for it—it's a waste. We're going to pay how much, just to “win” and get to hoard that one copy? And then the money we pay isn’t going to go to the original artist, but someone who bought a collection secondhand. With dubs, the original artist didn’t even mean for it to be sold, he gave it to a particular DJ to play and test out. And now some random asshole in America, me, is trying to give someone else a bunch of money for it. 

Yeah.

So, yeah, at some point I kind of realized it was sort of sick, not sick, but that there is probably a better ethical way to do the same thing, which is basically try to offer that money to the people who made the tunes when I find them, and do a vinyl label releasing those tunes for the first time. That way the artist gets paid, and more people get to own the tune. 

With this heightened interest in jungle over the past few years, what kind of new tracks are you excited about? Are you into the really purist revivalist tracks, or are you into the music made by people that are doing weird stuff with jungle—stuff that is almost in a breakcore tradition?

It's weird. I have some cognitive dissonance with it, where listening to a very narrow style of music for a long time, you can't help but build up certain biases. So there's certain things, there's a certain particularness that me and my close jungle buddies have about the way that Amen breaks sound, or the beat pattern, stuff like that. For me, I don't actually need it to sound just like ‘93-’95, but there's some sounds that end up sounding awkward and inappropriate to me. I don't know whether it's an uncanny valley thing or what. 

Well, you must be so cued into exactly how this is supposed to sound, according to old records. 

When you get used to it, it's hard not to let that bias you a bit. There's certain things for me, like when people started using the program Recycle years ago, that was a different way of speeding up and chopping up beats. Instead of pitching the whole sample up or being a consistent timestretch, it would just shorten the space between the drums. That has always sounded “wrong” to me personally in a jungle context. Certain things like that will throw me a bit off a track. But more recently, I've just been so burnt out, because for a lot of years, very few people were doing super legitimate old school sounding stuff. Lots of people claimed to do throwback tunes, but they were actually doing 130-ish breaks tunes with a simple loopy Amen on top. Now there's enough sample packs out there. There's YouTube tutorials. There's lots of people doing more old sounding shit.

Yeah, the YouTube stuff is interesting. You can watch somebody tell you exactly how to make jungle the “right” way.

There’s still good tunes being made, but it's sort of brought down the specialness a bit, where I almost prefer hearing weird 160 BPM tracks that don’t even try to be regular jungle. The tutorials have definitely helped people pop up and do some really good shit, but it also has hugely increased the amount of mid-quality stuff, which is frustrating, because so much more stuff isn’t a ten out of ten, or a one or two out of ten. It's tons of four to six out of ten tunes, where you can't just listen to it and instantly be like, Oh this sucks, next track. You have to put more time into figuring out if there’s something special there. 

There's just so much music in the world, and nothing ever really dies. At this point, there's maybe more new jungle tracks than classic-era jungle tracks. 

That's kind of why I don't mind being primarily focused on a retro thing and not primarily pushing brand new sounds, though I’m open to them. Because all music stays around now, there's such a wide range of it out and it's all instantly available. I think by and large, people don't do the thing that I do, which is pinpoint one thing. People will listen to some of the shit that I do, but then they'll also listen to breakcore or Afrobeats or even Korn or something. 

Definitely. 

I remember that driving me crazy because I come from the nineties, you were defining your identity in terms of the subculture you consumed or took part in. And then, when I started making tunes, I was doing splatterbreak crazy music with certain key references. I thought surely the only people who would be down with it would only be people who shared my experience of like, they like drum and bass and breakcore, but then they also like grindcore, fast shit. They're into Italian horror movie soundtracks, and old video games sounds, chiptune stuff. Then I remember looking on last.fm and seeing that some of the people who played my tunes the most, their most played next track was Korn or something like that. And I was thinking, that's not how it's supposed to work—you're only supposed to be into the “cool shit!” That's not how the world works, though. People don’t care, they listen to what they like, as they should.  

A lot of younger kids, those sort of binaries that used to exist, those subcultural markers, those lines in the sand, they just don't exist anymore. I think that's probably how music is going to keep changing. 

Yeah, it's probably for the best, because the line isn't there anymore, we'll finally hear some of those taboo hybrids or things that people didn't do before. Actually you're seeing this a ton—just look at, unfortunately, how the hard, fast, crazy techno has gone off the rails a bit. It went from slowly getting harder, faster and crazier in a good way in my opinion, almost reaching jungle speeds. To now, where it's fully up to the speed that I hoped it would get to, but then it's a lot of pop remixes or speedy trance. It's not wrong, but it’s not for me. The younger kids who want to hear hard, fast banging beats aren’t purists who would never dare listen to a pop song on the radio.

For the John's Music blog readers that may be casual jungle fans or not jungle fans at all, what's a lesser known jungle tune you would recommend for somebody that's trying to dip their toes into the genre?

So there's a jungle record that came out in the Netherlands in 1996, which was actually by the Trance artist Ferry Corsten. 

Oh, wow. 

He did a couple of jungle tracks. The artist name is Skywalker and the track is called “Intentions.” Because it's pressed in the Netherlands, the record pressing isn’t quite as beefy and huge as a UK jungle record, but the production is there and it's a really sick track. And just the fact that it's a crazy obscure record, but by a massively well known artist with millions of fans, and it actually is legitimately as good as any UK jungle track, I think is really cool. 

That says something about that producer’s talent. 

Yeah, for sure. Even back then, without YouTube tutorials or online sample packs, the fact that he could dabble in a genre, make a couple of tunes and have them sound this good—so good they even have a crotchety fan like me convinced… That's a good sign. 

Dev/Null on Instagram and SoundCloud