Star Wars

I love nothing more than the original trilogy of Star Wars. The wonder I had watching them as a kid has remained with me to the this day. When I heard about the prequels I was very excited just like everyone else. And just like everyone else I was mainly disappointed.

Now whilst the prequels contain some excellent elements overall they were poorly acted and scripted leaving them feeling clunky and almost dumbed down.

I do believe there were better ways to tell this story further. Whether making further sequels now will be it I do not know?

Disney's take over of LucasFilm is certainly remarkable and they seem to be set on snapping up franchises at the moment and the work they have done so far with Marvel had been very good. But in the film world can they redeem the Star Wars reputation?

I was excited about a Star Wars TV show, I thought it could have been made intelligently dealing with the fallout of the Empire and what the rebels will do now? Make sure there are no more Sith Lords? Maintain the teachings of the force?

Would a film be able to deal with these issues whilst maintaining the wonder of the Star Wars universe? No one liked the political content of the prequels as it was slow and full of in relevant dialogue.

There is a case for blockbusters becoming more intelligent, look at Christopher Nolan's films, so maybe the world is ready to handle a Star Wars movie that has as many questions to answer as well as finding new characters to go on a journey with.

Whatever's happens I will be excited to see the film just as I was when queuing up for The Phantom Menace. Expectations will be higher this time and there have been many good books set after The Return Of The Jedi so is adapting one of them a likely route or does Mr Lucas have a very definitive version of where to go in his head?

I just hoped to be wowed.

A brief musical journey

My passion in life is music specifically Drum and Bass and Jungle hence the Junglist bit.

To me nothing sounds greater than the sound of a low frequency bass tone. I think I developed the love of this sound from the moment in Star Wars: A New Hope when Obi Wan Kenobi turns off the tractor beam aboard the Death Star. It was such a lovely deep sound.

So when I progressed through my musical life journey from pop to dance music and Jungle developed and met me around 1995 I found something that inspired me and made my hairs stick up.

The diversity, the bpm, the amen break are all staple ingredients of my love for the musical genre. I love how it has been around for 20 years still largely untouched by the mainstream but still thrives and grows and underpins much of what makes modern music good. It has points in the scene where the music stops progressing and you find yourself listening around for new sounds then all of a sudden a handful of artists spin it on it's head again and the scene just lifts higher than ever again.

I cheated on this music for a good many years, from around 1999 to around 2008 and I developed a huge passion for Hip Hop probably because of the samples often used in Jungle. I consumed so much Hip Hop music in this time I was buying so many albums form the early years through to every new release. Some of it is fantastic but the newer records started lacking anything that was good about old Hip Hop and I found myself drawn back to Jungle/Drum and Bass.

2008 probably wasn't the greatest year for Drum and Bass but as my soul seems naturally locked into the groove between the snare hits I started finding out about what I had missed since the turn of the century. I guess I didn't really miss much but not long after I came back to it the music starts picking up, becoming inventive again. Wowing me.

Right now the music is fantastic and there are a number of record labels carrying on the good work from the Jungle heyday of and labels like Moving Shadow, Suburban Base, Reinforced. I follow the output of the newer labels such as Ingredients, Dispatch, Critical as much as I look for artists whose work I admire.

A brief history of my love for Jungle. This record below inspires me so much.

Peace.