We’re tracking Jungle Drum & Bass’s journey through Ireland, and turns out, some of the Emerald Isle’s finest Promoters, Producers and DJs were keen to chat to us about all things Irish Jungle Drum & Bass Culture!
Read on for our first round of interviews…
Stella – Rave Culture Galway
Tell us about Rave Culture Galway.
Rave Culture Galway is a grassroots crew throwing acid techno and drum & bass parties out on the wild west coast of Ireland. We’re all about proper underground vibes, no frills, just big tunes, good people, and a sound system that does the job. From packed out club nights to outdoor summer raves (weather permitting), it’s all DIY, inclusive, and driven by a love for the rave. Galway’s small, but the energy’s massive.
Since you started mixing, what has motivated you to keep coming back for more and pushing yourself forward?
Honestly, there are so many things I love about DJing, but if I had to pick three, first, it’s the connection with the crowd, there’s nothing like watching people lose themselves in the music you’re blending and getting into a flow state yourself. Second, I’d say the creativity, digging for jungle tracks, finding those rare gems, and crafting sets that tell a story keeps me inspired. Third, it’s the growth, I push myself to constantly level up, try new things, and really own my sound. Every set is a chance to go deeper.
You play out a ton, please tell our audience about the Jungle Drum & Bass scene in Ireland.
Yeah, the jungle and drum & bass scene in Ireland is definitely growing, and it’s full of passion. It’s still a bit underground compared to other genres, but that just makes it feel more special, like you’re part of something real. There’s a solid community here, especially in Ireland’s major cities like Dublin, Galway, Limerick, Cork and Belfast, and people show up ready to rave every time. You’ve got collectives like Rise Dublin, Amen DnB Belfast, Crilli DnB, Outlaw’d, Rave Culture Galway, Bad Arts Collective, and Puzzle pushing the sound forward and DJs putting serious heart into their sets, as well as labels like Galway’s Rua Sound, and Limerick’s Subtle Audio, and Asterizm Records. It’s raw, it’s heavy, and there’s a real love for the music. I’m proud to be part of it and to see it getting louder.
Find Stella on: Instagram, Soundcloud and Mixcloud
Rohan Reilly – Bassbin Recordings
Bassbin Recordings is the backbone of Irish Jungle and Drum n’ Bass, what were some of the challenges you experienced running the label?
Bassbin was a club first, then a record label. I also owned a record shop. All of these worked in tandem. I got to know the DJs and artists through the club nights and through the record shop, I built relationships with the distributors. Both the club and record shop were fundamental in making it easier to start an Irish Drum n Bass label, when at the time it was predominantly a UK phenomenon.
It started with Irish producers, we had a basement studio where Myself and Naptha worked with other producers and Beta 2 and Zero T were also working together. After the first four releases, we started to release music from international artists with Breakage being the first.
This was before Aim, Whatsapp, or Instagram so being in Ireland it was much more difficult to contact new artists. I would have to call artists at home, often speaking to their parents first.
I remember speaking to Senses on the phone one day and he was raving about Breakage’s track, ‘So Vain’. I hadn’t heard it at this point. I called Breakage straight away and said I wanted it. I had only listened to it on the phone, but could tell straight away it was a Bassbin tune. ‘So Vain’ crossed a lot of styles and was played by so many DJ’s across the scene.
I would fly to London and master the 12’s at The Exchange or Metropolis Mastering, pop down to SRD and talk about scheduling new artists and pick up as many white labels as I could. Then I would go to Music House and cut some dubplates. Everything took longer, was costly, but very personal.
Aim and CD decks changed everything, though. They came about at a similar time. Suddenly, I had instant contact with producers and djs around the world. I could send Bassbin tunes to dj’s directly and producers didn’t have to post me cds, I could burn new tunes and play them in the club that weekend. At this point, the label grew very quickly, it was a very exciting and prolific time.
As technology advanced MP3’s and Internet Record shops also arrived. This reduced sales hugely for vinyl releases both on the label and in the record shop, and ultimately, I closed both over a couple of years.
The artists that we had on the label such as Breakage, Zero T, Fracture & Neptune, Beta 2, Equinox, Digital, Martyn, Alix Perez, Sabre, Seba and Paradox and many others all went on to greater things, and are still producing brilliant music today so I am very proud of what we achieved from our humble beginnings in Dublin.
What have you been up to musically and other passions in your life since Bassbin?
Musically, there has been very little since I folded the label in 2009, I moved to Barcelona and lost touch with the scene. I started taking photographs and that became my focus.
I am back in Ireland, but living in West Cork. I have been a photographer for the last 15 years, I am now using my eyes instead of my ears and traveling the world photographing instead of DJing. There are some similarities and the experience of running a record shop and label has definitely helped with owning my own gallery and finding a style.
We have run a couple of reunion nights on Bassbin’s 20th and 25th birthday in Ireland and in London with Rupture. It was a lot of fun seeing old friends and catching up with them all.
Do you have any plans to start up Bassbin again or another label in the future?
I have no plans to relaunch Bassbin, it was a special period in time for all of us, and it would be impossible to try and recreate it. I wouldn’t want to tarnish the legacy or the memories we all have.
Bassbin was very much a Dublin club and label. Bassbin was a collective, we had a huge roster of residents. The label’s sound was influenced by Don Rosco who worked in the record shop and helped run the club nights, and Naphta who was a Bassbin resident from the start.
I have thought about starting a new label by myself at various points over the last 10 years. I have a logo and name in mind, thoughts on the style of music that would work with my minimal photography. I am quite busy at the moment and I won’t start a project until I can give it my full attention.
I keep up to date with new music and speak to some of the producers from time to time, so you never know.
Find Rohan’s Photography here
Zero T
You’ve released on foundational irish label Bassbin Recordings, tell our All Crews audience about the early days of the Irish DNB/Jungle scene.
The D&B scene began in earnest in 1996 when two entities started booking big names from the UK to come and play in Dublin: Bassbin and Quadraphonic. Rohan & Naphta were the Bassbin founders and it continued for a couple of years as a monthly club night, with one of them playing support to the likes of Doc Scott, 4hero, Photek, Ed Rush, Trace, Fierce, Nico, Optical, Matrix etc. By 1998 a group of local DJs had morphed into the Bassbin crew (Don Rosco, Triple A, Kenny & Keevo, Zero Tolerance (aka me), Elmo, The Clockers, Golden Maverick, Genie & Ali, Droid & Slug, Psyence, MCs Wuzza & Kriminal K) . Led by Rohan & Naphta, we started a weekly club night where guests from the UK were less frequent. At the same time we all started dipping our toes into production and by early 2000 we had Bassbin Recordings 001 ready to release. This featured myself and Naphta on one side and Rohan & Elmo on the flip.
I had also started producing with Dom, Beta 2 at this time and through a chance meeting at their gig in Dublin, 4hero signed some of our first songs to Reinforced for their Second Wave era of releases. This was where we met James Breakage and connected him with Bassbin and the second phase of Bassbin Recordings began. Up to that point it had just been music made by original Bassbin crew members, but it quickly became an international thing with some amazing artists providing releases: Digital, Paradox, Fracture & Neptune, Seba, Martyn, Alix Perez, Sabre (Ivy Lab) and of course our countryman Calibre, to name a few. Calibre had his first release years earlier with Bassbin rivals Quadraphonic. They booked the likes of Fabio & Grooverider, Roni Size, LTJ Bukem, Andy C etc and that’s where he first met Fabio (at U2’s club The Kitchen). By the mid 2000s and the dawn of the digital age, Rohan decided to wrap up the label, which had been exclusively vinyl releases. This coincided with a downturn in club cultures’ popularity in Ireland. Compounded with draconian licensing laws and the smoking ban, it proved to be the end of the golden age of Irish clubbing. This was also around the time I moved to London. There have been promoters and crews fighting to keep the scene alive in Ireland since then (Spectrum, Absys Records, Crilli Belfast etc) but that’s best spoken about by someone who was present.
For all of the 90s and early 00s, rave culture was absolutely massive all over Ireland, with 1210’s outselling guitars for more than a decade and there were clubs, festivals and illegal raves everywhere, all the time. There were DNB crews in Belfast, Cork, Galway, Limerick, Dundalk, etc and we all came together to do a weekender called Jungle Republic on Valentia island off the coast of Kerry. Hosted by Jet-Li at his family’s historic hotel (also where Calibre composed his Valentia LP on the old house piano), DJs from all over Ireland brought the ruckus for 2 solid days of madness! There are whispers of a Jungle Republic reunion festival at some point, I really hope that happens.
Please tell our All Crews readers about your lower tempo moniker, Bruk Rogers.
I always loved the broken beat/bruk genre from its inception in the late 90s and early 00s. Making music for Reinforced at that time meant I got to hang out at Dollis Hill and get exposed to all the great music that 4hero and all the Bugz in the Attic crew were making. Fast forward to Covid; I was booked to play the virtual version of Gilles Peterson’s We Out Here festival and had to play 2 hours. I decided it would be boring to play 2 hours of D&B and played bruk for the first hour and got such a buzz from it that I went home and made a tune. I sent it to Afronaut & Mark Force (Bugz In The Attic members) and they released it on their Co-Operation label. I followed this up with an EP (Off Planet) for them and then ended up signing to Brighton label Tru Thoughts for a multi LP deal. The first LP (Loopholes) came out in May 2024 and I’m in the middle of LP 2 at the moment. It’s been an amazing journey so far and is giving me new life in a creative sense. I love D&B but it can feel like a prison sometimes. I mean that in a musical sense, there’s only so many rhythms that work at 174bpm.
What are some of your life passions outside of music?
Football is definitely one, I play 5 a side twice a week and can never watch enough. I’m also an avid collector of jerseys; the more obscure the better. Playing is such an important thing for me, especially mentally. It’s an essential anchor for my week, it resets me and it’s a couple of hours in the week when my brain is ‘off’, I need that, hahah. Other interests include film, stand-up comedy, reading non-fiction & history and travelling. Nothing teaches you more than travelling the world.
Find Zero T on: Instagram, Soundcloud
Beta 2
What do you feel are your 3 most significant music-based accomplishments to date.
My 3 most significant music based accomplishments to date would be:
1) Signing to Reinforced Records, Metalheadz and Bassbin Recordings. All 3 are labels I love and it is incredible to be a part of their catalogue history. I was also the first Irish person to sign to both Metalheadz and Reinforced.
2) Remixing Goldie’s amazing song,’State Of Mind’. This was a complete honour to do so and part of it was Goldie also approving it.
3) Creating Searchlight with Cian and releasing the self-titled Searchlight album. This was an amazing achievement considering we did it during Covid and most of it was done remotely with artists based in different countries.
What are you looking to accomplish tunes-wise in the future?
I would like to write more string/orchestral based music for both slower and DnB tempos. I am also creating an alias for slower tempo material as I have always been writing slower tempo stuff and I have written quite a bit of it over the last year. Some of it I think is nearly ready to be released so I would like to get it out there. I would also like to collaborate with more musicians for both slower tempo music and Drum N Bass and to write more Searchlight material with different artists and musicians. Lastly, I would like to write/score a picture too, of which I have done a small bit in the past.
Please tell our audience about SearchLight Music.
Searchlight is a collaboration between myself & Cian (Zero T). It’s basically a mix of all of the genere’s we love outside of DnB, like Jazz, HipHop, Soul, Neo Soul, Dub, Jazz Fusion and Funk. For the first album we have done, we collaborated with many incredible singers, rappers & musicians. Searchlight is also about changing up genres throughout the album and also during a song. Like starting with HipHop style and changing to Jazz midway through the song and back to HipHop again. There is more Searchlight material in the pipeline so watch this space.
Find Beta 2 on: Instagram, Soundcloud
Ricky Force
You have one of the best monikers in Jungle/DNB in my opinion, can you please tell our audience what’s behind your name, Ricky Force.
Has Irish culture shaped you as an artist?
Find Ricky on: Instagram
Code
Please tell our All Crews audience about your labels, Subtle Audio Recordings & Bustle Beats.
Hey all, and let me just take this chance to give a shout out to all the people supporting the labels and also to everyone keepin’ the sound of breakbeat DnB / Jungle alive !
So, I kicked off Subtle Audio back in 2005, it had actually been in the works for maybe 2 years before that, but it took awhile to get things in place and figure it all out.
Being based in a small country village near Limerick in Ireland, I was quite lucky to get into DnB / Jungle / Hardcore around ’92 and it was the breakbeats and energy that I was drawn to. I continued to follow the sound in the years that followed and gradually amassed a sizeable record collection and began DJ’ing myself in 1996. By the time I started a night with some other local Dj’s in 2000, it was obvious that the music had changed quite considerably. I could still find music that I enjoyed playing, but it was getting harder and harder to piece together a set of music that I really felt I could get behind and that was true to the heritage of the artists and labels I listened to in the early days, labels like Reinforced, Good Looking, Certificate 18, Timeless, Metalheadz, Brain Records, Rugged Vinyl, Moving Shadow, Suburban Base etc.
I was looking for like-minded people, we were already booking some of the Bassbin Dj’s to play in Limerick, the likes of Beta 2 and Zero T who were making heavily breakbeat orientated beats at that time and then I made some connections with people like Chris Inperspective when I went across to the UK to check out Breakage and Senses playing at the Technicality night late in 2002. One of the few nights dedicated to the breakbeat side of the music at that stage. I brought the 3 of them as well as Equinox to play a few shows in Ireland in March, 2003. I was also linking up with other producers online as I had been active on different forums for a few years. Subvert Central in particular was a place where there was a determination to bring back the DIY ethos and bring back the breaks and a focus to some of the styles and sounds that were being under-represented.
I got some demo’s from Equinox and Senses that I really liked, as well as from Alpha Omega and others and I was hearing demos from lots of producers whose music was great but that didn’t have an outlet. There were only a handful of labels active at the time that would consider releasing that breakbeat sound, Bassbin, Offshore, Inperspective, Streetbeats, Breakbeat Science, and Reinforced were still running at the time too, but there needed to be more and I thought I might be able to do something to help keep the sound alive. That’s where Subtle Audio came from, as well as focussing on the breakbeats, I wanted it to be a place for some slightly more experimental styles, so not just repeating what had gone before, but trying to progress things. Bustle Beats was launched in 2012 and that’s a sub-label for more dancefloor orientated stuff and it’s maybe a bit more ‘fun’ at times with the cartoon artwork and all that.
As head of a label, have you learned any valuable lessons over the years?
I think I learned most of the lessons before I ever started the label at all, learning from what I perceived as mistakes that other labels had made in diluting the sound and getting too far away from what DnB / Jungle was meant to be and represent. I always wanted to stick with the mission of highlighting really good breakbeat driven sounds and if there’s nothing around that’s really inspiring to me I just won’t release anything for a while. I’d rather wait until the right music comes along. I’ve always thought it was a good idea to take care of at least a percentage of my own distribution, I used to see Reinforced operate in that way going back to the early 90’s. I could see it would help to create a stronger link with the supporters and help the label’s longevity and I think that’s proven to be the case. It has also helped me to avoid, or at least lessen the exposure to distributor liquidation scenarios over the years. I was finally caught by that a few years ago and it did reinforce my conviction that I should continue to operate the way I do, trying to sell a good percentage of each pressing myself.
What do you see in the future for Subtle Audio & Bustle Beats?
It’s our 20th anniversary this year ! The future is a serious hangover.
Haha, but yeah, I still have plenty of plans for new releases on both imprints. It’s been exciting to see new artists coming through, some have been in the music quite awhile but are really coming into their own in terms of production level and productivity, the likes of Krugah, Opius, Peeb, Duburban, Abstract Drumz, NonRev and others.
I do want to keep true to the style and sound of the label, there has been a huge resurgence in the Jungle sound over the last few years, but for me there is quite a lot of re-hashing of what I’ve already heard in the early 90’s. Some of it is REALLY well done, but overall I’d like to hear people using some different breaks and trying to put their own stamp on the sound a bit more. Hopefully there’ll be more of that in the years to come, and if so, then I’d love to be releasing artists going in that direction.
We have a new compilation album lined up for later in the year, entitled ‘Our Atmosphere’ which is a collection of atmospheric style tunes but with plenty of heavy breaks and basslines. I’m excited to get that one out, it’s been quite a while in the works. Also, I just had one of my favourite producers Arcon 2 remix something by Mecca & myself called ‘In Cold Blood’ the original came out on Subtle Audio in 2015, that’s something else for a future release. I have quite a few tracks lined up for a Bustle Beats compilation release too, hopefully that one will be dropping early in 2026 !
Find Subtle Audio on: Instagram, Soundcloud
