Renegade Snares: The Resistance And Resilience Of Drum & Bass

by Ben Murphy, Carl Loben

Renegade Snares is the definitive book on drum & bass music. Pieced together using original interviews conducted with all the scene’s main players, it traces the history of jungle/drum & bass from its early roots in sound system culture and rave music right through to the present day. With its hyperspeed breakbeats, warping bass pressure, and vast spectrum of sounds, drum & bass quick spawned a whole new movement in youth culture. What began as an outlaw street reverberation from the inner cities of Britain developed into a Mercury-winning, chart-topping, world-conquering genre in just a few short years. The frontier-breaking sorcery that emanated from its foundational producers and DJs pushed new levels of sonic science into the music world, and it has influenced all other electronic music genres in assorted ways. From the shock of the new to a global phenomenon, drum & bass has morphed from frowned-upon marginalisation to establishment approval—and back again. A multicultural triumph, it is a story of resistance and resilience that takes in pioneers such as Goldie, Roni Size, Kemistry & Storm, Photek, Fabio & Grooverider, and many more renegade mavericks—even, at one point, David Bowie. With vivid descriptions of key tracks and a detailed lineage of the scene’s development, Renegade Snares traces the genre’s gestation while also examining its musical twists and turns, worldwide spread, and enduring popularity. And, ultimately, it surely a genre of music with such a significant grounding in black music culture, developed by so many black pioneers in its formative years, could never be ‘whitewashed’ . . . could it?

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Cultural, History

352 pages, Paperback

Published October 12, 2021

Reviews

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve considered myself a big fan of jungle/drum and bass for the past ten years from the tender age of 15 (living over 200 miles away from London). Jesus Christ I can’t begin to explain how ignorant I’ve been to lots of things within a the scene. In those 10 years I have seen and made my own assumptions on lots of things, this book completely encapsulates what the music is and where it comes from. A must read for any fan of the music!

[Tony Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not bad but a bit average and could have been a lot better.
This book tried to cover the jungle and drum + bass scene from the early 90s onwards.
It does a decent enough job but there are some huge omissions.
Look, I get that they can’t cover everything but to leave out interviews with key players like the reinforced crew, moving shadow, early renegade records etc is just unforgivable.
The problem with these kinds of books is they spread themselves too thinly trying to cover all facets of the scene.
Instead of splitting the book into a couple of volumes which would have worked better.
Instead we get whistle stop chapters on the usual players with very little detail on the margins of the scene, thereby instantly ignoring valuable contributions from many much more interesting and fairly undocumented characters like Voyager, Lucky Spin records, DJTrax, DJ Pulse, KMC, Blu Mar Ten, MC Conrad, Basement records, Precious materials etc etc.
I was there at the time going to those clubs and record shops.
The story needs a detailed and sympathetic book to do it justice.

[Meteorite_cufflink · Rating 3 out of 5]

4 stars for a historical overview of the musical genre I've loved since I was 14 years old.... And 2 stars for the writing, which, unfortunately, uses a lot of and-then-and-then to tell the story of drum 'n bass. I also noticed overlap between chapters and paragraphs on artists or tunes appearing in more than one place.

[Pete Judge · Rating 4 out of 5]

this was a very comprehensive history of dnb, which i enjoyed a lot. it covered all the main sub genres. what i would have liked to see more of is the recent history, which was skimmed over. obviously the 2000s and 2010s saw less innovation but i’d be interested in how this was perceived