Download audio file (NaphtaVDaveFanning.mp3)

If you’re only going to buy one drum ‘n’ bass album this decade, it should be this one. (JOHN EDEN)

How about this for an end to 2007? Junglist soldier Naphta drops his long awaited debut LP and trust us it is essential. Available now to buy from The Fear Website.

Also available to buy in dublin from the following fine stores:
Road Records
Spindizzy
All City
City Records
Freebird
Abbey Discs

Read more for a glowing review from Woofah magazine (which usually doesn’t touch Drum and Bass with a stick) “Woofah” review: Naphta Long Time Burning (The Fear CD)

“I left the coastal plains and I wandered inland… and then I came to where… real jungle begins…”

Can one man save drum ‘n’ bass from itself? The current state of play seems to be a fight between 180 bpm anodyne trance vs numbingly obvious ragga breakcore mashups. Naphta is fighting a rearguard action to bring back the thirst for the unpredictable which always made the music so exciting to us jaded old fuckers.

So, a jungle album. I have to put my hand up and say I wasn’t expecting too much of this, but a few tunes in and I was grinning away, ready to step it up like back in the day, much to the amusement of my daughter.

It’s a no-brainer that reigning in the bpms and cliched samples allows you the space for FLOW and FUNK and EXPERIMENTATION, but everyone else seems too young (or too up themselves) to have learned this lesson.

“Jungle Forever!” …but nothing lasts forever.

Tracks like “Bagman Skank” and “Jungle Republic” are beautiful rollers with everything perfectly placed in the mix. It’s achingly good to be reminded of this again, but there’s a tinge of sadness over days gone by as well, like a last dance with your ex-…. Could things have been different, is this just nostalgia or is there a future here? For me this tiny hint of melancholia adds proper depth to the album and stops it being some kind of pub tribute band affair.

But please don’t get me wrong, the album isn’t depressing – it’s totally full on and righteous. For example “Street Dancing” is ultra brock out business that will have you skanking wherever you hear it. “Soundclash” is proper brooding lighta in the air stuff that uses reggae samples with a deftness and subtlety that certain producers should be forced to learn at gunpoint.

Long Time Burning not only points out that emperor d ‘n’ b has lost his clothes, it holds up a massive portrait of him in the glory days of yesteryear.If you’re only going to buy one drum ‘n’ bass album this decade, it should be this one. (JOHN EDEN)