Shabba Ranks Goes Jungle, Thanks To Lost City

You probably know Noah D from his fire-hot releases on LA's SMOG Records. But before he was deep in the dubstep game, Noah was a junglist soldier, with drum & bass tracks coming out on heavy labels like Renegade Hardware and Human. But no matter what tempo he's rocking, you've always been able to hear those smoker's vibes—deep, dubby bass and reggae/dancehall touches all over.

While half of dubstep's gone retro house (who would have thought, eh?), Noah D's refreshing his sound with another retro style: jungle. He's teamed up with longtime friend No Thing to create Lost City, mixing ragga vocal stylings and classic breaks at new and different tempos. Check out this re-rub of Sha-Shabba Ranks' "Ting A Ling" and go like Lost City's Facebook page in order to download it for free, or the Lost City Soundcloud to hear the entire EP.

Here are some words from Noah about this Ting.

Who is your partner in Lost City?
My longtime friend Tom aka No Thing, who is originally from the US dubstep outfit Babylon System. We first met in the mid-90s while attending high school in Cupertino, California. The first time we hung out was at a Rage Against the Machine show and we've been friends ever since.

What are the inspirations of this project and why now?
Earlier last year we were revisiting a lot of old jungle tunes that we hadn't heard in a while and we still felt the same excitement listening to them now as we did back in the day. We thought it would be really fun to bring this somewhat lost sound back to the current "EDM" scene, in the hopes that it could be just as fresh and exciting to a younger audience who may not have experienced it yet. We didn't want to make throw back Jungle tunes so we came up with the simple idea to call our sound "JNGL," illustrating our aim to combine the elements of classic jungle with more current styles like trap, bass music, dubstep, etcetera.

What are your future plans for this project?
We're starting by using a lot of material that directly inspired the project via sampling or remixing but our main goal is to be making more tunes with new original vocals from current artists in the reggae/dancehall, hip-hop, and R&B scenes.

Whats your favorite jungle memory?
To be honest, when I first started going out to clubs for electronic music, jungle had already shifted into darker D&B so I didn't get to witness much jungle first hand. My friends and I still listened to a lot on our own though. Tom had this compilation CD called Toasted that was always on repeat and Prizna ft. Demolition Man "Fire (Urban Shakedown Mix)" was definitely our crew anthem back then. I remember we'd always have it bumping in the car on our way to D&B parties and then while inside I'd be thinking how much I'd prefer to hear that over many of the tunes the DJs were playing. And now, many years later this is our chance to finally bring back those fun, rebellious, bouncy JNGL vibes to the dance!

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