Last week I found this site called Jungle’n’Wobbles.
I’m not sure anymore if it was through facebook or twitter. Maybe it
was just through random googling. Anyways, I must have seen a short line
mentioning something about creative commons music and the name of the
site didn’t seem familiar so I clicked to check it out. I landed on a
wordpress page with a questionable multitude of colors and fonts, the
kind of stuff that makes graphic designers cringe in pain, but most
people seem to ignore. The top bar was what struck my interest.
Their main focus seemed to be their radio program. So, if you are
under proper listening conditions, please do take a couple of seconds to
initiate the streaming of one of their random radio sessions archived right here before proceeding to read any further. Thanks.
Not only did they operate a radio show, they also seemed to blog
about free music, host a DJ sets archive, maintain an index of netlabels
and curate their own releases in parallel under their own netlabels.
Reading diagonally they seemed to be about all things dub. Ambient dub,
reggae dub, techno dub, 2-step, techstep, jungle, drum’n’bass, dubstep.
Jah man! Feel da bass! What?! No link to Enough Records Dubstep compilations and releases?! Have to email them about it!!
I thought to myself. And since I was already considering emailing them
anyway, why not write a small interview for netlabelism at the same
time? So I sent them a few questions and Quoob was kind enough to reply.
Can you tell us a little bit about who runs Jungle’n’Wobble? And why it was formed?
Right, where to start?… Behind J’n’W it’s two of us, me [aka quoob
aka Fabio] and tre791 [aka Alessandro], both from Rome. We have known
each other for over a decade and also lived together in Amsterdam for 3
years. Here in the Dam we developed a maniacal love and interest for
underground stuff, for anything that was unknown and dirty but sonically
interesting and exciting. Then me and Alessandro lost contact for a
while, he went back to Rome and I moved to Scotland, where I’m still
living! And once we met again we decided it was time to put our brains
together and do what we always dreamed of doing… start a radio show.
Our common ground of interest was electronic music, and in particular
dub, which evolves naturally into jungle and drum ‘n bass. Dubstep was
the trend of the moment so we decided to add it to the list. I should
add that those genres were also the soundtrack of our years spent in the
Dam. But the main reason was to create an outlet for all the amazing
underground producers that might never get the chance to hear their
productions played on air otherwise. Millions of beautiful tracks and
projects are out there but nobody knows about it just because MTV
doesn’t play them! So… here we are to blast them tunes!
Well, at this point it was just a matter of getting out to the
public. Jungle’n’Wobbles Radio was born in September 2010. We thought
that we needed to let people know what we were broadcasting, and even
more importantly: promote those producers and their work, their links,
their websites. So we set up a blog where we would post anything related
to those main four genres that we believe deserves attention, our
podcasts, events and sometimes art.
We started out very slowly, with playing tracks we downloaded here
and there and then contacting those producers and netlabels we were
showcasing during the show. Slowly the word spread… People loved our
attitude and passion but I think that even more than that, people just
loved the attention we gave them.
I noticed on your site you operate several things at once, a
blog where you post new audio finds, you run a radio, host a dj set
podcast of sorts and operate a netlabel on top of that?
A year on we asked ourselves: what’s next? Well, the answer to that
was: “Let’s create our own label.” Allesandro and Mauro started
Ephedrina Netlabel, which we consider a kind of lab-label where
experiments are proposed to bigger audience, with no limitation of
genres. Because we were already running a blog and a radio show, it was
pretty easy for us to promote those releases as well. About a year later
I started nurturing the newborn DubCombe Records (specialised only in
dub, digi dub, dub techno) which is mostly looked after by me, though
important decisions are still made by the two of us.
So by now we run two netlabels, and everything is completely no
profit. I think we might be crazy. The second release for DubCombe is
happening on the 1st of June. The producer is Mildtape from Turin, Italy
and the EP is called ‘Coat Rack’. We met Mildtape through J’n’W and we
wanted him to release with us and now this is really happening. The
podcast and the other shows you see on the radio are an attempt to make
Jungle’n’Wobbles more interesting, and always more appealing to more and
more people and again, giving the opportunity to other passionate
individuals to have their shot and little piece of fame!
Did this connection happen as a natural process of how you guys are used to promote music online?
The connections are born naturally. Like I said before, people love
the attention we give to them and they are more than happy to share
their material and art and we just have to push it in the audience’s
face until they wake up and understand that Skrillex is nothing more
than a musical McDonalds.
We wish we could do more, to be honest, do proper ads and good
publicity, but we live on zero budget so all the promo has to be done on
social networks, blogs etc which are still free to use. The whole is
pretty much improvised or at least was in the beginning, now we know
were to post things and for who… What we do is basically try to make
people interested and they will make others interested and… domino
effect! This means we will continue operating in more of an underground
scene, but maybe this is what makes J’n’W so real.
Where do you find the motivation to operate all these things at the same time?
Right, join me for a little experiment. Put the best record you have
at home on the turntable, or your favorite tune in your iPod. Put the
headphones on and press play. Close your eyes and think about what you
feel. The memories, the goosebumps, that tickle in your stomach. Then,
think of the best live show you’ve ever seen, the best club party you’ve
ever been to. Now stop and remember the fun, remember the faces, the
vibrations of the bassline in your heart, the happiness, got it? Well,
that is exactly what motivates us. Music and all the beautiful things
around it.
