AVAILABLE DIGITALLY NOW AND ALSO ON LIMITED EDITION WHITE LABEL 12” WITH “BEAT 54 (KRYSTAL KLEAR 12” MIX)”
London collective Jungle is a band renowned for perfectly curated remixes of their music. Their half-a-million selling, Brit Award and Mercury Prize-nominated eponymous debut album spawned a string of top drawer remixes from the likes of Soulwax, Special Request, Zomby and Joe Goddard that transported their productions from their Shepherds Bush studio setup to dancefloors around the world.
Today the band reveal a brand new remix from their second album For Ever, which was released to widespread acclaim in September via XL Recordings. It sees Running Back label boss Gerd Janson stepping up to add his exquisite house & disco production touch to Jungle’s “Heavy, California”. Available to stream right now, the remix will also be available on limited edition 12” white label alongside Krystal Klear’s equally emotive take on the band’s “Beat 54 (All Good Now)”.
The 12” track list is:
“Beat 54 (Krystal Klear 12” Mix)”
“Heavy, California (Gerd Janson MPC Translation)”
‘Beat 54’ is taken from Jungle’s second album For Ever, which also features the AA sided singles ‘Happy Man / House In LA’ and ‘Heavy, California / Cherry’. It’s a perfect distillation of Jungle’s sound – the kind of escapist, anthemic, mercurial funk that made us all fall in love with Jungle the first time around but this time more expansive, sophisticated and cinematic than ever before. While their first album was their imaginary soundtrack to the places they had never been, For Ever is inspired by real-life experiences of the places they’d dreamed of for so long. Swapping Shepherds Bush for the Hollywood Hills, J and T set up camp in Los Angeles to write and record the album. Over time, however, their romanticisation of The Californian Dream clashed with the reality of actually living it, the feeling of being adrift on the West Coast compounded by the collapse of long-term relationships. Returning home to London, they teamed up with highly regarded young producer Inflo where they sought to create a “post-apocalyptic radio station playing break up songs”, whittling downloads of ideas this concept spawned into a core 13 tracks. That station and those songs and that journey are the sound of Jungle’s second album For Ever. They had to go away to come home. And what J and T lost in love, they gained in music. For Ever is for real, deeper and higher, more intimate and more expansive, feelgood and, just occasionally, feelbad. It is, then, a proper second album.
