Jungle Confessions: “It was a secret community that you wanted to be a part of”
Day 11 is dedicated to Nufound – star of many enthusiastic dancefloor snapshots, builder of bikes and last but not least, the man behind what several JUngLE calendar regulars have called ”Best thing to happen in 2016”: The All Jungle parties at Loppen, bringing back the oldskool jungle vibes from the 90s. Big up Nufie!
Nufie feeling it at Culture Box. Photo by Miss Popo.
When did you become a junglist?
“Someone brought a walkman and a cassette tape with jungle on it to school in ’93. . It was at Det Fri Gymnasium at Christianshavn. And I was thinking ”what iiiiiis that…?!” I couldn’t make heads or tails of it at first and I had been playing music all my life up until then, in bands and such. The tape was a mix. It was probably made by Nis or Opiate. And then I went to one of the first parties at Operaen. I was about 18 at the time.”
Nufie loosing at Trivial Pursuit because Svingsen and Chriszka the Time Traveller ARE WINNING.
Why do you love jungle?
“I think we were missing some sound that we could truly identify with back then. There was American hiphop and American heroin rock and you wanted to identify with it, but you couldn’t, really. And then this new sound just came in from London and it just matched us completely. That was us, that was what we were! The sound was wild, it had lots of energy, you could dance to it all night. And it was something noone had ever heard before. So completely new and crazy. It mixed all the genres. Rock and hiphop and everything. Hard beats and lots of humour and crazy samples. There you were, as a teenager, not really knowing where you belonged, and there it was, this community from London showing you the way. It seemed slightly dangerous, too, compellingly dangerous. It was underground, it was secret. It was a secret community that you wanted to be a part of.”
Nufie feels part of the community at the Seba party at Culture Box, 2006. Caught by Vitus.
How does raving make the world better?
“There’s a special unity to it. Thousands of people meeting to enjoy something that really means something to them. And you can see it in the eyes of the others. You don’t have to know them, you can see it in their eyes that they feel the same way. It gives you hope. That’s what it was like for me in the beginning. I didn’t know the people I would be raving with that night. But I had the flyer, so I knew where the rave was, and I would get ready listening to jungle at home and then just go to the rave and walk in through the doors and it felt like a private invitation.”
Nufound and Chriszka the Time Traveller feeling it synchronically at the Kasra party at Culture Box. Caught by Miss Popo.
How are you spreading the jungle gospel?
I’m doing the All Jungle parties at Loppen – dedicated to reviving the vibe from the 90s. Because it was so good back then. There are so many people who remember the parties from back then, and they all show up. And those who are too young to remember or too young to have been there themselves get a chance to experience how awesome it is. There’s something really special about the old vinyls. The genre has so much to offer, still. And we promote the parties with flyers like in the old days, too. So that people can hold a physical object in their hand representing something to look forward to. I miss that, now that everything is digital. So I’m doing the parties to revive the vibe from back then. We have to keep going – there are so many good dj’s in Copenhagen, and so many great people. We will do a couple more decades of this, haha. The next All Jungle is on May 20th 2017. Last time we focused on 1994-95. In May we will go even further back, to ’91-’93.
Intense dance floor moment at Culture Box. Caught by Miss Popo.
What’s your favourite tune?
Dream Team with Stamina.
It has all the elements of a proper jungle tune. Sick breaks. Crazy drums. Sirens, horns and ragga samples. It’s my fave.
What’s your best party moment ever?
I have to say all the parties at Operaen. But that’s quite a span of years. And the big parties in The Grey Hall back then. With a massive stage and MC’s. And some of the very very first RAW parties. They had a really awesome vibe.
Nufound floats above a very junglistic group hug.
What’s the best thing that happened this year?
“Definitely All Jungle. I had been missing that vibe terribly, and we succeeded in recreating it. I had to do the parties, because I really felt that something was missing. We had so many great years at Culture Box, too, and then it was all gone. I found an old mixtape with Dj Jeffy. It was called Jungle Spliff. And then I started bying all the vinyls from that mix on Discogs. It was all 93-95 tunes and I was at my decks mixing them and I justr thought ’fuck, this is crazy, we have to do a party and play this again. It will work, definitely’. And it really felt like jumping into a time warp, shooting us all 20 years back. It was an out of body experience. It was in the original part of town, at Christiania, and it was the right dj’s, the right lights, the right everything. And we just wanna pay tribute to the old tunes. So many other people play the new stuff. Oldskool jungle is… they were pioneers. It just hits you.”
What’s your favourite track that’s not jungle?
“It’s a classic, but Jean Michel Jarre, Oxygen part 4. It has that spacey dreamy feeling to it that I find important. It lifts you to a different place. Lots of other tracks and genres do that, too, but this piece in particular. If a spaceship comes by and takes us all they could very well be playing this track in the lounge.”
What have you learnt this year?
“That we sould pollute less. I was travelling in Vietnam at the beginning of the year, and I just got home from Kenya, and we really have to take care of our environment more and watch out for the global warming. We saw som sick stuff in Kenya with lakes that have risen 20 meters and roads that have disappeared. We went to this place that used to be pink with flamingoes and they had all migrated to somewhere else. We all have to start with ourselves. I do little things. I never throw my cigarette butts anywhere. And I use the bike.”
Nufie and Chriszka The Time Traveller, surrounded by nature, like proper junglists.
What’s your favourite JUngLe calendar post?
The 7 saddest jungle tunes ever. I’m a sucker for sad drum’n’bass tunses. My own favourite sad tune is Simon V – When Fancies Speak. Man, that’s sad.
Listen to Chriszka the Time Traveller’s selection of the 7 saddest jungle tunes ever here.
Do you want more Nufound? Check out his soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/cbakpedersen
And put down the date of the next All Jungle party at Loppen in your calendar: 20th of May 2017. Good music and good vibes guaranteed.
This post would be appropriate to reread today: Flyer, flyers, flyers everywhere
Did you miss a day of JUngLE? Go to JUngLEkalenderen
Christina Majcher 