Review Summary: 3.0 good Cyclotron | August 3rd 20
You can practically hear the dust on the cassette. The internet captures the ephemera that is physical media and fossilizes it like an insect in amber. And sometimes we can be thankful for that. So yes, anywhere you can find it,
Riot Allnighter sounds like an maltreated artifact of '90s physical media. Regardless, German DJ Moonraker taps into something more twisted than the average jungle DJ mix of its era. This is about as far removed from the more atmospheric side of the genre as can be; if the lighter side of the genre is dreamy, ethereal, and lush, this is gritty, noisy, and at times, sinister. Barring a few moments of levity, there aren't any delicate synth pads or melodic vocal samples to lure you into a reverie—this is realism in jungle.
The B-side of the tape is where DJ Moonraker's hard-nosed jungle onslaught excels. While the A-side is more reserved in its approach, perhaps to a fault, DJ Moonraker's B-side is somewhat unfettered. Its thick, screaming bass and nervous, crackly percussion are a sort of controlled chaos—manic, yet grounded as if it were simply a mechanical process. There's nothing truly off-the-rails happening here, even if individual segments feel like they might descend into pure noise at any moment; this sort of tension makes the B-side all the more menacing, but it does lose its luster on repeated listens when listeners know that this collapse into madness isn't as imminent as it may seem. Even with this in mind,
Riot Allnighter sounds like a dingy '90s German nightclub frozen in time, with enough pitch-black energy to warrant multiple visits.
