It's very sad news that Daz Ellis has recently died at just 54 years old. For 90s junglists Daz has a very special place in the pantheon of the greats. In 1995 he put out a bunch of amazing records, but two 12s in particular have a strong claim to be the best jungle records of that seminal year, and up there at the top of any all-time greatest jungle records lists.
The back-to-back releases of Oh Gosh and Babylon were lightening in a bottle, Oh Gosh about the most uplifting rootsy amen tear out going, and Babylon surely the most militant smash-the-system hardstep jungle record ever made. Both are marked by incredible drum programming, killer basslines, and the arrangements not just copy and paste jobs, they develop and travel from the top to the last drop. Masterpieces both.
And the B sides of both records are personal favourites too, The Instrumental has got some utterly unique drum programming on it, and Heaven is one I played to death at the time, deep and dubwise, a beautiful heavyweight mystic piece of music.
What I think all Daz's tunes have in common is dub soundsytstem logic...these are tunes that really come to life played on a set with the bass allowed to pump. If you don't play them at volume you miss half the point. I really do think he was a pioneer of that dub-logic jungle sound - he certainly played an important part in it. And with rocksteady legend Alton Ellis as his uncle and his dad also involved in JA music perhaps that's not such a surprise.
Something I never knew until his passing was the he was the man behind setting up Essex pirate radio station Cyndicut FM. This was the station in the far east of London Essex borders and also reached over the Thames estuary to north Kent. It turns out the reason for this wide broadcast zone was that they had the transmitter up on the biggest pylon you've ever seen! Cyndicut is still broadcasting online to this day and remains one of the best pirates in the country
https://cyndicut.net <check them out.
All in all the man is a legend, one of those figures that may not be a household name but has done so much for the culture. A life well lived, and the music lives on. Mix here includes my favourite of his productions, across some of his different aliases. Play it loud.
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