8205FR001 by Blinded By Science

A few years back, when I used to upload music onto YouTube that wasn't already on there, I put up this tune called Fluctuations by Fuze, which came out on On-line Recordings, but I had it on a compilation called "This Is... Drum & Bass" on Beechwood Music. 7 years later, around October 2022, out of the blue, Dave Ivy (who produces as Fuze and 1/2 of Blinded By Science with Rob Pearson) sent me a really nice message on SoundCloud thanking me for having it on my channel, as someone had linked it to him and he hadn't heard the tune in 25 years!

In that message, he mentioned that Rob had recently pulled out all of the DATs he had of their music, going back to nearly 30 years ago and was in the process of digitising them, which was great news for me, but since Future Retro London is mainly focused on new jungle, I was eager to partner with someone who's more clued up and involved in the releasing of unreleased 90s jungle and drum & bass.

8205 Recordings is an American based record label owned by Dev/Null, who's had music out on earlier Future Retro London releases, who I've done collaborations with in the past on Globex Corp, Lobster Theremin & Bluff Records and has been running a fortnightly radio show called Blog To The Oldskool Radio on a net station called Jungletrain which I got involved in around 2013, which spawned his label. The label specialises in releasing old jungle, hardcore and drum & bass that was made in the 90s and never saw the light of day, so it seemed like a good fit for this project.

When Pete (Dev/Null) visited London in November, we both met up with Dave in person to chat about the plans for this release and then a few months later, Pete was back in London to play a Future Retro London event and we were going to meet both Dave & Rob this time to finalise everything but Pete was unwell and we ended up having a video chat but we got it all sorted in the end!

Big thanks to Dave & Rob for their excellent music & co-operation in the making of this release, for Guillaume on the design of the center labels on the vinyl & to Pete Dev/Null for his remix and for partnering with me on this release.

The Jungle Testing Grounds

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