Pioneering jungle drum & bass architect Krust is to launch his own label this week – Wonder Palace.
Having recently secured the full rights to all of his material – a great deal of which has never been digitized or available to stream – Wonder Palace will launch with a series of remastered cuts from across Krust‘s extensive discography entitled Irrational Numbers.
Set for five volumes, released monthly on both vinyl and digital, Irrational Numbers will map out the parameters of Kirk Thompson‘s famously futuristic style with cult classics, slept-on gems, unreleased specials and all innovative missives in between.
Renowned and respected for his prolific output across multiple aliases throughout the 90s and 2000s – and one of the most influential and consistently ahead-of-the-curve protagonists in the game-changing Bristol drum & bass movement of the 90s – the inaugural volume drops Friday July 28 with seven exceptional examples of his forward-thinking approach.
Brief Encounters (Full Cycle, 1997)
Set Speed (V Recordings, 1995)
Jazz Note (V Recordings, 1994)
Priorities (Full Cycle, 1996)
Check Dis Out (V Recordings, 1997)
Vibration (Dope Dragon, 1997)
Maintain (V Recordings, 1995)
While all seven tracks were released within a potent four year period during the mid 90s, between them they follow some of his broadest boldest strokes and highlight how influential his sound was during jungle drum & bass music’s most formative and fired-up eras.
Cuts like Set Speed, Jazz Note, Maintain and Check Dis (which was the B-side to his universal bulldozer funk reloader Warhead) all capture Krust‘s role in the development and sound of Bryan Gee and Jumping Jack Frost‘s seminal V Recordings. Currently celebrating 30 years of forefront jungle manouevres, V Recordings‘ first ever signings were Krust, Suv, DJ Die and Roni Size.
Elsewhere on Irrational Numbers Vol 1 we’re reminded of Krust’s powerful sense of brazen funk and embodiment of b-boy culture on cuts like the Full Cycle banger Priorities and his Dope Dragon basher Vibration (which was released under his Gang Related alias) while the EP opener references the period that has characterised Krust’s whole career: Brief Encounters.
Taken from his Genetic Manipulation EP, an EP that still has the chin strokers rubbing their bristly beards down the nubs over 25 years after its release, Brief Encounters weighs in at an epic 13 minutes (which was mindblowing even back thne) and is a great snapshot of Krust‘s mindset and attitude: From these earliest dispatches to his last album, the critically acclaimed Edge Of Everything on Crosstown Rebels, Kirk Krust Thompson has never followed rules and has always approached his music, art and business on his own terms and in his own way.
“When you want to make something so epic, so next level it takes the world by storm, you have to forget everything you’ve learnt before,” he once told me in an interview on UKF. “To make tracks like Soul In Motion and Genetic Manipulation I had to re-understand everything. Breaks, basses, sounds, arrangement. I had to leave drum & bass. They’re not drum & bass, they’re not jungle. They’re pieces of music. I started to listen to classical music, watch films and read philosophies and watch documentaries and think about my approach that I wanted to take with my art. That’s where I started making art and not music.”
Expect a lot more art on Wonder Palace every month as the Irrational Numbers series continues. We’re excited to see what comes next…
Irrational Numbers Vol 1 is out July 28
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