DJ Trace - 21st And South (Sm:)e Communications, 1997)
Although DnB and Jungle came out of the musical melting pots that are London and Bristol it quickly spread across the globe. In America one of the labels pushing the sound was Sm:)e Communications, a subsidiary of the Hip-Hop imprint Profile Records. They licensed tracks from UK labels including Moving Shadow and Reinforced as well as putting out material from US producers. One of the guys involved in running Sm:)e was DJ DB AKA DB Burkeman, a British DJ who had moved to New York in 1989. He mixed TheHistory Of Our World LP which was the first DnB album released stateside.
Another guy who played a large role in bringing DnB to the USA was DJ Trace. He went over to Philadelphia as early as '93 with Ryme Tyme and played at a rave in Allentown, Pennsylvania. This led to a invitation to play at NASA, a New York club which was co-run by DJ DB. Trace recently recalled to UKF:
"We came down and played this set pretty much all jungle, lots of dubplates. They’d never heard anything like it. It went off. Anyway, the owners were DB and Scotto. DB had a label called Smile and asked if I wanted to do a track for it. I thought no problem"
That release was Have You Know / West Coast Flavor and then in 1996, just as Techstep was blowing up, Trace moved to Philadelphia and this relocation inspired his second 12" for Sm:)e.
'21st And South' refers to a location in Philly, the intersection of South Street and 21st Street. Like most vinyl releases on Sm:)e it came on a coloured 10", in this case white, and the sticker included a shout out reading: MAD RESPECT TO THE PHILLY HARD STEP INC. As you might expect for a Trace tune in '97, this is a techstep in style but unlike many of his other productions this is not an all out assault. It opens with ominous echoed synth before crunchy drums enter. While the Trace staple Tramen break is deployed it is fairly low-key in the mix and there's no distorted Reese bassline either as he opts for square wave bass reminiscent of Dope Dragon releases of the time. But this certainly isn't a jump-up tune as that menacing undertone is always there.
You can hear ninety minutes of Trace on the Bassquake radio show broadcast on Princeton University's 103.3 WPRB in May 1997, around the time '21st And South' was released. Presented by Michelle Sainte, the show was one of the few places to hear DnB on FM radio in the US and this set was full of yet to be released material: