Drum-n-bass is in a boom-bust flux right now. It's debatable whether all the magazine articles noting how conveniently some former junglists have become die-hard two-steppers have actually caused the topsy-turvy fortunes of the Amen-botherers. Meanwhile, drum-n-bass has actually just come around to another creative peak. So, why the naysaying?

Well, I think people are looking for drum-n-bass in the wrong place. So many long-term junglists have turned the clock back to the good old days of 'ardkore and proto-jungle classics such as 2 Bad Mice's "Bomb Scare," as if to take public stock of the genre's significance. "Look at us! We lasted longer than five minutes!" they scream as they loop another Winstons break and helium-pitch some dippy vocal. But it's also true that Johnny L, responsible for natty numbers such as "This Time," has opted to produce Posh Spice's bid to become the two-step Queen of Ayia Napa.

If influence is a yardstick with which to rank the achievements of any genre, then drum-n-bass must be the punters' dead-cert for grabbing a top gong. Who can fail to hear the mashed-up syncopations and linear freedoms inherent to the genre in Tobias Schmidt's techno? The breaks crowd have licked the pavement upon which drum-n-bass marched proud and tall. The dissonant juxtapositions of awkward sounds, always a welcome din in jungle, has extended to post-Portishead beatnik beards (why, even Portishead, I think, owe a huge debt to Bristol serial junglists, Flynn and Flora as well as Smith and Mighty).

DJ Die's recent Through the Eyes compilation also exhibits-- nearly flaunts-- astounding plates by Roni Size, Suv, and Die himself. Reprazent also returned from the cultural dead end of the jazznik corner of Gilles Peterson's backside with the bolshy punk-funk of In the Møde. Bill Laswell also gave us a new territory to explore when he debuted the junglist applications of Tabla Beat Science. The Freight Elevator Quartet's Becoming Transparent offers innovative action that would work some crucial dancefloor madness as well as providing the Knitting Factory with a new flame or two.

Why, then, hasn't this renaissance affected Dieselboy? The 6ixth Session displays nothing but comic, flaccid machismo. So what if 90% of the material he's compiled is pre-release acetates, given to him by those responsible in back-slapping homage? The bulk of this album is comprised of unimaginative clatter, loved by those not entirely sunk by draw, who also enjoy making camcorder zombie movies, the company of lapdancers, and rendering the neighbors' daughter catatonic by burning her Barbie dolls. These same lads, for boys they unquestionably are, fantasize about cyborgs and secretly repress unacknowledged desires to pluck Schwartzenegger's nostril fluff.

Dieselboy's highly professional mix offers his target audience more 'borg dreams than Robocop. Yet how tiresome! These tunes, virtually indistinguishable from one another, are the drum machine and ProTools equivalent of the heavy metal guitar solo-- an exhausting display of puny ability. Only DJ TeeBee's remix of his own "Space Age" shows any consideration for elegance and style; he even allows for minute lacunae and hiatuses in his material, space enough for us to think about his creation. J Majik's "Solarized," on the other hand, hilariously attempts to convince us that trance/jungle hybrids are not really the blood of the devil.

Perhaps Dieselboy's childhood in Pittsburgh is the cause of his industrial fixations, manifested in such tedious detail on the EP accompanying the mix disc. Had Dieselboy fully appreciated how groundbreaking Krust and Williams' Coded Language was, he could have easily commandeered the talents of a wandering Wu, or even got a De La Soul daisy to extemporize over some nifty beats. But no. Boys will, inevitably, be boys and Dieselboy wants only to display his baby-oil-drenched drum-n-bass pectorals. How we gaze in numbed disdain.

-Paul Cooper