Persian: Summer Breeze/Worries in the Dance (White Label, 1998)

Another of the mysterious Speed Garage white labels more discussed than owned. Persian was making some of the most tripped out Jungle in the early 1990s (Desertism/Shoalin Temple was the first I heard on a DJ Sniper mixtape, I think it was, that Dubshack smuggled out of Heathrow in their undies) and carried his eclectic groove discipleship to the UKG scene when “Dangerous” under the moniker Same People blew up in 1995. It’s easy to see why this one never had a commercial release: “Summer Breeze” is literally the Isley Brothers’ “Summer Breeze” distorted, muffled and then driven head-first into a throbbing junglist bassline.

“Worries In the Dance” is replete with elements borrowed from the jungle underground atop a strident shuffle. This is as hard to get as there is, but we’ll always have YouTube and the crackhead DJs that rip fuzzy audio from it.