Charlie Bird
, January 30th, 2021 09:22
Photographer Eddie Otchere captured jungle and drum n bass from the inside. On the eve of Velocity Press publication of their oral history of the scene, Who Say Reload (which features Otchere s images extensively), Charlie Bird caught up with the photographer to discuss nights down the Blue Note, the hardcore continuum and why dancing is dangerous to conservativism
All pictures courtesy Eddie Otchere
Eddie Otchere is a curator, photographer and educator. His photographs have shaped the visual history of music for the last three decades, with iconic portraits of Aaliyah, Biggie Smalls and Wu-Tang Clan, to name just a few. In March, a series of Eddie’s photographs will be printed in
Over its tenure, Knowledge Magazine defined a generation of rave, especially when it came to jungle and drum and bass, chronicling the burgeoning genre pretty much from its inception. Popularly known as Kmag, the monthly publication took us from paper to digital and from hardcore to crossbreed, leaving a major gap when it more or less dissolved in 2014.
That gap was filled last year when Kmag co-founder Colin Steven put together the gorgeous hard copy retrospective, 25 Years of Knowledge. The book published in December 2019 and is full of full-color photography from 25 years of bass with multiple sections written by multiple authors about the different aspects of drum and bass culture. It tells a great story about the timeline of D&B but Steven felt there was more to tell.