Swedish psych band Dungen are back with a new EP and it’s not what you might expect. Gone are the jazzy, proggy grooves and flute solos; in their place is 100% pure ’90s-style jungle. What? Gustav Estes writes:
An incredibly long journey: from a day at Snickars in 2017, discovering a couple of jungle records, to becoming obsessed with rave tapes from the ’90s on YouTube and digging through records on Discogs, to Oscar Ekman hooking me up with an MPC 3000, Mattias Glavå modding it and assisting with various things.
A term with DJ Haydn at Robotberget, psychedelic films with Isidor and Leo. Samir Yosufi wanting to chat and play jungle, and nerdy nights with Bimse. Meeting Bojan, who invites the aristocracy of the contemporary jungle scene, DJ Sofa and Tim Reaper, to Stockholm—and after a long night a year ago on a Sunday, suddenly finding them sitting on my couch.
The journey has led to this release on Future Retro London. Incredibly grateful to everyone mentioned, thank you DJ Mantra, Double O at Rupture, and Pete Devnull for your support—the list could go on…
Future Retro London’s Tim Reaper adds more context:
In November 2023, I played an event in Stockholm, put on by Bojan aka Boj Lucki, who runs a label called Bukva Sound, which I had done a remix for earlier that year. DJ Sofa was also on the lineup with me, as well as someone I had never heard of called Gustav Ejstes.
A lot of people I was talking to at the event and on the day were telling me about Gustav and how much of a spectacle it was that he would be DJing tonight, and explaining about a band he is a part of called Dungen (pronounced Doon-yen) which is very well known & respected in psychedelic rock.
I checked his set out and was very impressed by how confident he was with his vinyl mixing & selection, as well as some of the tracks on digital he was playing that I’d never heard before. I told him afterwards how much I enjoyed his set and he seemed quite happy about that, because he had been a long time vinyl buyer of my music & other releases on Future Retro London.
The day after, Bojan took me & DJ Sofa to meet Gustav at his home & we got to chat with him about music, see his record collection & hear some jungle/hardcore tracks that he had been making. Turns out a lot of the tracks I liked from his set that I’d not recognised were ones that he made!
I thought it’d be really cool to be able to release some of them as he’s never put anything out like this & since he’s a fan of the label, so I asked if he’d up for it and here we are!
Otis is pretty awesome and you can listen to the EP below.
This breakbeat twist is not entirely out of the blue. Dungen dabbled in amen breaks on “Var Har Du Varit?” on 2022 album En Är För Mycket och Tusen Aldrig Nog and remixed José González’s “Visions” into a total jungle banger last year. “I was pleasantly surprised to receive a jungle version,” José wrote at the time. “So authentic in its sound that I got thrown back to my teenage years when I used to hang out by my friends and listen to their vinyls.”
Can we get a Dungen / Nia Archives collab next?