Meet The RDB Team

Keeping RDB up-to-date and ensuring all the information it holds is accurate is no small task. Here you can found out a little about the people who work behind the scenes providing content, correcting errors, moderating the forums and all the other aspects of the day to day runnings of a site this big. Everyone who works on the site gives up their spare time for free and it will come as no surprise that many of them are collectors of hardcore, jungle and DnB related music to an almost obsessive degree.

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  Thijs, (Alkmaar, Netherlands)

  In the early days Thijs was mainly into hip-hop. However around 1995 the interest in electronic dance music started with Underworld. Though one of his music 'dealers' he got introduced to the early Moving Shadow and Suburban Base releases. It wasn't until he got hold of a tape with an LTJ Bukem Radio 1 Essential Mix that he got hooked. After buying 'Logical Progression' and 'Platinum Breakz 1', he was beyond the point of no return.

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  Haste (London, UK)

  Even though his brain is capable of storing catalogue numbers by the shedload and random information on obscure 10 year old 12"s Haste still can't seem to remember simple day-to-day tasks like getting up for work and eating food. An avid record collector since as far back as he can remember and a big fan of all types of music he joined Thijs in helping to run the site after becoming one of the main contributors on the Tarzan forum. After first discovering the site and helping to iron out many of the errors in the database he began to have ideas about how to develop things further. The pair worked together implementing many of these new features while Haste started work on creating a new, more aesthetically pleasing and usable design for RDB, making sure that the simplicity of the original Tarzan site remained in place.
  
  Find out more and download mixes at www.mrhaste.com. More information on his design work can be found at wearelighthouse.com

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  Cob (Brighton, UK)

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  eXtreme (Hornchurch, UK)

  It was the likes of "Nitro Deluxe - This Brutal House", "House Master Boys - House Nation" & "Raze - Jack the Groove" that kicked it all off back in 1987 while still at School. From then, Following the music through its forms, Acid House to Hardcore, Jungle to DnB. during that time being especially addicted to the Pirate Radio stations in the early days. eXtreme played on the East London pirate 'Freedom FM' between 1993 - 1999 until its close down & that was the time Hardscore.com was formed just as a small piece of the Oldskool revival at the time. Head to the Forum @ http://www.hardscore.com to catch up with the latest mix offering from eXtreme.

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  iamdek (Surrey, UK)

  Collecting old skool hardcore, jungle & drum & bass vinyl, especially 1993 & 1994 darkside tunes, some would say with a passion bordering on obsessive compulsive. Love it. A.W.O.L. at the Paradise, there was no better. Unity, Section 5 and Horace @ Camden Market provided me with my tunes.

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  JJ (Sheffield, UK)

  Following his initial exposure to electronic music through Detroit techno, it was hearing the likes of Top Buzz and Fabio in early 1991 that started his addiction to hardcore/dnb. Excited to find other people that still shared a passion for old skool hardcore & dnb when he first got online in 1998, he's been happy to ID tunes and trade tapes/records ever since. First checked out Tarzan at the end of 2003 and liked the site so much he started posting in the forums. Intends to be less lazy in 2005 and beyond by adding a lot more information to the site.

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  Komando (Chicago, USA)

  Hailing from Chicago, Komando first heard the sounds of the jungle while driving one friday night in the mid 90s and chanced upon a weekly jungle radio show. Soon obsessed with this new sound and with no idea how to pursue it he began to buy records and trade tapes with other like minded individuals. Then came the big breakthrough finding that there was a small albeit thriving community of enthusiasts on the internet. Starting with IRC and the original breaks list, he started putting the pieces together and continued amassing his record collection. Having a background as a historian, it always frustrated him that there was no definitive resource on dnb/jungle and the early sites of the day did a piss poor job. However once he found tarzan it was all over, days at a time were spent adding releases and fact checking the database. Now that real life has kicked in he has slowed down a bit but still lurks ready to post the odd nugget of info that he comes across.

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  Logic (Lawrence, USA)

  Always eager to take on new distractions from his uni work, Logic came aboard to moderate the forums and oversee the forthcoming Rave Archive and History sections. Logic was a forum regular and was recruited for his razor-sharp wit and roguish good looks. He's been around since the Tarzan days and has contributed countless verbose and overwrought ideas for the site's relaunch. Logic is another oldskool dork (check out Logic and Haste back to back for two hours of '94 jungle), and he has used his skills as a ruthless pedant to help perfect RDB's extensive oldskool content.
  
  Studying Linguistics at Uni has given Logic a distinct advantage over Haste at deciphering ragga lyrics.

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  Phokus (London, UK)

  Stumbling across the sound of sped-up breakbeats and deep basslines of early breakbeat hardcore, the young Phokus quickly became hooked. Spending every spare minute amassing useless information about all things dnb related, he found an outlet for this data soon after Tarzan came online. His particular area of expertise is that of the breakbeat, having started the ever popular These Are The Breaks pool of information on dogsonacid.

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  Spoox (Oslo, Norway)

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  The Manipulator (Breda, Netherlands)

  The Manipulator stumbled on breakbeat in 1991 (which actually was quite difficult to do in Holland). Unable to satisfy his needs in his local record shop he ventured out to the rest of Holland. But that didn't really help all that much. So from 1993 onwards he regularly ventures to London to get some new and old releases. And with white labels there comes a need for discographies and other sites to fill in the blanks. Not content with "that other discography site" he became more and more involved with Tarzan (and Rapture's pages). Happy to have finally found a place for all the useless information he had gathered over the years he instantly made his presence known on the forum. Within days (well okay, months) he had annoyed Thijs enough to become a moderator. Due to his nature of collecting records (and not just jungle and drum 'n' bass) he is pretty good at giving out sample related info, which years ago led to the Drum 'n' Bass Sample List.
  
  Download his mixes or find out about samples or his record collection at: the R&D in Sound pages.