Roni Size and Reprazent Go Live With Drum-and-Bass

When jungle music first came out of England’s slums in the early ‘90s as the wayward child of techno and rave, few purists ever imagined it would evolve into something as refined as what Roni Size and his crew Reprazent performed Friday at the House of Blues.

Jungle was aptly renamed drum-and-bass, and producers such as Size found a middle-ground sound between the avant-garde and the deliciously funky. On its current U.S. tour, the group has taken drum-and-bass one step further by humanizing this moody genre of electronic music.

Shunning the typical rave format of a DJ spinning records, the stage was complete with a live drummer and bassist. DJs Roni Size, Krust, Suv and Die each manned a computer terminal like students in an IT class, programming sonic bleeps and lush strings. The group’s powerful singer, Onallee, bellowed her lungs over relentless breakbeats and belly-rumbling bass lines. And the incredibly energetic MC Dynamite bounced about like a champion boxer ready to land a knockout.

Reprazent proved that much of its material works live, especially soulful classics “Heroes” and “Share the Fall.” But the biggest treat for the drum-and-bass aficionados on hand was when the DJs blended a few seconds each of dance floor anthems the crew has released since the early 1990s on various side projects.