Blue Mountain - Breakage (2006)

A dark, hypnotic jungle roller from when its producer was still making his name across the myriad lanes of British bass music

The titles of some electronic music releases become part of their allure, like the design of a wine bottle seeming to enhance the flavour of its contents. But when a song contains no lyrics, I often wonder how its artist chose to label their creation.

It took me years of daydreaming to its rumbling bass line and a holiday to Jamaica to finally clock the link between Breakage’s jungle masterpiece, Blue Mountain, and the country’s highest peak.

The real Blue Mountain is a physical and spiritual centrepiece; a nexus of historical significance, geographical dominance and folkloric symbolism that wise elders, road signs and touristic excursions from all corners of the island it towers over point towards as an end destination.

It belongs to the inner-eastern highlands where Maroons — made up of both native Taínos and West Africans — escaped captivity to resist Spanish and British colonisers in the 17th and 18th centuries. From their fortified perch deep in the rainforest they protected a culture and community that remains, playing a vital role in the eventual abolition of slavery and movement for independence.

It is also where the world-famous Blue Mountain coffee beans are grown, before they are packaged up and sold behind branding that is blue-tinted like the misty appearance of the mountain itself. 

Breakage grew up in Slough, Berkshire, before bursting onto London’s drum and bass scene in the early-2000s. He released Blue Mountain as a single in 2006, the same year as his debut album, This Too Shall pass, as dubstep began to emerge as its own concrete musical subculture.

Then he helped the genre’s crossover potential to pierce wider recognition among grime purists with Hard featuring David Rodigan and Newham Generals in 2009. It appeared on his sophomore album, Foundation, which became one of the most memorable bodies of work when I was in my first year at university in Bristol.

As I adapted to a lifestyle of dancing all night before falling asleep to the sound of sunrise birdsong tweeting outside my bedroom window — trying, with limited success, to wake with my alarm and cycle down to morning lectures in the city a few hours later — every DJ set I experienced would play a Breakage tune.

Blue Mountain was brought to my attention after a school friend — who is now an overseer at the popular d&b label, Skankandbass — uploaded it to his YouTube channel, creating a video that is still the most listened-to version of the song.

To decorate it, he used a photograph showing two of our other friends sitting at a remote Montenegrin train station, peering up at a mountain during a group inter-rail journey around Europe after our A-Levels. It’s a trip that I regret missing out on, having opted for a raucous week on the Greek island of Malia instead, within days of my 18th birthday. The photo helps me to feel like I was there in spirit. Its contemplative, grainy blur transports me back to that most carefree time of life.

Listening to Blue Mountain without good headphones or a proper sound system does it a disservice. Every time I return it climbs higher in my reckoning, speaking to heady adolescent nostalgia and maturing adult focus, all at once. I play it to write my diary or when I go for a jog in the cold and dark. The older I get, the more I would pay to hear it go off in a packed, shadowy dance.

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