Tim Reaper has spent 2021 staking a claim as the breakout star of jungle’s most recent revival, and this meeting with Japanese junglist Comfort Zone feels like the moment the scene’s new guard properly locked in. Released on 16 July, Banoffee Pies White Label Series 01 kicks off the London label’s white label run with four tracks that span the full jungle-BPM spectrum, from 160bpm full-throttle rollers down to 94bpm heavyweight steppers.
Opening track All the Time lays down the template immediately. Rolling breakbeats, chopped and rearranged with real musicality, lock into a warm, low-slung sub bass whilst rave stabs puncture the surface like signal flares across its six minutes. The production is spotless in the manner of the current revival—digital clarity on the drums, analogue warmth in the pads—but the swing around the kick keeps it firmly rooted in the dance.
Touchdown is the EP’s sharpest cut, a five-and-a-half-minute blast of tightened percussion and urgent stabs that feels like the pair’s foot pressed harder on the accelerator. At 160bpm the breaks fly past with barely room to breathe, and it’s all the better for it—a proper peak-time weapon that would turn any rave inside out.
The record then switches register entirely. Pacific drops to a 94bpm half-time roll whose deep sub bass and drifting, sea-sick pads conjure a proper end-of-night atmosphere, whilst Sherpa closes the EP in suitably heavyweight fashion, layering dusty breakbeats, dubby echo and a low-end that demands a big system. Both tracks show Comfort Zone’s Japanese influence rubbing against the UK sound Tim Reaper has championed, and the friction is exactly what makes the pairing work.
As an opening statement for the White Label series, it’s a confident one. This is genuinely functional dancefloor music that wears its rave heritage proudly, and the UK-Japan link-up points to a scene that has never been more international in its outlook. Four tracks, zero filler—if this is the standard the series intends to keep, the next instalments can’t come soon enough.
