Nia Archives’s second full-length record is about falling in and out of love. Called Emotional Junglist – a term the Bradford-born singer-songwriter, DJ and producer has used to describe herself – this is a collection of songs telling not just a basic story of infatuation and heartbreak, but of roaring lust, overwhelming obsession, heart-thudding anxiety, yearning and pettiness.
While jungle – the beloved, breakbeat-heavy UK dance genre born out of Jamaican soundsystem culture – has certainly made forays into more tender musicality (see M-Beat and Nazlyn’s phenomenal take on Anita Baker’s Sweet Love), vulnerability hasn’t been a central tenet. But though Archives was hailed as the face of the jungle and drum’n’bass revival, her Mercury-nominated debut, Silence Is Loud (2024), revealed her not as purist but an artist imbuing her own sound with the spirit of 1990s Black British dance music.
The 26-year-old has fans in stalwarts such as Goldie and Special Request (AKA Paul Woolford) – and for good reason. As well as showing deep knowledge and appreciation of her scene’s history, while running her own label and the club night Up Ya Archives, she successfully petitioned the Mobo awards to introduce a best electronic/dance music category in 2022.
All the while, she has been unafraid of being an iconoclast. On that first album, she put aside the hedonistic ragga-tinged sounds of her early work for a foray into Britpop meets breakbeats, with songs that fizzed with notes of dreamlike, William Orbit-style lightness and vocals from the school of Amy Winehouse.
Not everyone will be pleased with an artist expanding jungle’s reach. In 1994, when General Levy and M-Beat’s Incredible broke into the UK charts, rumours swirled of a committee of originators annoyed by the commercialisation of the sound. And Archives is undoubtedly adjacent to the pop world; she recently revealed she was part of a songwriting camp for Rihanna, and in 2023, she was an opening DJ for Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour in London. But the crowds at the Tottenham Hotspur stadium were reportedly not particularly taken with Archives’s set, and so this second album finds her at a crossroads: too intense for the mainstream, too pop for the heads.
But Emotional Junglist knows what it is. Co-produced with Ethan P Flynn (whose work with FKA Twigs feels instructive) and James Ford, the alt-jungle album amps things up after Silence Is Loud , with assured, full-band instrumentation, precisely drawn lyrics, pop-punk snarling and scuzzy spaghetti western guitar riffs.
Where the previous album offered vignettes, there’s a real sense of narrative here, reminiscent of the raw frankness of Lily Allen’s West End Girl. Archives is knowingly saccharine about her new lover on This Could Be…, before eviscerating that same partner for calling the police on her in Boys in Blue. Feelingz Go Numb and Around Tha Bend embody the reeling chaos and perpetual cycles of breaking and rebuilding that define your 20s. “I’m a stranger to myself,” she sings.
She reflects on the early days of sexual infatuation on Danger (originally written for Rihanna), with unabashed lines such as, “you got me pussy blushing”, or on Vertical, where her heady emotions are intensified by trip-hoppy guitar, stretched-out synths and sweet vocal harmonies.
Elsewhere, there is pure starry-eyed romance on Dance With Me 2nite, which feels like a 90s-style take on Fly Me to the Moon. Jorja Smith and Sampha add their silky vocals to the mix on standout tracks Get Me Down and Tender; the former song channels British rave history via a sample previously used by both 808 State and LTJ Bukem.
Emotional Junglist is ambitious, an album built on vivid storytelling and vibrant production. Archives is experimenting with a rich musical history, and with her creative compass guiding it somewhere new.
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Photograph by Iris Luz