Jungle

Jungle is a Swiss rock band and also the name of an English modern soul collective formed in 2013 by childhood friends Tom McFarland and Josh Lloyd-Watson. The same name is used by several different acts. The Swiss group is the relevant one here.

Origins and activity

The English collective forms at the start of 2013 and develops around an emphasis on artwork and videos as part of its identity, with McFarland and Lloyd-Watson known as J and T. It also expands into a seven-piece live band. Its debut album, Jungle, appears on XL Recordings and is shortlisted for the 2014 Mercury Prize. A second album, For Ever, follows in 2018.

Other Jungle acts

Ann Arbor power trio

Another Jungle is a world/rock/fusion power trio based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with Steve “Muruga” Booker on drums, Dave Sharp on bass and Steven Springer on guitar. It forms in 2010 during a project at Booker’s Sage Ct. recording studio and records its first album live in the studio. The trio draws on influences including Coltrane, Hendrix and Funkadelic.

Steve “Muruga” Booker

Booker is a Detroit-born drummer and percussionist whose roots go back to the late 1950s with the Detroit rock and roll band The Low Rocks. He plays with John Lee Hooker, billed as Hooker and Booker, and later performs at Woodstock in 1969 with Tim Hardin, at Carnegie Hall with Dave Brubeck, and on Weather Report’s Sweet Nighter in 1973. He also collaborates with George Clinton and the P-Funk All Stars from the late 1970s onwards. In 1990 he releases Blues from the Rainforest with Merl Saunders and Jerry Garcia, receives the Hiroshima Voices for Peace award in 1991, appears on Circle of Drums with Babatunde Olatunji and Sikiru Adepoju, and releases several albums on Qbico Records. His 2010 album Kiss of Peace is nominated for a Detroit Music Award for outstanding world music recording.

Steven Springer

Springer grows up in Port of Spain, Trinidad, where he begins guitar at a young age. His style blends jazz, reggae, Latin, blues, rock and R&B, with roots in reggae, soca and calypso. He moves to Phoenix in his early twenties and forms Sanctuary, then tours worldwide and performs at the 1988 World’s Fair in Brisbane with the Trinidad Calypso Band. He later joins Hugh Borde’s Trinidad Tripoli Steel Band, with whom he performs and records for more than ten years, and he also leads Tropicooljazz. He is chosen as Best Guitar Player at the Detroit Music Awards each year from 1990 to 1993.

Dave Sharp

Sharp is a native of Detroit who becomes devoted to jazz at the University of Michigan. He studies with bassist Herbie Lewis in San Francisco and Marion Hayden in Detroit. As bassist and composer for the modern jazz group Spheres of In uence, and as touring bassist for The Melvins on Atlantic Records, he builds a national profile. He lives in Ann Arbor, where he composes, records, teaches and performs with Jungle and leads Dave Sharp’s Secret Seven.

Unidentified release

Another item linked to the name Jungle is a late-1960s album whose makers are not known. It is later reissued and includes tracks such as “Early Morning Rising,” “Slave Ship,” “House Of Rooms” and “Gray Picnic.”