I still remember that night some ten and a half years ago. It was dark and cold. I was in part of the city that I had never been to before--warehouses, abandoned buildings, empty parking lots, barely-lit alleys. Driving around those downtown streets was almost like asking for trouble, especially in the middle of the night.

But when I got to my destination, called The Hangar, I saw the crowd of people at the door and joined the line to get in. The temperature must have been in the 40s or 50s, but that didn't stop people from being warm and welcoming to me. I chatted with a few others while we all waited and we could hear music coming from inside the building in front of us. Faint at first, then growing louder and louder, until it became a thunder over the broken and worn buildings around us. Then the line started moving.

As people began to stream in, the main room became a giant crowd of bodies, bathed in light and all moving to the same beat. I had never been to anything like this before and yet, when I met a girl that I had known from high school, I felt right at home. We talked for a while, then I went to get something to drink.

As I made my way through the crowd, off to the side, I could hear what at first sounded like a total calamity going on nearby. I moved closer, and for some reason, it sounded like some sort of broken heavy metal track, the drums blazingly fast and the bass diving to extreme lows. I walked in and the room, completely dark and lit only by strobes and smoke, shook my entire body.

***

That was my first-hand introduction to drum and bass music.

That night, I had not only my first taste of the music, but of the style and mood of the culture that went along with it. It didn't matter where you were from, who you were or what you were wearing. There, you were amongst friends and everyone was welcome. The whole experience deeply affected me and my perspective on people and music and I've never forgotten it.

After more than ten years of listening to d'n'b (or jungle, as it used to be called), I'm gonna try my hand at it. It's more of an experiment than anything else, just to see if I can do it. It's always been a dream of mine to do something with music, but I either couldn't find the time or tools, or didn't have any ideas on what to do.

Under the alias Polymer Zero, I've started putting together some tracks and seeing what I come up with. There's more to come, so stay tuned.