HIGHLIGHTS

DIESELBOY

THURS., JUNE 17

WHERE DO YOU go when the music stops playing? I ask not because, in those cornball Legrand/Mancini terms of that song's title, the music has actually stopped playing. It's just that, for the most part, the necessity of drum 'n' bass and jungle has dwindled to a thrum; especially in this, the good old U.S. of A., where it hardly ever broke beyond the dedicated masters (Grooverider, Roni Size, Goldie) and its dear, devoted followers. Surely, the best city-and-state for the most original of the jungle crew is Philly. Wink, Nigel Richards, the GFS crew: These are the heroes of the jitteriest of hardhouse sounds, the most dramatic of DnBers.

And then there's Damian Higgins. The junglist best known as Dieselboy has leapt from imprints, big and small (Technical Itch, Moonshine, Palm, Sub Base) and his own label, Human/System, to haunt the locals with the roar of the jungle in its most urgent unctuous sound. From "Atlantic State" and "Descent" to his first (one of the first) artist/mix double CDs, 2000's, The 6ixth Session and projectHUMAN, DieselHiggins has managed the cool detachment attested to by the best Britjungle with a brusque warmth that only the finest funk could hold truck with. Not funk like thumb-plucking fun, but rather the humid moodiness and humor of, say, techno soulsters like Juan Atkins and Derrick May.

For his new CD, The Dungeonmaster's Guide, Dieselboy does something most only infer: He plays a game as old-school and fickle-fan-based as his votive electro-motivated sound, Dungeons & Dragons. Dieselboy's twisted mixing and sharply axed break-beats take on not only the hilarious mash-up of neighbors like Wink ("Evil Acid") and pals like Karl K/Kaos/Jae Kennedy ("Soul on Fire"). It chops/slices/dices his own decadent dreary tracks ("Prologue") and those of Raiden and Dumonde—separately, the Sacco and Vanzetti of DnB.

Avalon, 662 6th Ave. (20th St.), 212-807-7780, call for time & price.

A.D. AMOROSI

AMP FIDDLER

SAT., JUNE 19

EVERYTHING IS RIGHT in the universe of Amp Fiddler. Known as Joe to the artists who've borrowed his Detroit born-and-bred electro keyboard style, Fiddler spent the earliest chunk of his career making his solar-space the place for acid jazzers (Brand New Heavies), rock weirdos (Was (Not Was)), funk kings (George Clinton) and princes (uh, Prince). For me, Joe was most famous for pairing with his brother as the bass-and-keys house-hop duo Mr. Fiddler. Their singular effort, With Respect, is one of those great lost hiphop CDs you'll spend forever hunting down on eBay while it surely sits in bargain bins across the plains.

Still, it wasn't until Amp added his cooing, yowling silken vocals to the mix—on several Moodymann singles, throughout tech-lord Carl Craig's compu-jazzy Detroit Experiment—that everyone took notice. Y'all took notice because, like the music of Lloyd Banks, Andre 3000 and Sleepy Brown, this was the murky future-funk of the new millennium here and now—a sound that had been rolling around the South and Midwest for more than a decade.

Amp Fiddler is on Waltz of a Ghetto Fly, a CD filled with Mr. Fiddler-style hump-house rap shat, cool-like-dat flowtronics and furiously aggressive funk ("Superficial," "Love and War") with spacely-sprocket synth squiggles and Moogs that remind audiences that they've been here before.

Rumsey Playfield, Central Park (enter 69th St. & 5th Ave.), 212-360-2777, 3, free.

A.D. AMOROSI

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