A-Sides
Jason Cambridge came through hardcore, De Underground and the first jungle years before building Eastside Records and one of drum & bass’s deepest long-running catalogues.
From East London record culture to three decades of bass
A-Sides is not a later drum & bass artist looking back at rave history. He came through the same shops, crews, hardcore records and early jungle moments from which the music itself developed.
Jason Cambridge, better known as A-Sides, grew up around Dagenham in East London / Essex and first connected with the music through hip-hop and electro. By 1990–91 he was making hardcore, part of the generation of producers who learned their craft while the boundaries between breakbeat, techno, hardcore and the music that would become jungle were still moving almost month by month.
The name A-Sides came from a very specific record-collector instinct. Cambridge has explained that Belgian producer Frank De Wulf’s B-Sides EPs made such an impression on him that he chose A-Sides as a mark of respect. The joke became a philosophy: on his own label he preferred double-A releases and rejected the idea that one tune should be treated as the disposable reverse of another.
His early working life was tied directly to the record network. While working for the distributor Stage 1, he helped drive new releases around record shops, selling them straight from the back of a car. That put him inside the physical circulation system that powered rave before digital distribution: records travelling from pressing plant to distributor, shop, DJ box, rave and finally cassette.
At the same time he was part of the De Underground circle alongside figures including Randall and Lennie De Ice. Cambridge has recalled being with Randall when We Are I.E. was first played at Living Dream, after sets from Carl Cox and N-Joi. For A-Sides, that moment represented one of the points where the musical language changed in real time. His own productions followed the same path from hardcore into jungle and then drum & bass rather than arriving after those genres had already settled.
That continuity is central to his career. A-Sides began producing in 1990 and built a catalogue running across harder jungle, rolling drum & bass, deeper musical material and soulful collaborations. Releases appeared across labels including Metalheadz, Reinforced, True Playaz, Valve, Bingo, Innerground and Hospital, while his engineering work made him as technically useful behind the studio glass as he was behind the decks.
In 1996 he established Eastside Records. The label became the main home for his own work and a platform with enough longevity to document several eras of drum & bass without being trapped by one fashionable sound. Eastside released the Eastside Jamz compilations and A-Sides albums including Follow The Groove, Worldwide, Mysterious Vibes and Based Upon Bass.
His studio partnerships show the breadth of that network. A-Sides has worked with artists including Calibre, Makoto, DJ Marky, Break, Randall, Jenna G, Mark de Clive-Lowe and New Zealand jazz musician Nathan Haines, with Cambridge and Haines also working together as Sci-Clone. Rather than separating engineering, production and DJing into different careers, he has treated them as connected parts of the same craft.
One relationship stands above most others: MC Fats. Their long partnership produced some of A-Sides’ best-known vocal drum & bass and became a familiar live combination. What U Don’t Know appeared on A-Sides’ 2003 debut long-player, and their work together continued across releases and live recordings for years. In 2013 A-Sides also organised a large fundraising compilation for Fats during a period of serious ill health, drawing contributions from across the drum & bass scene.
A-Sides also looked beyond the genre’s established walls. In 2008 he co-founded BassHead Music with Juan BassHead / DJ Burn, creating another route into dubstep and wider bass music. That willingness to move between scenes was consistent with the eclectic listening that had shaped him before jungle: the style changed, but the instinct to hear connections rather than fences did not.
By 2015 he could mark twenty-five years of production with Quart, five linked EPs containing twenty-five tracks. The project moved from rugged jungle pressure to smoother funk and soul and made the point clearly: longevity did not mean preserving one old formula. A-Sides had survived because he kept treating drum & bass as a broad musical field.
That remains visible now. His own Mixcloud archive contains studio sessions, radio shows and live sets spanning decades, and in 2026 he played a special Influences set in London built entirely from his own productions, collaborations, remixes, special versions and unreleased material from the early-to-mid 1990s. It is rare to hear an artist use a present-day set to unpack his own place inside the first jungle years with that much surviving material available to draw from.
For Rave Archive UK, A-Sides connects several histories that are too often separated: East London record-shop culture, De Underground, hardcore, the birth of jungle, the independent-label economy, the engineering room, MC-led live drum & bass and the global scene that followed. The catalogue is huge, but the important thing is the thread running through it.
Hardcore roots to Eastside longevity
Records before genres
Hip-hop and electro lead into hardcore production, Stage 1 distribution and the De Underground circle while breakbeat rave is still finding its future shape.
Hardcore becomes jungle
A-Sides moves with the music rather than changing camps: hardcore, darker breakbeats and jungle become a continuous production and DJ history.
Eastside Records
Eastside becomes the long-term home for his catalogue, albums, collaborations and A&R while releases continue across many of drum & bass’s major labels.
Fats, global touring & wider bass
The MC Fats partnership, international touring, BassHead Music and constant engineering work widen the story without disconnecting it from jungle.
Archive in motion
Quart marks twenty-five production years; Eastside Sessions, Sun & Bass appearances and current old-skool sets keep the early catalogue active rather than frozen in nostalgia.
A-Sides in frame
Four photographs saved in the Rave Archive UK website image library, spanning DJ and portrait material.
Three eras from A-Sides’ own Mixcloud
No confirmed Rave Archive UK Mixcloud upload surfaced in this pass, so the next source in the site order is A-Sides’ own channel rather than an unrelated third-party account.
A-Sides & MC Fats — The Gallery Cafe, Puerto Rico — June 2001A-Sides with MC Fats & T.R.A.C — Sun And Bass — September 2017A-Sides & Shylo — Influences London — own-production jungle set — August 2026Old-skool jungle still moving
A genuine filmed set rather than an audio upload with static artwork.
A-Sides ft Illmatika — Jungle Warfare, Planet Wax — November 2024The value is in the continuity
A-Sides gives the archive a straight line through a period that is often chopped into separate nostalgia boxes. Hardcore did not end and then jungle begin for him; the same producer, records, shops, crews and techniques moved forward while the music changed around them.
The De Underground connection matters because it places Cambridge near one of the records repeatedly identified as a turning point in jungle history: Lennie De Ice’s We Are I.E.. His later Eastside catalogue then shows what happened after those experimental early years became a mature international music culture.
The other important thread is infrastructure. A-Sides has spent decades not only making tunes and DJing them but engineering, running labels, supporting collaborators, broadcasting and preserving his own live history. That is exactly the less glamorous machinery that keeps a scene alive after the first explosion has passed.
