Lennie De Ice
East London original, sound-system head and the producer behind We Are I.E. — one of the records that helped break UK rave away from imported formulas and towards the sound that became jungle.
Before jungle had a name
Lennie De Ice arrived from the mixture that made UK rave its own thing: hip hop, electro, rare groove, reggae sound systems and acid house.
Lenworth Green grew up in East London with a record box that refused to stay in one lane. Mantronix, Jonzun Crew and Afrika Bambaataa sat alongside ska, new wave, rare groove and the sound-system culture around him. He started making music in the mid-1980s, learning drum machines and synths while also DJing rare groove and hip hop.
By 1987 acid house had grabbed him. A warehouse rave on Carpenters Road, trips to Sunrise, Energy and Metamorphosis, and hearing A Guy Called Gerald at The Dungeons on Lea Bridge Road pushed him into the new rave world. With his friend ET he performed live electronic sets at illegal parties as Ill Tempo, carrying keyboards and sequencers into rooms where the rules were still being invented.
The important thing about Lennie is that he did not throw away what came before. The hip-hop breakbeats stayed. The reggae gunshots, rewinds and dub weight stayed. Acid house supplied the pulse. In December 1988 he started building the tune that would bring those worlds together.
We Are I.E. began at a slower tempo before Lennie pushed it faster. He lifted the Amen break from the route through Mantronix, added spinbacks and gunshots from the DJ-tool culture he knew, found the distinctive vocal phrase from Algerian raï, and wrapped it around a bassline and 4/4 pressure that belonged in the rave.
Through Forest Gate’s De Underground circle he connected with Long John Aymer and the Reel 2 Reel crew. Uncle 22 helped him with Cubase; Randall, Cool Hand Flex and A-Sides were around the same orbit. When Lennie played John a batch of tunes, We Are I.E. was the one that stopped the room.
The first big test came on dubplate at Living Dream, Eastway Cycle Track, Leyton. Randall dropped it to thousands of ravers. The first play made people move differently — slower, half-time, listening. Randall played it again at the end and the reaction had changed. A new rhythmic language was bedding in.
Released in 1991, the tune soon became one of the records people used to explain the moment when hardcore started turning into jungle. Grooverider later said it changed the game; Randall remembered the period as one where jungle and drum & bass were beginning to form around them.
Lennie’s story carried on beyond the anthem. He released music under names including Body Snatcher and Lick Down Crew, worked with CIS Production, Madd-Ice and the Armshouse circle, and ran Do Or Die Records. dBridge later credited Lennie with opening doors, releasing early material and introducing him to people who became part of his own musical path.
Lennie died on 10 December 2024. The tributes came from across jungle and drum & bass because his importance had never really been forgotten. We Are I.E. survived every shift in fashion because it was not built to follow one. It was built from everything Lennie already loved — and in doing that it helped show British rave where it could go next.
The road into jungle
Rare groove & hip hop
DJing and learning drum machines while electro, rap and sound-system culture shape his musical vocabulary.
Acid house hits
East London warehouse raves, Dungeons, Sunrise and Energy pull Lennie into the emerging rave movement.
We Are I.E.
Amen break, gunshots, rewinds, raï vocal and acid pressure are fused into a tune that did not fit an existing box.
Randall breaks it
Living Dream gives the dubplate a huge early test before the record spreads through the DJ circuit.
Jungle takes shape
The rhythmic and bass ideas around the track become part of the language of hardcore, jungle and drum & bass.
Aliases & Do Or Die
Body Snatcher, Lick Down Crew, Madd-Ice and his own label keep the wider story moving beyond one anthem.
We Are I.E.
A tune that sounded like the next thing before the next thing had a name.
The Amen break was not new. Reggae sound-system effects were not new. Acid-house 4/4 was not new. Lennie’s trick was hearing how they could belong together. That hybrid is why We Are I.E. still matters: it caught the exact moment British rave stopped needing permission from existing genres.
Lennie through the years
Five photographs supplied to Rave Archive UK for this memorial, with the smaller archive originals kept at sensible display sizes.
Hear the change happening
Rave Archive recordings first, then Lennie’s own surviving Mixcloud presence.
A Rave Archive UK recording with We Are I.E. in the tracklist alongside the sound of late-1991 hardcore moving fast.
Lennie’s own profile preserves mixes and his description of the musical path that ran from old skool and jungle into later hybrid work.
Read Lennie’s own account of building the tune, the De Underground connection and Randall’s first big dubplate test.
One of the blueprints
There will always be arguments about the first jungle tune, because scenes do not arrive on one morning with a label attached. What matters is that We Are I.E. is unquestionably sitting in the room when the language changes.
Lennie brought together the breakbeat logic of hip hop, the signal sounds and bass weight of reggae culture and the pulse of acid house. That combination became part of the grammar of jungle. His influence is not just historical trivia; it is audible.
For Rave Archive UK, that makes his place in the Hall simple. Lennie De Ice helped British rave find a sound of its own.
More on Lennie De Ice
From East London into the foundations.
The tune survived because the idea inside it survived: mix the cultures around you, trust the rave and make something that did not exist before.
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