Three years ago drum&bass seemed a redundant musical force: Roni Size had moved the jungle goalposts onto the kind of Astroturf surface that no-one else wanted to play on, and Goldie pawned his gold chains for a life of celebrity whoredom. As producers leapt onto the UK Garage gravy train and the live scene dwindled, a few disaffected DJs and MCs in Oxford drew a line in the ashes and set about defending what was precious to them, and Depth Charge was born.

By bringing some of d&b’s biggest players to Oxford under the premise of being a showcase for strictly old-skool junglism, the club night has become a metaphor for a scene returning to its roots, and more recently returning to the charts. Add an unremitting barrage of rasping ragga MCing, courtesy of Dappa Stevie and the irrepressible, irresistibly brilliant , and you have a resulting “urban” music that sounds rootsy, earthy and organic. Resident selectors Trends and Lunar have always been first class, and three years of regularly sharing their decks with the likes of Mickey Finn and DJ Hype manifests itself tonight in an effortlessly self-assured back-to-back set that alone justifies the entrance fee. Support act DJ SS only increases the vibe, rolling out a set of hard driven basslines that fully deserve the countless “REWIND!”’s afforded them.

Andre Williams, aka Shy FX, is a DJ and producer at the peak of his powers, and the next twelve months, with its promised live shows, may see him finally live up to the hype that followed his 1995 collaboration with UK Apache (and tonight’s set closer) ‘Original Nuttah’. Picking up the blistering gauntlet laid down by SS comes easy to the man currently laying siege to the top twenty with the infectious drum’n’calypso hybrid, ‘Shake Your Body’. His hour-long stint behind the decks revisits past glories within a forward-looking, funkier framework, throwing snatches of vintage dancehall into a loose-limbed, fast moving set.

Like the club he’s playing at, Williams has come a long way in three years, from a marginalized outsider with his best days seemingly behind him, back to the cutting edge of British dance music. Like the music itself, he’s still young, still fresh, still new, and now jungle’s latest ambassador. If your ears were trained elsewhere the first time jungle broke, don’t be a fool twice. These people are survivors.

Aidan Larkin