Jungle: (n) a genre of electronic music hailing from the United Kingdom circa 1989, when it first branched off from the old skool-rave sound. Syncopated beats and melody, 180 beats-per-minute breakbeats and lo-fidelity bass are the staples of the style.

Life’s rough when you’re a junglist. The R.A.V.E. act has crippled your culture from coast to coast. The mainstream media just brings up your musical genre of choice so they can fashionably chortle how dead it is (cough… Spin magazine). Finding a store that sells your giant wooden war beads is a bitch and a half. Worst of all, jungle DJs everywhere are trying to be harder and darker than the next without having the balls to bring anything unique to the table.

Enter Reid Speed: DJ extraordinaire, 555-Soul model and professional problem solver. With her latest mix, Life after Dark on the Breakbeat Science label, it would seem that Speed is trying to take over the world: her selection is eclectic enough to please all drum’n’bass fans, but calculated enough not to seem like the variety is forced. In the opening track she establishes the state of the junglist nation as it stands today: Dylan’s downtempo “Black Rainbow” starts off with bone-chilling vocal clips from one of Charles Manson’s trial interviews that acknowledges the self-destruction and cruelty found all too often in the scene today.

With that, Speed is off: a seamless mix sees us moving into K’s “Blur” and from there to the robot-soul of Filthy Dirty Rich’s “Second Skin.” With this track, Speed offers junglists an alternative to the current state of the scene—follow Speed down her spiraling path of soulful vocals, monstrous beats and be saved.

From there on out, Life after Dark is relentless. You’ll be bobbing your head to the heavy piano of Mathematics’ “Funhouse” for days afterward, and Speed gives props to her Breakbeat Scene label mate DJ Dara by rinsing his track “Unholy Grail” for all it’s worth. I’d say more, but it would ruin the surprise.

Rest assured the energy doesn’t wane for a second. Speed, a Brooklyn native, finally brings it all to a simply beautiful close by bringing back from 1993 the Foul Play classic “Music is the Key.” The choice to end the mix on this track is anything but accidental because both the old skool-breakbeat sound and the lyrics are a plea for the jungle world to return to a more caring time.

Proof that she’s serious: this reviewer e-mailed her to make sure he wasn’t reading messages into the album that weren’t there, and unlike what most superstar DJs would do these days, Speed e-mailed him back a really sweet and detailed letter within a day. So even if Reid Speed IS trying to take over the world, we’d probably all is better off that way.