Here’s a cautionary tale for all you producers out there. I’m talking to Merf from the Breakfastaz, who are about to hit Australia on their 3rd tour in as many years, and he tells me the kind of story nightmares are made of. “It was the first Bank Holiday of the year and we had just moved into our new studio and spent two months setting the place up. We actually had our office and tech room in the men’s toilets,” he chuckles, “because we had an extra set, so we dismantled them and put computers and stuff in there and it must have got a little too hot or something because three of our fucking hardrives just popped and we lost a shit load of stuff!” OUCH!
“When it happened we were all like FUCK! We couldn’t believe it. I didn’t believe we couldn’t get the data back, I was like ‘nah, we’ll be fine, we’ll get it all back’ and as the weeks ticked on it was like ‘oooh shit, maybe we won’t get it back!’ he laughs nervously. And although it was a pain in the arse for them, they’re pretty optimistic about the whole ordeal. “To be honest it hasn’t really set us back too much as yet. The next single we were planning was on that harddrive so that would have come out around October, but if we don’t have it back by then we’ll probably have to re-write it which will be the first time it would have really fucked us.”
“To be honest there’s two ways of looking at it – either it’s a major disaster or it’s something positive. We’ve got all our samples and programs and plugins on other computers so we can still do our work and do some new stuff, and in some kind of cathartic, Buddhist kind of way we’re like burning the past and we’ve got a fresh start and can turn over a new leaf,” he laughs again. “We’ve still very much got plans to crank out some two or three more singles on Breakfast Club by the end of the year, and then try and put something big together for around the start of 2008.”
Yes, a Breakfastaz album is on the cards! “It’s something that maybe we should have done already,” he says diplomatically. “I guess we’ve been a bit lazy but because we’ve changed labels every two or three singles and never found one company we were really comfortable doing it for. Now that we’ve got our own label we can do it ourselves. If some other bigger label wants to help out then fine.”
But don’t take this as a 100% confirmation. Their label is still fairly young, and the boys themselves are taking stock of the industry as it stands, deciding what to do. “It’s kind of tricky with the beatport and trackitdown kind of stuff,” Merf explains, “because punters are buying individual songs. Chances are if you put out a full album people are just going to download the songs they like anyway so it’s kind of confusing figuring out if it’s even worth doing and how useful it is, bar having to say ‘we’ve put out an album'”.
Their new label, The Breakfast Club, has the three of them excited and optimistic. Forming good relationships with distributors and promotion companies, the boys are looking forward to releasing their second single ‘Girls, Money, Drink & Drugs’. “It just makes more sense to run your own record label,” he says, “rather than giving away half of your tunes to someone just so they can do a little bit of the organisational work. It’s not that hard running an underground record label… I say at his point after only having done it for a few months,” he chortles. “I might be eating my words in six months time!”
For this years tour down under, Merf and Gav will be gracing us as the Breakfastaz, leaving Froe to hold the fort back home. If you’ve never seen the Breakfastaz, never heard their sound, you’re missing out because their sets are full of energy and they have the big dancefloor party sound similar to the Freestylers, with a lot more enthusiasm because they’re not a bunch of old farts like Matt and Aston. They promise a jumping set with new stuff from artists like Far Too Loud, Control Z, the Freestylers and of course, their own stuff; providing their hard drive doesn’t give out on them again.