Tag Archives: breaks

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

Nubreed

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I had a chance to chat to Nubreed’s Michael Walburgh aka Mykel just after Easter, the first Easter they had off in over 3 years. These hard working Melbourne lads have not only been touring extensively over the last few months, but been busy in the studio recording their first full-length album – The Original. Known for an awesome live show, and deep, nasty basslines, Nubreed are the darlings on the breaks scene, both here in Australia and abroad.

Walburgh says that having time off over Easter was a good chance to catch up on what’s happening around the place. “There was a big 33 1/3 show up here in Melbourne with Freestylers, Uberzone, Grass Roots; and the drum and bass crew – Pendulum, and Shapeshifter. It was a really mad weekend!” he enthuses. “I met Uberzone back in Miami a few years ago, and we were talking about hooking up and doing something, and now he’s got some new releases and is itching to get stuff heard and work with us. Aquasky were down here too, and we hooked up with them too.”

This is pretty much how Nubreed got out there in the first place, just by networking and being in the right place at the right time. “We put together a demo show reel and I had the fortune of being in Miami with Rennie Pilgrim, Danny McMillan, Tayo… everyone who’s anyone in the breaks fraternity was there. I got the chance to pass the tape around and through that we got lots of good recognition. And I suppose Adam Freeland, touring with him when he came down a few years ago,” he adds.

Nubreed are as well known for their bootlegs as they are for their originals. Bootlegs are illegitimate recordings of artists, and Nubreed have done a range of stuff from Alanis Morrissette to old school hiphop greats. They’ve done legitimate remixes, such as the awesome Born too Slow by the Crystal Method. “We’ve done a few live booty’s, stuff that works really well live, that we don’t sell or whatever. They came about from the Phil K / Nubreed shows that we did a few years ago,” Walburgh explains. However, the album is full of brand new material. “The Album is a catalogue of or work since about 1997. ‘The Original’ is all new material, and the second disk is mixed by our mate Phil K, and has lots of the vinyl only, hard to find recordings for your CD buying community. On the album we try to morph ourselves in all the directions we’ve wanted to go. We wanted to elaborate on the vocal tunes for this CD release.”

I had to know if they preferred making original tunes, or doing the covers. “It’s all part and parcel of it all. You have to be able to sustain a living. We don’t have any part time jobs, so we try to keep any avenue open to us. It’s a balance, you’ve got to do as many remixes as you can to keep yourself fresh and out there, on the dancefloor and in DJs boxes, but at the same time keep your ideas that you’ll think will work in circulation for your original material.”

Nubreed are keen to get back on the road again with their new live show, one which now features a drummer. “We’ve been so bogged down by the machine behind getting an album actually out there, the artwork, the legals, and so on. We’ve been working on a new live format too. We’ve got a new drummer!” he says excitedly. “That’s worked really well, and we’ve got a lot more options open to us with the drummer. There’s obviously a lot more album based material in the show, so there’s going to be a lot more depth to it. It’s not going to be a straight dancefloor set, which is what we usually do in clubs and dance arenas. This will be a chance to do OUR show, really get into it and play a lot of the older, unusual stuff as well as the new stuff. Dave (the drummer) has played for Wicked Beat Sound System and On Inc. If anyone has met Dave our drummer he’s quite infamous. He’s a great energy; he’s the equivalent of Animal in the Muppets,” he laughs.

“We’re beat orientated anyway, and the only reason we haven’t crossed over to a 100% live format is because we didn’t want to have to compromise on our production values of what we produce in the studio. With software and the money we’ve made and saved over the years we’re at a point where that’s now possible. Dave’s a lovable larrikin type. The three of us (Nubreed) have been together for the last 15 odd years, we’ve known each other forever, and for someone else to come in, despite the odd teething problems, is really good. It’s added a fresh and new approach for us.”

Luckily this current live arrangement is coming to Adelaide, most likely in a smaller, more intimate venue like Traffic, rather than the raves we’ve seen them play at in the past. “Every time we’ve been to Adelaide it’s been at a rather large gig,” Walburgh says. “Its mainly Blake (DJ John Doe) who has really spearheaded us there in SA, he took a punt on us – he’s got a real diverse edge in what he listens to. We slipped really well into that vibe as we do tag some drum and bass on the end of our usual set. He saw a vision of what could be, and it worked really well. One of the best gigs we ever did was at Stardust with the Ez Rollers and Shimon. That was great – you had a really energetic crowd, they were there for it, it was just a mad vibe to be caught up in all that. You caught us at a good moment,” he laughs, and then adds “that’s the thing with Adelaide you never know what to expect.”

 

dB Magazine, Music, Writing

Freestylers

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The Freestylers’ Matt Cantor is chatting to me over a dodgy connection munching on some toast, so it’s very hard to hear him in some parts of the conversation. Which is a real pity because the Freestylers are amongst my favourite producers, and have been for about 8 years. Unashamedly responsible for some of the biggest “big beat” records around, they’ve progressed with the scene and have arrived with Raw As Fuck. The first single Get A Life hit the No. 1 spot in the English dance music charts with very little promotion. “Obviously we’re really happy with getting number one in the charts,” says Cantor, munching on some toast. “That’s with absolutely no promotion; it’s just people going out and buying the records. It’s nice to know that people still know the name and want our stuff. It’s the first thing we’ve had out under the name Freestylers for a few good years.”

The Freestylers disappeared for a while after the collapse of their record label Freskanova. “For a while there it was really great, just a bunch of friends together and we all used to A&R it”, Cantor explains. “We’d been recording for the people who ran it for a long time. But I guess it just ran its course. They lost a lot of money and went bankrupt and ceased to exist.” This explains the absence of the band, and also the rise of a little group called Raw As Fuck. “Just to keep the music out there we decided to put some underground breakbeat out under the name Raw As Fuck. And another year down the line we thought the dust would have settled, and we could go buck to out former name. In a stroke of genius we decided to call our next album Raw As Fuck”, Cantor laughs.

The Freestylers are just about to embark on a whistlestop tour of the Eastern seaboard, which upsets this reporter greatly because I’m not located on it! “This time it’s just me and Aston,” Cantor relates. “It’s a real whistlestop tour, we’re just coming to play our new material. We haven’t been down there for about a year and a half, we’re just in and out of there in a week, doing these four big parties.” But there’s hope yet, as Cantor says there’s definitely talk of getting the whole band down for the big festivals next summer. “The band hasn’t actually toured Australia yet, and we’re very keen to get the whole band experience down there.”

“It’s funny because I don’t actually tour with the band any more,” Cantor explains. “It was just getting exhausting, and me and Aston found we were doing the same job on stage anyway. Ashton enjoys the pressures of the road, whereas I enjoy being in the studio and DJing and stuff.” He goes on to explain that he saw the band at Fabric, and says he was very impressed. “We’ve down size the band… we used to go out with break dancers and stuff,” he pauses. “I suppose you could it an attempt to be more ‘serious’. The sound has got a little heavier; the music we’re making is a little more heavy. The band no longer has Navigator and Tenor Fly; we’ve got a MC called Surreal who’s got his own style, you know. We’ve got Valerie M doing the vocal tracks still, and bass, and drums, and Ashton on his stack of samplers. It’s a much tighter but much bigger sound.”

I asked if the the Freestylers still play the old stuff, either their own or that of the other bigbeat players. “The thing is it was really fun back in the day, there were some really fun records. But if you start thinking music was better back then than it is now, it’s probably time to give up”, he states matter of factly. “We’re really excited with the what’s happening now… that’s the great thing about the breaks scene, things are always changing. We’re branching out away from the progressive stuff, and doing the more raw sounding music, big basslines and more drum and bass influence. The great thing about the nature of breaks is that it’s always changing and evolving.”

“Raw As Fuck (the Album) is looking to come out in early June,” Cantor says excitedly. “Push Up, the next single is going to be out in May. We’ve pulled all the Raw As Fuck tunes together and those tracks still sound fresh. A lot of people didn’t hear them, as they came out as an underground thing, and now people are going to get to hear them with a whole heap of new stuff.”

dB Magazine, Event, Interview, Music, Writing

French Maid Alliance

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The French Maid Alliance consists of a bunch of mates, some of whom are some musical performers, some just regular punters, who know what they want in a good night out. Dale Tiver is the main organiser, and we spoke to him about the coming party simply called “Blind”, which is supporting the Royal Society of the Blind. The name French Maid Alliance is a nod to the Adelaide rave party crews. “You know the ones with super cool mechanoid Lego men, Transformer logos, and the like. I wanted to turn that on its ear a little bit and make it all about fun”, Dale says cheekily. “‘The French Maid Alliance’ just makes people do a double take, and I hope it encourages people to find out what we’re about.”

So what, exactly is the French Maid Alliance about? “I have had strong ties in the local club/music scene for years,” Dale begins. “I hosted an event just over a year ago called Deliverance with MK-1 and Yoshi, and I had a French Maid giving out free chupa chups, CDs and other treats all night. It was a night where I called in a lot of favours from friends and did everything I could to make it feel like a party, not just a regular club night. For some time I’ve been searching for a formula that could turn the love I and many of my fellow party organisers have into something completely positive,” he continues. “A night that supports musical talent over the established pecking order, and was more about having a good time rather than making money. After spending some time with Rotary, it dawned on me that fundraising for a charity was the perfect way to go.”

Organising any party is hard work, and organising one for charity must be quite a chore. Dale says: “in my experience people don’t mind giving their time to help others if it is well organised. When I put pen to paper and realised what I could create by channelling even a small portion of Adelaide’s musical talent into a charity event, I started the search for my charity. The Royal Society for the Blind were the first organisation I thought of and right from my first approach, they were completely supportive. They agreed that the use of French Maids and other fun devices was the perfect way to counter the stigma that charity events ‘can’t be fun’. They made available all their useful contacts and have been involved in approving every step in the promotional process.”

As for past charity events, the Adelaide dance community has strongly shown it’s support for this event, with all DJs and performers donating their time for free, and others offering free advertising. For example, DJ C1 and Noddy have designed all the flyers and magazine artwork. “There was a lot of work involved in that,” Dale says, “and they deserve credit for the time they gave for nothing”. Further support comes from the kind people at Cadbury/Schweppes and Diageo (the company that distributes Smirnoff/Archers) who Dale says, “have been great from the outset. Both have donated free stock and their time. As a result there will be a launch for a new Archers product on the night and the first 400 heads on entry will receive an Archers drink, Pepsi and a chupa chup”. Other help has come from Blake at Traffic for providing the venue, and “the rest are all my good friends from Adelaide Massive website (www.adelaidemassive.com). There are a lot of little things to do for a show of this size and I can’t thank them enough,” Dale adds.

Dale’s strongest musical passions lie in drum and bass, breakbeat and live funky acts, so that’s what will be represented at the first party. Yes, Dale has already decided to do some more shows for charity at a variety of different venues, to keep the idea fresh and fun. “To be honest, there are a couple of acts that couldn’t do this show due to other commitments and I can’t wait to roll out the next show,” he says enthusiastically. “I hope to be able to organise these kinds of shows three or four times a year. I have four or five venues I’d like to try, a long list of charities I’d like to assist, and a heck of a lot of talented musical performers I’d like to big up. Hopefully Adelaide gets behind the whole ‘having fun that helps people idea’… I think it’s a winner!” he adds.

The live area inside will consist of Kumfy Klub regulars the New White Sneakers and The Break, playing live funk. Mojo favourites and SA Dance Music Awards Best Live Act 2003 Hooligan Soul, and The Jupiter Sound Project will be performing live Drum n Bass with live vocals, live instruments including Saxophone and Classical Guitar. MC Hype and his brother Piers will do some beatboxing to alongside DJs John Doe, Lachlan Pender and Funky J, performing breaks sets. Techno will feature early in the night care of Fenetik and DJ Anarki, and Mal Chia.

The outside area has the cream of the Adelaide DnB crop, including the SADMA award winners MPK, Patch and Noddy, Canada’s DJ Static, Drumsounds C1, 5158 record guru Mark 7, D-Jon, inbound’s Filter and Fiction, Altitude’s Jayar, Adelaide’s producer extraordinaire Skyver, Turbine’s Khem and Ozone, Rukkas’ Phink, alongside Adelaide Massive favourites Solace, Lucas, Frost, Harass, IQ, Del, Trucker, and Spark. Lyrical accompaniment will be provided by MCs G-Swift, Pab, Stryke, Pase, Mennan, XPress, and Mission.

Also, thanks to the performers and the kind donations of many others, a team of highly skilled French Maids lead by Tasma will also be working very hard at giving out free CDs, tickets to up coming parties, lollies, fruit platters, and many other freebies throughout the night. They will also take care of any dusting that may become necessary! Visual effects will be provided by Yasmin, with Fire Twirling by Toby. There will also be special guest appearances and prices for best dressed and most enthusiastic are also on the cards!

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

Krafty Kuts

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From the first moment I heard ‘Chunks of Funk’, I was hooked on Krafty Kuts. Here was a track so funky, oozing with so much ‘coolness’ that I simply couldn’t ignore it. After getting down to the big beat sound, which quickly became a pale mockery of itself, out of leftfield comes this stormer of a track with the vocal “not because we can… Coz we want to!” which remains a funky dogmatic greed of my day to day life. At the time I thought Krafty Kuts was black, that’s how funky his sound was to me! Little did I know he was some pale white English Geezer called Martin Reeves. Then, he disappeared for a year or so, subsequently booming back onto the scene with a vengeance.

“Yeah, a few years ago I got myself into a bit of a sticky situation”, Reeves relates over the phone. “I wanted to release some records so badly, and Ministry of Sound didn’t want to release any more records or 12 inches. There was this guy who promised me the world, and I signed this contract that I should have never had done. I wish at the time I had a manager, because he would have said ‘don’t sign it!’ I could not release a single thing under the name of Krafty Kuts for a year, and I had ten records ready to come out, and it was probably my best ever products… it was around the time of Chunks Of Funk, Gimme The Funk, and it was that party hiphop, funky breakbeat stuff.”

As you can probably tell from those titles, Reeves loves his funk. “I think it stems form a constant listening to 70’s style and a lot of black music” he muses. “It’s all I listened to, all I wanted to buy. I was a complete obsessive; I used to get up at 5 or 6 o’clock in the morning at weekends to go to car boot sales.” He explains that car boot sales are something akin to our Trash and Treasure markets. “It hit in the mid 80s, and it was quite a phenomenon; everybody was selling their records, and you can imagine the records I brought… it was just AMAZING! I was just up at the crack of dawn every weekend, wanting to buy records, and that’s how I started my record store, I just bought this massive collection off someone, who said they had loads more at home… He was a DJ and had about 10,000 records at home and just wanted to get rid of them, and that’s how it all became an obsession.”

Reeves is obviously proud of his collection. “I’ve got some amazing records, stuff you wouldn’t even dream about!” he says excitedly. “Stuff that only got released as promos, stuff that never came out, and stuff that is really hard to find.” Along with his outstanding collection of records, Reeves is well known for winning a DJ comp when he was only 12 years young, after never touching a turntable before… or so the legend of Krafty Kuts goes. I had read conflicting reports about this, and decided to clear it up for myself. “I was 17”, he states matter of factly. “I wasn’t old enough to get into a club, so I had to enter an under-18 DJ competition. I didn’t have any turntables, so it was my first experience with real turntables.” Real Turntables? “My best friend, who actually beat me in the final, he had decks but they weren’t technics, but he was really good at mixing on them. The comp had technics of course, and I was so excited to get on them and see what they were like; I had played on his turntables before, but they were belt drives and kept jumping and weren’t really great to mix on.”

“Once he let me have a go on his decks, it was like eating chocolate, but only a piece, not being able to eat the whole thing,” he continues. “Or like eating a pringle… you eat one pringle and you’ve got to eat more. You can’t stop, can you? You have GOT to have another one, there is no stopping!” he laughs. “It’s like when you collect things, if you’ve got that stance in your head, you have to continue it. I had to carry on DJing, I HAD to enter that competition, because I knew if I didn’t I wouldn’t fulfil any ambition. It took a lot of courage really, I wasn’t that good, but I managed to put a few good ideas together, and people were cheering and that, and I thought then that this is for me.”

Reeve’s knack for putting “a few good ideas together” has earned him a lot of respect from audience and peers alike. “I met Q-Bert last year when I was in Australia, and to be honest I thought he wouldn’t have a fucking clue who I was”, he says of one of his brushes with fame. “Then you speak to someone who’s just such an idol to me, and I introduced myself … ‘Hi, I’m Krafty Kuts’ and he says (and here Reeves puts on a generic American accent) ‘yeah, I know, I’ve heard a lot about you, blah blah blah’, and I was speechless! It was like Cash Money too, one of the first DJs I ever saw, and at an awards night last year he comes up to me, gives me a big hug and says (donning the American accent once again) ‘well done Krafty, you deserve it!’ and I’m like ‘oh my god, this isn’t real’… people I idolise coming up to ME, and giving ME respect for winning an award. Not only was it great to win the award, but it was amazing to have someone you admire to give you props, it’s like a double whammy!”

But what is it about the Krafty Kuts sound that makes people sit up and listen? When he did a mix for mixmag called Instant Party, Just Add People, it sold like absolute hotcakes, and is quite a sought after CD, up there with Coldcut’s Journeys by DJs and Andy Smith’s The Document. “It’s kinda about being clever,” he says, “in general, thinking about what people are going to like. That’s the hard thing, trying to choose a collection of records that make people think ‘these work well’. And I think I’ve done that in the past” he says without a hint of ego, “and people have come to expect the unexpected with me, and they think ‘I wouldn’t have done that, that’s a good idea’, and that’s what I try to do.”

His latest mix CD These Are the Breaks captures the essence of Krafty Kuts. “I’m absolutely thrilled with this mix, it’s a proper representation of where I am at the moment and what I do as a DJ. It’s got the party hiphop element on the one CD, and on the other it’s got all the proper really good current and classic breakbeat tunes. I think people can listen to and dance around in their living room, or bop in their cars to it,” he continues. “It’s one of those CDs that I think will stand the test of time, it hasn’t got any throw away tunes… there’s a couple of tunes people will think “that’s a bit ‘now’”, but you’ve got to have some of those on it. I try and capture elements of past, present and future, people listen to it and think “oh my god, what’s that!” or hear a mix and think “how did he do that!”

Similarly, his live shows are much the same. “It’s quite a strange phenomenon, really, because as soon as I walk in I look and feel the vibe, I’ve gotta take in this intense situation within seconds, and think ‘right, where am I going with my DJing’. I always try and do something different; I never play the same set twice, EVER. I don’t sit there and have my records in order, no way, that’s not me. I’m about taking the vibe from an audience into me, and giving it back. There’s certain records that you’ve got to play because they work so well together,” he muses, “but generally speaking, I can be getting into something, and see that they’re down with this hiphop vibe, and then maybe start the breakbeat, play the slower tempo but funky new stuff, and slowly build up, but I’ll play a lot less break beat and cut out my drum and bass tunes… Or if it’s an up for it mad crowd then obviously go for the more up tempo breakbeat stuff and move into drum and bass.”

“It’s the crowd that dictates where I’m gonna go. I do choose records in a small way, but I’d rather let the crowd choose for me, although theoretically they don’t know that. It’s weird; I have to read what they want collectively, and give that to them”.

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

Freq Nasty

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Freq Nasty is one of those people who are just ‘different’. He looks different, with his mass of dreadlocks; he sounds different, with his accent sounding British and Kiwi all at once, and he makes music that is just different, and unashamedly so. The thing is, it works. It works very well. Even the casual listener can hear some amazing stuff off his latest album and know that not only is it different, it is damn enjoyable too. Unlike other producers who go out of their way to make things different, and end up simply losing their audience, Freq Nasty doesn’t lose sight of his listeners or the dance floor.

Darin McFadyen came up with the name Freq Nasty through thinking about sci-fi B-movies. “From all those superheroes from the late 50’s early 60’s that had really stupid names and crazy super powers”, he says, “and Freq Nasty has one of those kind of retro-futuristic sounding names, like it would be one of those retro-futuristic cartoon characters. That was the kind of vibe I was on – a lot of the samples I used at first, and the tune Booming Back Atcha, all the artwork on the first album was themed around that type of sci-fi.”

Growing up in New Zealand, he faced the same difficulties as we do here in Australia – isolation and a very small music scene. There was no internet, so he had to rely on radio, and as here, radio was all about rock music. “I love the intensity of rock music, and always have,” he enthuses. “I’ve listened to everything from AC/DC, which I still love to this day, through to your Carcass and Entombed and bands like that. But there’s also this idea that you end up getting the English stuff before the American stuff and the American before the English, so you’re in this weird mid-ground, and you end up taking on a lot of influences. If you live in England, you get an impact of the American stuff, but there’s a lot of stuff you miss out on, and I think if you live in the States it’s the same thing. But if you live in New Zealand or Australia you get a very wide spread of stuff from Europe and America, and I think in that respect I have an even-handed approach to listening to music, and the way I hear music”, he says of the influences on his music. “When I first left New Zealand I was going to move to either New York or London, and I think the way I make music is very much from that perspective – the American thing of hiphop and funk style, with the progressive of the UK dance scene sums up my sound.”

McFadyen is unashamedly honest about trying to make his music different. “The way it comes about is I just try to make something different. The way Plumps do their thing is amazing in their right, what Aquasky does is amazing in their own right, what Rennie (Pilgrem) and BLIM does is all amazing, so when it comes to me making an album I say ‘right, all this has gone on, I’m going to do something that isn’t really happening at the moment’, and present people with something they didn’t realise breakbeat could be. It’s that simple,” he states. “Someone asked me what inspires me a while ago, and I was saying that a lot of the stuff that I hear out there, but it probably wouldn’t be breakbeat records that inspire me. I appreciate a well done dance record for sure, but I hear an amazing dance hall record or old dub tune, or some mad breakbeat garage tune, some 8-bar tune on a pirate radio station that some 17 year old kid has made, and I think ‘fucking hell, that’s incredible, I could do something with that’, and I twist it up and do my own version, and the way I make it coherent is that I’m always nicking influences from elsewhere, but the other half of what fits in will be that thing I do.”

“And I hope that in a year or two’s time people start listening to it, and people start making their own versions of that, and in a way another sub-genre comes about; in England these things happen so quickly and so easily if a sound picks up” he continues. “And the whole Ragga-dancehall kinda dub-reggae thing is starting to pick up momentum over that mixture of breaks and those sounds and it will probably be a lot prevalent in the next year, year and a half. I’m already hearing records out now that are using those kind of beat patterns that didn’t happen a year ago.”

McFadyen is also about to create a different expression of his forthcoming album Bring Me the Head of Freq Nasty, incorporating a character made for the single into a whole audiovisual experience. “Initially it was going to be a ‘dex and fx’ thing”, he says “but that’s now been translated into the Video Nasty Experience. It’s a character designed by Jamie Hewlett, who did Tankgirl and the Gorillaz stuff, he’s created a Freq Nasty character for the video but then there’s a whole lot of other stuff that’s been created around that, with the character being integrated with real photo’s and film using new CG stuff. There’s lots of graphics and text chopped up, and everything is going to be themed to the album. There’s not a lot of old video and that… it’s not about recontextualising the old; for me, what I’m doing is creating everything from scratch, there’s probably not going to be anything nicked in there.”

Unfortunately, the Video Nasty Experience won’t be coming to Australia this time around, but we can expect it sometime next year. Fortunately, the Freq Nasty website www.freqnasty.com features the kind of thing to expect from this exciting producer, and he’s set to play in Adelaide in December.

 

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

Blim

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Gervase Cooke, the Boy Lost In Music, certainly has a lot to say about music, and we could have chatted for hours if it wasn’t for the phone card giving up the ghost. Getting into dance music because he was self confessedly too pretentious to listen to indie as it exploded into commercialism, he’s become one of the most important figures on the Breaks scene today, and cites Australia as the reason that breaks parties are some of the best parties in the world.

Cooke got the name BLIM because he literally was ‘lost in music’. “I used to write music on headphones in the corner of the lounge room of where I lived so other people wouldn’t get annoyed by it or if it was late at night,” he says of his name. “And I used to do it for quite long periods of time on end, and if anyone come up and tapped me on the shoulder or anything I’d jump out of my skin because I was just somewhere else completely. A blim is a very small piece of hash here in England, the very last little bit,” he adds “so I thought of that and how it could come to mean something else, and thought up Boy Lost In Music, and it stuck.”

His introduction to dance music came from early Warp releases. “I was into indie music and rock, and when it came to about 1988-1989 I was primarily into a lot of indie – Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets, and a lot of underground stuff as well; and I went to Manchester because that was really good for that kind of music. Just as I arrived there it exploded on a commercial level, and made me not want to listen to it. Coz I’m pretentious in that kind of way,” he says, and I’m not really sure if he was joking or not. “Then I heard some Sheffield techno, some really early Warp releases, and because I was a scientist at the time, I was studying mathematics, the logic of the way the music was put together was instantly recognisable to me, and appealed to me and made me want to buy some machines to make music.”

Whilst some may think that beginning his musical life from an essentially classical orchestral base of piano and violin would aid him in leaps and bounds, Cooke isn’t so sure. “Learning an instrument growing up as a child is a frustrating experience really,” he says candidly. “Because you kinda don’t want to do it, you know what I mean? You see it as a chore.” So Cooke doesn’t think that it has had a big influence on the way he makes music. “Just the experience of growing up in constant contact with musical instruments, however badly you interact with that” may have had an impact, he says, “but I would have to say it’s intuitively… I have to say I’m not consciously aware of it.”

Cooke started his electronic music career producing drum and bass for Emotif and SOUR, before moving over to Botchit & Scarper with labelmate Freq Nasty. “The simplest way to explain it is I just wasn’t happy doing it anymore,” he says of the change in musical direction. “I didn’t feel it anymore, I didn’t believe in my music, didn’t believe I had an opportunity to make myself heard in drum and bass, for a number of reasons – some to do with the music itself, some to do with the people involved in it. And when I first started to make breakbeat, it made me feel happy, and that’s the choice I pursued. It’s not even necessarily a conscious decision; it was a matter of doing what I wanted, what I liked.”

Cooke is known for making and playing music with a party vibe, and is partly responsible for the term “festival breaks”. I say partly, because it seems it’s a joke that, due to the music press, has spiralled out of control. Certain aspects of the UK music media have pointed to it as a move away from the harder sounds of breaks, but Cooke says, “It’s not a move a way from anything. It was just a joke me and Rennie (Pilgrem) had in the studio one night when we recognised the sound that we were making. I don’t think we deliberately set out to make anything… it was just something that when Rennie and I get in the studio we make music in a certain way – it sounds big, like its at a festival, we’ll call it ‘Festival breaks’, just laughing and joking about it… and one of us mentioned it to somebody and then all of a sudden…” he trails off with a smile.

Cooke believes the real party vibe comes from visiting Australia. “Everywhere I go this year it’s exactly the same,” he says. “I’ve got a digital camera, and at some point in the night I take a picture and everyone’s got their hands in the air, and I’ve got them all in a line, and unless you take close look of the racial mix in the crowd you’d never notice the difference,” he says. “And it’s been the same everywhere I’ve been… all around Eastern Europe where I used to go 5 or 6 years ago and they had a scene but really tiny and small. They all got scenes going on now. I used to play in Israel and it was just dead – it was good, you had a couple of people into it but you couldn’t get a party going. Recently they had a rocking crowd and I ended up playing for 4 hours – they kept the venue open for two hours longer than it was supposed to be! I just played in China and they fucking loved it, and they never even heard it before. They just couldn’t help themselves.”

He cites Stardust in Adelaide and Two Tribes in Perth as the places he started to notice this. “This year all the gigs are like that, everywhere I go. It’s phenomenal, absolutely fantastic,” and you can tell he is really enjoying the breaks scene at the moment. “I think the music has become a lot more fun, and I feel that it’s the British DJs who go down to Australia for the summer bring back that influence.” An unusual statement, considering it’s usually the English scene that has been seen to influence our dance music scene in the past. “Breaks parties are the best parties to go to in this country [the UK] now, there’s no question about it. I wouldn’t have said that if I didn’t think it wasn’t true, it definitely didn’t used to be true,” he states. “You go out now to a breaks night, and it’s a real fucking party. It wasn’t in London for so long. We were amazed to find out that in Australia that was like the norm. In some ways I think Australia’s party and fun vibe has filtered back into England and made the vibe fun back here.”

“You know what I mean, just real fun, proper parties,” were the last words he said to me before the phone card cut us off, and you can see exactly what he means as he hits Adelaide.

 

 

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

Meat Katie

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Meat Katie aka Mark Pember hates flying. LOATHES it. You can hear the venom in his voice as he speaks about it. “I’ve done over 60 flights this year, and I still HATE it. White-knuckle ride for me all the way. It’s the take off and landings I hate the most”. Yet why would he agree to do an album and subsequent tour of Australia, knowing that the only way to get here is to fly? “I don’t know… it was stupid”, he laughs, “I love DJing and stuff, love it when I get there… it’s just the flying!” he says exasperatedly. Pember was out here recently promoting the album “Destination Australia 02”, and we spoke in between sniffles as we both had the flu that seemed to wipe out everybody.

Pember got into the dance music scene in the early 90s. “I used to be in bands,” he says of his beginnings. “I started off in bands, and a friend introduced me to samplers, and the first thing I did was sample drums and bass. This was the early days of bigbeat, and it just sounded more dancey, more clubby than the stuff I did previously.” His first foray into dance production was Ceasefire on Wall Of Sound. Pember says, “I split with my partner, and he decided to continue with wall of sound with the name, and I decided to continue with a new project.” That new project was the darker sound of Meat Katie, and for those who wanted to know, the name comes from a film about sex.

Pember has been at the forefront of breakbeat since it moved from being cheesy Fat Boy Slim style breaks to what we know as ‘new school breaks’. The scene has exploded in recent years, and considering Pember once said, “I’m not convinced that Breaks is going to do what Garage or Trance has done. I think it will be a cult scene, healthy but not mainstream” I wondered if his position had changed. “It’s a difficult one, because when I said that I genuinely meant it”, he muses. “It is particularly big in Australia. There are certain acts that I think may break through to the mainstream, but as a scene it’s going to be rooted in the underground – the same as drum and bass. There may be the odd track or two or the artist that goes overground… hearing some of the new stuff, like Plump DJs and some of the Stanton Warriors stuff, I can see the accessibility more so than I did maybe a year ago. But for me, and my own sound, no, I don’t think I’ll ever break into that market. I’d love to, but it’s not realistic for me.”

The recent Destination release is the second in the series, but not many people heard the first mix, done by H Foundation. “There was a problem in that they had only released the Fabric H Foundation Mix two weeks before, so I think EQ had a few issues in that everyone was mentioning the Fabric CD and not the Destination CD,” Pember explains. “And that’s a real shame those guys at EQ are really good and it’s a bit of a shitty thing to happen. But I jumped at the chance of doing it, and I’m a big fan of playing out here and my records seem to be selling well, and I thought this would be a great way to set the record straight as actually what it is that I’m about. By doing a domestic CD I’m hoping people understand my vibe a little better. It’s breakbeat based, but I like to touch on different styles as well, and I saw this as the perfect opportunity to do this.”

Pember’s previous works, such as his track ‘the Hum’ with Lee Coombs, are often dark and tribal, but this mix CD is a lot “lighter”, showing that there’s a lot more to Meat Katie than meets the eye. “I guess it’s how people perceive it. I’m not a moody person, ya know!” he laughs. “Sometimes my music can be mood based, which may lead people to think I’m always like that, but my taste is very broad. I like funky music… I’m not a big fan of cheese, but I do like stuff with a bit of a groove.” This mix CD certainly shows this, as it moves from DJ Shadow to Meat Katie to Matrix versus Goldtrix.

Hum is also the title of his successful club, which is coming up to its 2nd birthday in November. “It’s moved to a new venue, a place called the Fortress, and it’s like two story down basement warehouse venue, and we’ve got a license til 6 in the morning, which is quite a late license for the UK. We keep it quite cheap as well…” Pember says of the club. “We do it sporadically now, every 6 to 8 weeks. Thing is, we get other work – good paying work – elsewhere, and we have families and actually have to make a living as well”, he laughs.

His other project is the label Whole 9 Yards, which has recently released the new Elite Force album. “I’m actually taking a bit of time off, as I have another child on the way which is due in January and I need a little home time,” Pember explains. “I spend a lot of my time running the label, and this will be a great opportunity to put it on the backburner for a little while, to concentrate on the things I need to do.” I wondered if Pember thought it was difficult being a father and working in the music industry. “I think it’s hard having a family and doing ANY job, really” he laughs. “You’ve got a lot of responsibility and all that. I wish I was there a bit more on the weekends… I spend the week producing and running the label, and come the weekends I go out and DJ, and try and grab moments being at home, but now I’m really making an effort to make some quality time. It’s difficult because you’ve gotta make money as well, make ends meet”.

Pember missed Adelaide on this tour, but is sure to return to Australia, most likely after his break in January. “Do you know what? I would love to come to Adelaide,” he says. “It’s a real shame I didn’t have an Adelaide date this time –I’ve been here 4 times now and I’ve never been there! I’m going to harass my agent next time I’m down,” he laughs. In the mean time, get a copy of the Destination Australia 02 CD and prepare for a funky ride through some great breakbeat!

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

Ils

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Illian Walker, aka Ils, is one of the hottest breaks producers in the world. He was one of the first people Adam Freeland signed up to his record label Marine Parade, and he’s been recruited by Distinctive Breaks to produce the next instalment of the excellent Y4K series. Even though the record label that released his first record, Idiots Behind the Wheel, burnt him, the well-distributed promo solidified his street cred with magazine editors, DJs, and label heads across Europe. His second album for Freeland’s Marine Parade was the first full-length artist album for the label, was critically acclaimed and earned him the title of “the producers producer.”

“To be honest I don’t really understand what that means,” he laughs. “I take it in a complementary way I suppose; it’s nice to be recognised in some kind of dimension”. Anyone who’s heard his tunes will notice the incredible complementary sounds he manages to produce seemingly out of thin air. “Being in a rare groove / funk live band had a massive impact on my drum programming and the basslines,” he says, of his days playing bass in a funk band when he was a mere14 years old, but it was the seminal rave act of the 90’s, The Prodigy, that inspired Walker to buy a sampler.

Throughout the 90’s, Walker made his living by working as an engineer for various DJs and producers. It was here his technique caught the ear of LTJ Bukem, who asked him to do work for Good Looking Records, and then later he worked with James Lavelle and DJ Shadow at Mo Wax on the U.N.K.L.E. project. “It was good to be around those kinds of people, to see how they worked, to hear music through their ears. You can sit in the same room with these people, and learn how they perceive music, the sounds that turn them on. And you see different methods of work, some people use different studio, or different kit, and it’s fascinating to work with these other people”, he says of his time spent with these doyens of dance music.

The disappointment with the Fuel label going under and not receiving a cent for his work led Walker to abandon dance for a year or two. “No one’s really seen or heard from the label owner of Fuel. It’s a bit insane,” he laughs. Asked if there’s any chance of re-releasing the album to new fans, Walker is a bit hesitant to look back at that stage in his life. “As far as I know I never signed a contract for that album or anything, so technically I could re-release it, but I feel I should move forward. There’s a lot more music to be written, really.” He also doubts he’ll go back to producing drum and bass, the sound that got him his start. “I’ve worked with a couple of singers who sing at that speed, and if I was producing a singer, and drum and bass really suited, I would do a drum and bass backing track to fit the song if that energy was required, but for myself, I’m not really interested at the moment.”

Looking forward is what Walker is concentrating on. A few of his tunes have been licensed for commercials, which is a great way for a producer to cement their financial standing, but some people point the finger and scream ‘sell out’. “I think considering a lot of breaks doesn’t get mainstream radio play in this country – you won’t hear Ils on Radio 1 – so I think if I can get on TV that’s good from a musicians point of view”, he explains. “I’d be annoyed if my music was used on a tampon advert or something “ he chuckles, “that kind of thing is quite critical. A lot of my older drum and bass is used on gardening and lifestyle shows and things like that and I find it funny. But if it’s for something like Nike, that has really groundbreaking adverts, that use cutting edge editing techniques, that has really cool visuals, and if it’s a cool product, I don’t consider it selling out.”

As well as working on his third album, Walker has been working on the next Y4K Breaks album. “I’ve tried earthing it by throwing a few anthems in there,” he says; on making his set stand out from the marvellous forerunners by Tayo and Freq Nasty amongst others. “I’ve got a few vocal tracks in there; I dunno, something about the Y4K series is it’s usually quite instrumental, so I’ve put a few vocal tracks in there. I think vocals work well over breaks, and tried to represent that in there. There are also some totally new tracks in there by unknown and up and coming producers.” There are also a few of his own compositions as well. “I’ve got a track with MC Dynamite, Roni Size’s MC, that’s totally unheard and been kept under wraps for a while, and some other tracks that haven’t been allowed to be licensed to CDs in the past.”

Walker is looking forward to touring, with the possibility of hitting Australia towards the end of this year. Whilst he has only been DJing for the last year or so, he believes he could pull off a live performance similar to the Roni Size Reprazent live show. “I admire the whole Roni Size live thing, I find that absolutely ingenious. That’s one of the few rare examples of studio sequencing stuff being performed live. And still a lot of people can’t emulate that. That’s the benchmark,” he says. “I have enough tracks that I’ve written in the last 9 years, so I feel I’d be able to go up onstage and give and interesting set. I’ve got enough back catalogue, and good singers and performance people that I believe in to feel it’s the shape of a good show,” he says. But whether it’s a DJ or live set, Illian Walker’s show would be one that is worth hearing.

Check out Ils Y4K mix out soon through Distinctive Breaks, and keep your eye out for a possible tour towards the end of this year.

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

Planet Funk

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Planet Funk is the coming together of Marco Baroni, Sergio Della Monica, Alex Neri and Dominico GG Canu, Italian and English producers who found a common link in their desire to create a new kind of dance music, a new kind of funk. Bored with traditional notions of Italian Dance Music, they sought to inject a new life into the tired cliché that had become their scene. “We tried to produce something fresh. In the creative moment we try to let ideas come freely,” says Marco Baroni, through a crackly telephone line from sun drenched Italy. Meeting in 1999 at the Miami Music Conference, they joined together and produced the incredibly successful “Chase the Sun”, a song that got an incredible amount of airplay, which you are sure to recognise once you hear it. After the release, the guys spent a whopping two years in the studio, producing their debut album “Non-Zero Sumness”.

“We each knew each other through our individual projects”, Baroni explains, “but met up in Miami. We were looking at doing something a little bit different, because we all had been doing this for about ten years or so.” Their time in the studio was well worth it, as they took the time to finish their tracks, and learnt to work with each other cohesively. “Its not so simple as when you stay with people a long time, sometimes you fight maybe for a cigarette”, he laughs. “Now we know each other much better than we did a few years ago and work very relaxedly with each other”.

The album features two incredible singers from the UK, Dan Black and Sally Doherty. Dan Black is the front man for the group “The Servant”, and his voice has that punk rock edge, often sounding like a cross between Ozzy Ozborne and Shaun Ryder from the Happy Mondays. Planet Funk found Black through “the guys from Naples producing his album, and we like the way he sings and he really seemed right”. The decided they wanted his unique voice and punk mentality on their album, and sent him an instrumental version of “The Switch”. “He really liked the music, and wrote some lyrics for our songs. He gives the music a different style, brings a different feeling from ‘dance’. We wanted to get something different from the rest of the album, and people’s reaction is fantastic, they really like it.” Sally Doherty, a folk singer trained in Gaelic and Classical singing, was discovered over the internet, proving that this new medium can work for independent artists.

In addition to winning 3 prestigious Italian Music awards, Best band, Best newcomer and Best dance act, Planet Funk have been played by DJs across the world from Pete Tong to Adam Freeland, and have been highly praised in the European press. However, Marco holds his audience in higher esteem than the press. “We always try to think in terms of the people, because the people, the crowd, are our life. We like to make music for the people. All this reaction from Italy was fantastic, but normally we don’t like to think in these terms. We like to think of music directed to the people as most honestly as possible.”

The live show has become Planet Funk’s main focus; something that I imagine would be quite difficult for a group of dance producers. Baroni is frank in his assessment of playing live. “We like very much to play live. It was another natural step for us. We just love the reaction from the crowd. Our music changes a bit when we play live, we use real drummers, 3 singers, and we make a show of it”. The live show must be pretty impressive, as they have played in front of crowds as large as 70,000 people. The live element has also helped the direction of the next album. “We’ve just started to write for the next album, and we’re happy with what we’ve done so far. The success of the first album is important, and playing live is important. When we try and write new, different things there’s not so much pressure.”

Planet Funk’s album “Non Zero Sumness” is out now through Sony Music, and Baroni says that they’re hoping to bring their live show to Australia during the European Winter. “We’re Chasing the Sun” he laughs.

 

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

Brewster B

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Melbourne boy Brewster B has been making a name for himself over the last ten years in Australian Dance Music scene for being individualistic and having a well-defined sense of fun. From remixing the theme from “Hogan’s Heroes” to writing a song about a bartender, his unique broken beats have rocked dance floors everywhere in Australia, except for, strangely, lil’ ol’ Adelaide. A complete oversight on behalf of local promoters I’m sure. Brewster has a great new tune on the new instalment of the great “If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It Too” CD, a compilation of Aussie breaks which is sure to shine locally and overseas.

Being influenced by groups like Kraftwerk, Cabaret Voltaire, Devo, New Order and early 80’s Hip-hop and Electro Pop, Brewster is proud of his heritage. “I love my chilled groove a lot!” he says. “I guess you could say that’s my roots.” He was discovered by “playing chill-out stuff in my lounge room after a party shut down early and some other DJs were there. They liked what they heard and offered me a gig at their next party in the chill-out room because it was so different from what everyone else was playing.” It’s that difference which defines Brewster. “I play everything from ambient dub to weird hip-hop to soundscapes to the very left! Then there is the dance floor side of things. I love and try to play anything with broken grooves. From electro to breakbeat house to dirty dark nu-skool breaks in to the heavy rolling dark funk style side of breaks. Even DnB with bit of old skool jungle now and then! Basically if it’s broken and make’s me rock, I wanna play it out loud so the dancefloor wants to rock with me”.

His early influences play part in his productions and mixing, as he scratches and samples his name into his set, as old hiphop DJs used to do, “partly to take the piss and to let people know it’s a bit of fun. And if it says ‘Brewster’ won’t that make it clear who this record is by?” he laughs. Using a blend of both an old technology, “but as time goes on its more & more computer based” to make his tracks, Brewster isn’t afraid to work with a variety of people from diverse backgrounds, such as DJ Ransom, Little Nobody, and an “ex-techno dude called Viridian. I think the key is to keep evolving. Stuff I was playing 2-3 years ago people are playing now, so it’s about finding new sounds and making new stuff so the crowds think ‘that’s rockin’ my world more that ever before!’”

The Australian Breaks sound seems to be doing very well overseas, and Brewster thinks this could be because “we have a sound all of our own, that will in time be recognized as a style of breaks. “Oz-Nu-skool” or maybe Oz-Skool?” he says cheekily. “But at the end of the day there only two real types of breaks – good and bad! The Brits make some amazing stuff and some of it is just fillers. Just like here there are toons and fillers. I don’t think it matters were it comes from… just make it rock!”

Fortunately, there are no fillers on the “If it Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It Too” CD, which features such a diverse range of sounds and artists such as Infusion, Hybrid and Brewster pumping out great material. “Breaks seem to have a wider appeal due to some of it live elements,” Brewster says, “With an increased acceptance of electronic music, it’s brought people in to the sound of breaks from outside of the club and rave scene, which have not had it hyped up like in other countries. This has let it grow naturally. Plus I think there is one other key ingredient,” he proclaims. “It’s the climate in Australia. Breaks and warm weather go together just so well. Put it outside in a park on a nice 25c degree day and people will smile and dance for hours in and around the trees! Try that in grey ol’ England!!”

We are hoping that the release of “If it Ain’t Broke… Too” will see Brewster hit town soon. “I’m hoping to hear and see the Adelaide massive groov’n real soon. Its the one place I’ve never Dj-ed!” he cries. “I’ve played in every state at least once a year, and even Tasmania a couple of times.” He’s not sure why he hasn’t played here, but thinks, “maybe Adelaide doesn’t like phat funky dark rollin breaks, that make’s ya wanna shake what ya mama gave ya? I think you guys want to shake it?? Well do ya?!?!

If it Ain’t Broke Don’t Fix It Too double CD, featuring tunes by Brewster B, Infusion, FNDA and remixes by Ransom and Nu Breed, plus a Mix CD of tunes from Volume 1, by competition winner Jeremy Judd, is in good record stores now thru inertia.