May 2nd, 2009 by ollspin
Malfunction vs Frustrated Disco Machine / Void vs Brap
Lab (formerly Arc Bar) (Bristol) map
Saturday 2 May 2009
April 8th, 2009 by ollspin
Infectious Breaks
Saturday 11 April 2009
Drift Bar (Portsmouth) map
I’m back in Portsmouth for the first time in yonks, playing for legendary South Coast breaks party crew Infectious Breaks, a collaboration between three Portsmouth Breakbeat promoters featuring members from Dustedbreaks Records, Out-Break and Error. Afghan Headspin are headlining, Reverb and Custard are on warmup and you can catch me playing somewhere in the middle of it all.
November 7th, 2008 by ollspin
Rewind back to the start of the century.
Freq Nasty had recently released Freqs Geeks and Mutilations. Mechanoise released their Way Of The Robot LP. Aquasky vs Masterblaster released their Beat The System album and mix CD. Stanton Warriors were producing and playing jumpup 2-step style breaks. Botchit & Scarper were firing on all cylinders. Labels such as Bingo Beats and Rat Records were releasing bass heavy garage/breakbeat crossover tracks. Labels such as Hardcore Beats, Cyberfunk and Against The Grain / Supercharged were forging the blueprint of the tearout breakbeat sound. Fusetrax were pushing the industrial and garage/jungle sound of the scene with releases from artists such as Mr Psik and Baobinga.
All was well in the land of tearout nuskool breakbeat and it stayed so for a few very good years.
Then it all went to shit.
Whilst the mainstream breakbeat sound seemed to be happy turning itself into plodstep and electro house, the tearout scene slowly devolved into a mixture of the same old tired basslines and drum beats, formulaic tune programming, lengthy orchestral breakdowns and cheesy trance synth riffs. All of it overproduced and far too clean sounding. I may be making a somewhat sweeping generalisation, I know there has been plenty of good tearout tunes in the past few years as I’ve been playing most of them, but nobody can deny the scene has become over saturated with cookie cutter generic fodder.
Fast forward to 2008.
Thankfully some recent emerging artists are willing to break the mould and inject some fresh enthusiasm into the scene! The increasing popularity of dubstep over the past couple of years seems to have allowed artists to further explore the more twisted side of bass heavy breakbeat based music. Artists such as Reso are producing some of the most forward thinking dance music out there right now, particularly his more upbeat dirtier techno and drum & bass influenced productions. Afghan Headspin, who have previously produced under the alias Resonant Evil, have been producing fast chopped up breaks with dark influences. Vent have set a new bench mark for the more traditional tearout breaks sound with a string of heavy releases. Labels such as Urban Graffiti and Cool and Deadly which although sometimes classed as dubstep often release tunes that fit perfectly into a heavier breaks or breakstep set.
Thanks to these people, plus of course many others who I have not mentioned, the future sound of filthy dirty tearout breaks is hopefully safe for a long time to come.