I’ve been obsessed with breakbeats recently.

It’s partly down to my borrowed nostalgia for something I wasn’t at all party to – the outbreak of hardcore and jungle in the early-mid 90s. I was a way too young to be cognizant of what was going on; being around eight years of age and living in pre-internet suburban Yorkshire, I didn’t know what the underground dance music was, let alone have access to it; and even if I did I wouldn’t have had a clue what to make of it. Though the idea of an eight-year-old junglist is a cute one, I think my cassette copy of Bon Jovi’s Crossroad was all I cared about back then.

For the next fifteen or so years, I never really got my head around jungle, or more accurately never really tried to. When I moved to Bristol as a student around 2002, it seemed natural to take against drum ‘n bass, which along with (ugh) “breaks” was the dominant sound in the city’s clubs. I didn’t know much about drum ‘n bass at this point, but I knew its period of future-rushing innovation was over; it was no longer an idiom that attracted genuinely imaginative and experimental artists. At all. Metallic tech-step was the order of the day; you didn’t need to be a jungle aficionado to sense that all funk and rollage had dissipated from the dance. It felt stale. Dubstep was just around the corner, and it wouldn’t be too long before our present era of funky and second-generation garage would set in. To be sure, UK soundsystem culture was evolving, but expressly away from drum ‘n bass.

Drum ‘n bass was no longer an idiom that attracted genuinely imaginative and experimental artists.

In the past six months or so, I’ve thought about little but early jungle, and the breakbeat science at its heart. I’m not sure why – perhaps it has to do with my over-immersion in 2-step and 4/4 forms. Funky did much to re-activate my interest in straight house, but of late there haven’t been enough surprises; if I was being ultra-cynical, I’d say that I can already feel a leaning towards the crisp tech-house orthodoxy towards which all 4/4 sub-scenes ultimately tend (see: electro-house, minimal, post-Innervisions deep house). But it is only February, with new releases still thin on the ground, and probably not a good time to make sweeping state-of-dance-music generalisations. Ahem. Either way, mild disillusionment with the new is always a good excuse to steep oneself in the old: hence my recent gorging on DJextreme’s mixtapes, the unmissable Rufige Cru Early Plates compilation, various early Moving Shadow and Reinforced 12″s, the first three or four Jungle Tekno compilations, the later Amen spectralism of Source Direct.

I’d really like to imagine that we’re on the cusp of a new jungle-techno revolution – the timing feels so wrong, it must be right – but it’s probably just wishful thinking (and this doesn’t fill me with much hope). All the same, it seems to me that breakbeats are beginning to crop up more and more in the context of techno, house and dubstep, and in fact are giving rise to these genres’ most memorable moments. Let’s look at some examples.

You know how much I, probably like you, love Shed‘s work – at times this column can read like a rolling tribute to the man – and I have doff my cap yet again and say that he’s been one of the boldest and most ahead-of-the-curve producers in terms of reappropriating the breakbeat, making it work in a 21st century techno style.

Breakbeats are beginning to crop up more and more in the context of techno, house and dubstep.

There are a couple of examples on his 2008 Shedding The Past LP, but one, ‘Estrange’ particularly stands out – with its loose drums and sweeping, sighing synths, this is breakbeat techno cut from the same cloth as Carl Craig’s ‘Desire’ (Craig was an avid advocate and evolver of the breakbeat, lest we forget – among other instances – ‘Bug In A Bassbin’) but shot through with real, frost-bitten late noughties ennui. The B-side cut of Shed’s second “anonymous” Equalized 12″ (2009) ploughs a similar furrow, and is even more affecting, its shuffling rhythm sounding clotted and cluttered, serotonin-depleted and unsure of itself. In an era where scrubbed-clean, streamlined 4/4 pulsation has become Continental techno’s default setting, Shed’s use of the breakbeat sounds provocatively gawky, radically awkward.

It’s interesting to note that neither ‘Estrange’ or ‘EQD002B’ are particularly danceable; in these instances, breakbeats provide the buttressing for disquisitions on melancholy; their pace, compared to the going rate in conventional jungle, is almost funereal. This isn’t a bad thing. Indeed, for all jungle’s virtues, its rhythmic velocity can be precisely what holds it back – when I interviewed Martyn recently, he said that one of the reasons that he’d begun to produce dubstep-oriented tracks in the mid-2000s was because drum ‘n bass’s 160-80bpm imperative was preventing him from exploring the kind of melodies and narratives that he wanted to. But Martyn himself has proved that breaks can force dancefloor movement even at reduced speed: his remix of Shed’s ‘Another Wedged Chicken’ does the job marvellously, though to be fair the syncopation is more reminiscent of broken beat, more Seiji than Kaotic Chemistry.

Shed has been exploring unusual breakbeat angles for a long time now – check ‘Masque Hidden’ (2006) and the title track of his phenomenal Citylicker EP (2005) for evidence. A more recent convert is Redshape. His 2009 album The Dance Paradox featured a magnificent track called ‘Man Out of Time’ – boasting a live-sounding break at not much greater than hip-hop tempo, indeed, not a million miles away from the 90s cine-hop of DJ Shadow et al. Still, the way he processed and iterates this rhythm is determinedly techno, really exploiting it for maximum crunch and kinesis, and placing it within a grand canopy of churchy, tension-wracked synths. Back in 2007 Redshape brought us ‘Dog Day’ -  a low-slung house bruck-out of garish rave stabs and heavy sampled breakbeats that is still, for my money, the most impressive and innovative production in his oeuvre.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 12th, 2010 at 1:01 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.