Broken/not broken
When it comes to broken beat, boredom is the mother of invention.
By Amanda Nowinski
(*from www.sfbg.com in 2001)
HOUSE MUSIC IS the comfort food of the club scene:
the good old-fashioned,
solid four-on-the-floor is as familiar as a looped snippet of a
woman's gospel
voice, or a sweeping, bittersweet melody, the kind that guts you,
makes
your eyes smart. Get a thump of that sound – in a car, in a club, on headphones
–
and bam! You are home.
But let's be real: is it still taking you higher,
to where you've never been before?
It would be convenient to say that broken
beat, a relatively new sound hailing
from
West London , is the antidote to dance music boredom. But
the problem with
the so-called genre is that it isn't
really a genre at all. Most of the
music incorporates
elements of live jazz instrumentation, but it has no definitive
properties, no specific beat
structure, no particular levels of bass, and no
pro or con stance toward melody, vocals,
or swingy, catchy hooks. Beats are
rarely four-on-the-floor or straight-up breaks
but instead are splintered and
skippy sounding, which makes for a music that never
sits still, even at its
most nodding-off, downtempo moments. Its open-ended character is
its single
most unifying quality, because each artist is forging a uniquely personal
sound,
as with IG Culture's Afro-rhythms, Seiji's
free jazz and darker electronics, Nubian Minds'
tweakier techno
edge, and the rare groove and soul-influenced sound of Afronaught
(Orin Walters). In most cases the music is led by more
mature players, such as
IG Culture and Dego (4
Hero) of Reinforced, reflecting
an ear that has been through
it all and has loved all unequally. It is post-house,
post-techno, post-ambient, and
post-jungle – and yet, it is all of those things
in no specific measure.
If it's defined at all, it's defined by an attitude.
One of the younger players on the scene, Paul "Seiji" Dolby (a.k.a.
Opaque and
Homecookin'), a 24-year-old (in 2001) member of Bugz in
the Attic – a leading broken
beat production collective in West London that was started
by Walters – has produced
everything from house to drum 'n' bass; listening
to his latest work, amalgamation
is the word that comes to mind. "The
whole West London thing is about fusion,"
Seiji says over the phone from
his West London home.
"We're not sticking to any
formula. But the worrying thing about the whole broken
beat tag is that people
might think, 'OK, this is a style, and this is what it sounds like.'
But it's
not true. All the different producers involved in what's going on, we're not
making the same style. It's very diverse even within the West London thing.
I'm doing something very electronic, and Domu is technical
and hard as drum 'n' bass.
And then you've got a soulful style from Restless
Soul [Phil Asher].
It's quite a diverse range of styles."
The broken beat movement centers on the pioneering styles of IG
Culture and Dego,
whose Reinforced label was home to Seiji
when he began making drum 'n' bass.
Dego's 2000
Black label recently released the Good Good compilation,
which is the
best introduction to the sound on CD. It's perhaps no coincidence
that the U.S.import
was released through Planet E, the label owned by Detroit-based
techno producer
Carl Craig, whose free jazz-meets-techno
project, Innerzone
Orchestra, reveals a
stateside link to the broken beat style.
In a broader sense, what the producers in
West London are doing isn't entirely
different from the electronic jazz fusion styles
rising in Germany with Trüby
Trio, Jazzanova, Beanfield, Fauna Flash, and other
artists
on the Compost label, or from what
Kyoto Jazz Massive is doing in Japan
and Volcov is
doing in Italy. "I
see broken beat as a term under the wider umbrella
of future jazz, which shouldn't
be mistaken for acid jazz," says Tomas Palermo,
editor of the electronic
music magazine "XLR8R" and a local DJ who plays broken beat
regularly
at the monthly Emoto club night he coproduces with Jonah Sharp and
Andrew Jervis
of Ubiquity Records – the S.F.-born label that's supported the
future jazz
sound for years, with West London artists like Beatless
(Alex Attias and
Paul Martin) and Americans like Chris Brann of P'Taah (and
Wamdue Project),
whose De'Compressed album features a broken beat remix by
Seiji (under the
Opaque moniker) and Nubian Minds. With twisty, cut-up beats
and enough avant
jazz stylings to have made Sun Ra or Rahsaan
Roland Kirk proud,
the music isn't
as overtly dance-floor friendly as the old acid jazz tunes,
which, for the most part,
relied on simple funk and jazz bars laid over hip-hop
tempo breaks.
The strong core of the West London scene developed through a closely knit
network
of like-minded artists and a proliferation of labels that support them,
including People,
Bugz in
the Attic's Bittasweet,
IG Culture's Main
Squeeze, Laws of Motion, and Co-Op,
which is also a club night. "Bugz in the Attic
is a constant collaboration going around
between everyone," says Ubiquity's
Jervis, who also organizes the monthly
"No Categories" event at 111 Minna St.
, featuring broken beat and future jazz.
"Everyone feeds off each other,
and its true that it helps, going around in circles."
Varied backgrounds
meld endless influences – well, except for trance and crap
mainstream house
– and no style is left out. "Instead of getting boring, imploding,
or
drying up," Jervis adds, "the chief producers have gone on to develop
a wider
variety of styles. The Afronaught album sounds different to the IG
Culture album,
and the Beatless album is completely different to Neon Phusion
album."
But while broken beat may be the newest buzz out of the London dance scene,
another genre, 2 step, monopolizes the press's attention.
Unlike 2 step, broken
beat
operates under uncertain guidelines and is therefore less appealing to
genre-obsessed marketing schemes, which rely on singular musical trends to
forward a commercial agenda. Could the elusive styles of broken beat-future
jazz
producers be in any form a conscious reaction to the aggressive mainstreaming
of
dance music or to the way in which another West London producer, bigwig
2 stepper
MJ Cole, garners all of the spotlight? Seiji, who
claims to derive inspiration from 2 step,
says no: "The broken beat thing
hasn't had much reference to another scene.
It hasn't been in response to anything. No one
sat down and said, 'Lets do that; maybe
we can make a scene.' Its just genuinely
people making music and doing something
different and realizing other people
were doing the same thing, so we managed to
get together a little community,
which has sustained it."
Still, Seiji admits that broken beat isn't exactly moneymaking music.
The
European glossies haven't been clamoring to put IG Culture or Dego on their
covers,
none of those artists seem to have press agents, and finding the music
in the stores is
a challenge. Hence, the music has taken an outcast stance:
its refusal to conform places
it on the outskirts of the commercial market. And also unlike 2 step – a black-innovated
music whose media darlings, MJ Cole and Artful Dodger, are white –
the
West London scene is defined to the media at large by IG Culture and Dego,
and therefore retains
a black identity, even while the broken beat and future jazz
scenes have a
multicultural character.
The 2000 Black label leaves no doubt as to
what influences the music is rooted
in, nor do names like Nubian Minds or Afronaught.
Seiji, who was trained as a cellist (and plays cello on the Afronaught album),
is more
of a studio geek than a slick champagne sipper looking for cash and
stardom – and
anyhow, it's hard to imagine that anything with abstract beats
would attract any level
of cash-money glam. When he talks about making music,
one word surfaces repeatedly:
"science" evidence
of his techie drum 'n' bass roots. "Drum 'n' bass is more about
getting into the science
of the technology of the sound and really messing with it,
rather than just
creating raw grooves," he says. "And at the time when it was exciting,
it was all about the beat science and trying to see how far you could take
the break
beats, how far you could twist them."
It's the same scientific approach that keeps him making music today – except
that he's
no longer concerned with fitting into the genre trap. "My style
of programming comes
from drum 'n' bass," he says. "I'm
trying to do something scientific, because at the
end of the day a house beat
can get boring, and it gets boring to be making music
in that particular style
where you've got to have a beat on every one. That's why
we started making
music that was a bit different, because we were bored."
And boredom is an inevitable development in a scene that is systematically
battered
into rigid genres. The dance music industry's vehement obsession with
categorization
leaves the rebels without aggressive marketing plans, without
gigs at commercial
events, probably without press agents, and certainly without
big record deals.
With no easily accessible formula, broken beat artists risk
antagonizing critics and
purists alike. Broken beat may be a small network
of like-minded souls,
but its message of emancipation from formulas and categories
is appealing
and no doubt will spread.
Down
load legendary Broken beat's party "CO-OP"'s 3hrs Mix, click here
Down load DJ Mixes by
Kay Suzuki, click here