These are the breaks

Say it: Breakbeat. Sounds good, right? Rolls off the tongue like broken kick-drum. Into the heart like a deep warm sub. Say it again. The soft alliteration of the ‘b’, the harsh consonants of the ‘k’ and ‘t’, stop/starting like its namesake drum pattern. Much onomatopoeia. Much omnipresence…

Present in almost every tune ever produced, if you include fills and breakdowns, breakbeats are everywhere. The swing between the sections, the momentum in those ‘moments’. But right now they’re switching from a supportive rhythmic texture to a more dominant characteristic in tracks. It’s the sound of My Nu Leng switching up the Bristol bass flow, or their fellow south west mates Diemantle niceing up the dance with their ‘anything goes’ rave fusion. It’s the sound of Mella Dee, Special Request and Detboi rumbling the jungle, or Wuki, Cause & Affect and Stanton Warriors slapping our butts with their 808s. It’s Jaded, Mafia Kiss and Marten Horger re-building house with broken blocks, or Hypho and ATYK manipulating trap aesthetics. It’s a new generation of artists from Aylen to Zander appearing in sets from Ardalan’s to Zedd’s. It’s lurking on labels like Punks, Black Butter, Night Bass, Dirtybird, Mad Decent, Houndstooth, Albion Collective, Lobster Boy, Keysound and Project All Out. It’s our Tune of 2015, Bicep’s ‘Just’: a beautiful breakbeat creation, no question.

But do any of the above call their beats ‘breaks’? Have a word. 130 jungle, bass music, tech-funk, booty bass, 808 music, beats, broken beat, rave, bass house, trap, your mum... literally anything but ‘breakbeat’ or ‘breaks’. I’m not mad at them, though. No… We’re in the midst of a vintage year for beats/bass because of these guys. What irks me is this: how can a drum pattern be as versatile and popular as Air Max, yet, as a genre tag, be as cool as Crocs?

To understand breaks as a genre we need to go back to the late 90s where a melting pot was being brewed by dissidents of big beat, drum ’n’ bass, hip hop and garage. Drum ’n’ bass was getting too dark in certain corners, garage had become sugar-sweet in places, big beat was getting boozy, superclubs and hammy prog and trance ruled the roost and even hard dance was perplexingly popular… breaks became an alternative lingua franca right up to the mid-noughties, packing dedicated festival arenas every summer and selling out clubs like Fabric and Sankeys most Fridays. But, like all genres, staleness struck. Even amid its menu of sub-genres (booty bass, tear-out, tech-funk, garage breaks, electro) formulas happened. Poorly produced imitations happened. Bootlegs of other genre hits were as prolific as originals. The tear-out side became muscle music for brochachos of yesteryear.

Yet none of those factors should equate to the tag’s apparent plague-like properties. Perhaps its decline was as timely as its genesis? Breaks was one of the last genres to grow without established streaming platforms and the heavy hand of social media. Sure, it had some passionate forum communities – similar to that of d’n’b – but there was little sharing, liking or spreading beyond those who were already fans. While this ensured a knowing underground spirit among fans and meant a myriad of localised crews developing their own sound and parties, it could never compete with what was to follow and consequently eclipse it: the homogenising effect of blogs and streaming sites that powered the more global sounds of electrohouse and dubstep. Genres that trampled breaks to a bassy pulp, kept alive by a life-support system such as nu-jungle, bootlegs and a small but passionate fanbase.

Leading breakbeat acts either switched to house or dubstep, disappeared or, in rare cases, continued to do their own thing but without using the word ‘breaks’. Promoters wouldn’t book it, radios wouldn’t touch it, YouTube music channels wouldn’t support it, only a few specialist blogs would use the genre name. Recently I’ve heard of one act being told by their manager never to use the term, and that one label has changed their track descriptions to get radio pluggers to check their releases. And this is the problem…

All genres have shady shark-jumping chapters. But do you think Jeff Mills lost sleep when Mauro Picotto took techno to the charts? Did Masters At Work retire when David Zowie assumed the role of house dealer every weekend? Did DMZ shut the studio down when Modestep rocked up and showed dubstep a massive chart-slapping sign? Will DJ Hype denounce d’n’b now Take That are involved? No. Genre fashions come and go, but they don’t completely die. Or at least they shouldn’t. Breakbeat, as a genre, is a handy way of describing a vast range of exciting non-4/4 electronic music and should work as widely as as terms like ‘house’ and ‘techno’. It captures an aesthetic or motion rather than a specific set of rules, and it deserves a second chance. And while industry behind-the-sceners, who base a lot of faith in social media stats, may still snub it, there’s a whole heap of really fucking exciting artists involved.

Back to the future, and a new melting pot is being brewed by dissidents of house, future house, d’n’b, trap, dubstep and bass music. In the wake of post-EDM, deep house, dubstep and bass house, in the shadows of crass pop features on d’n’b hits, breakbeats are being drawn from a wider cross-section of genres and are more dominant in electronic music than they have been in years. From Bristol’s S.O.B.A.D. collective to Dallas’s Broken Syndicate by way of Birmingham’s Four40, Stanton Warriors’ Punks, AC Slater’s Night Bass and so much more, breakbeats have reattained their status as the universal drum language that glues otherwise disparate genres and scenes together. And while I’m not expecting any crew or artist making this music to start calling it ‘breaks’ I am keen that we get over ourselves and expunge the negative connotations the b-word has been shrouded in for the last 10 years. Sure, it’s had its low moments – show me a genre that hasn’t – but right now it’s one of the heaviest influences in electronic music. And it sounds good, right? Say it again.