BREAKIN' NEWS: November 28th 2002
The breakbeat newsletter from Breaksworld.com

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http://www.breaksworld.com/Newsletter/

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Breakspoll

It's that time of year again to vote for the winners of the annual Breakspoll awards!
Who were the movers and shakers in the global breaks scene in 2002? Visit www.breakspoll.com and vote in 16 categories including the best single, album, producer, deejay, and club nite. You can also check out who DJ Hyper, Si Begg, Rennie Pilgrem and others have picked as this year's winners.
You can win lots of prizes by voting, including singles and other goodies from TCR, Kilowatt, Acetate, Sound of Habib and many other breakbeat labels.
A Breakspoll party to celebrate the breakbeat scene will be held in London (UK) at the end of February. Confirmed DJs for the nite are Phantom Beats, Jean Jacques Smoothie, Vandal, Jay Cunning, Haze and Johnathon Lisle, with Rennie Pilgrem, BLIM and Hyper still to be confirmed.
So what are you waiting for? Get voting!
http://www.breakspoll.com/

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Mofo

Issue 5 of London's free breakbeat street mag Mofo is now available.

To celebrate their fifth issue,, the Mofo crew are giving away a free cover disk with each mag, mixed and scratched live across 3 decks by Jay Cunning and Atomic Hooligan. This CD is very limited so don't miss out.

Issue 5 contains interviews with:
* Mechanoise - Alex and Jody discuss why they operate Mechanoise at street level - breakbeat garage - touring America - pirate radio - running a record shop and future Mechanoise releases.
* Atomic Hooligan chat with Mofo about studio techniques - their background and playing in Spain.
* Deadly Avenger gives the lowdown on his new album.
* Breaks FM collective talk about the days of pirate radio and why they turned to the internet.
*Craig Richards has a long chat with Mofo about his Fabric residency - youth movements - electro clash - Tyrant and breakbeat.
* DJ M07S submitts a guide to breakbeatin Boston & New England.
Plus club reviews: Trigger - Spectrum - Global Beats - Haywire Sessions. And stacks of breakbeat albums and singles reviewed.

Mofo is free to all UK readers. To claim your copy send an A5 sized S.A.E with 2 x first class stamps to:
MOFO / PO BOX 32128
LONDON
N4 1GA
For more info check out Mofo website:
http://www.mofomag.com

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Kid Kenobi

Kid Kenobi holds on to the title of Australia's best DJ! The breaks deejay won Best DJ for the second year in a row when the Australian Dance Music Awards were handed out at the Metro in Sydney on November 13th. Melbourne breaks DJ Ransom was also up for the Best DJ award.
Krafty Kuts won the award for Best International, beating Sasha, Freq Nasty and Paul van Dyk. Krafty picked up the prize in person and, according to Burnitblue.com, commented afterwards that the awards look rather like pieces of Kryptonite.
Phil K also went home with an award, winning in the brand new Best Remix category with the Dark Alley remix of paulmac's 'The Sound Of Breaking Up'.
After winning last year's award for Best DJ, Sydney's Kid Kenobi was recruited by Ministry of Sound to mix a "Clubber's Guide to Breaks" compilation CD. A sequel called "Clubber's Guide to Breaks" is in the works and due out soon.
"It's less of an 'introduction' to the breakbeat sound and more of an exploration of the differing styles, vibes, and textures that exist within the genre. I also managed my time a lot better and the chill CD is basically the CD I've always wanted to do!" the deejay says in an interview with residentadvisor.com.au.
Kid Kenobi (real name Jesse) recently traveled to the UK, USA and Sweden. The trip was a mixture of gigs (Chew the Fat in London, Supercharged in Brighton with Krafty Kuts, 2 Funk with the Phantom Beats and Plastic Raygun crew Cardiff, and New York with the Kingsize USA crew) and studio time (Ed Solo in Brighton, Phantom Beats in Cardiff, Johan and Stisch from Sound of Habib in Sweden, and the Kingsize crew in New York). "It was good fun and a great learning curve," he comments.
Meanwhile tickets for Fuzzy's annual Field Day are selling out fast at 600+ a day with over 10000 already sold. Sydney's massive all-day New Year's Eve event this year features Plump DJs, Krafty Kuts, Felix Da Housecat, Freq Nasty, Soul of Man, LTJ Bukem & MC Conrad and Scratch Perverts among others. More info at www.fuzzy.com.au.

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DJ Hell

After helping to create the electroclash scene, DJ Hell is now disassociating himself from the sound.
"It was hyped in the wrong direction and I don't feel a part of the electroclash movement at all," the head honcho of Germany's International Deejay Gigolos label said in an interview with Tranzfusion.net last month.
"We never called it electroclash, other people came along and gave it a name. People like Miss Kittin or IF or Drexciya were doing this music for years already. There's lots of misunderstanding about this electroclash sound right now, it's electro combined with pop music and we don't feature it much on Gigolo," according to DJ Hell - real name Helmut Geier.
"In music terms, I don't find this electroclash very innovative. I'm working on the next thing," he added. "There's a lot of fake bands around who've tried to jump on it and it just doesn't work. You can't fake the funk and there's a lot of fakes around, being hyped with no power. Music-wise we're onto the next level already."
Hell has mixed a new compilation called "Electronicbody-Housemusic" which is out soon on React.

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Stereo 8

The latest signings to the Finger Lickin' camp, Stereo 8 are out with their debut single "Get Above Yourself/ Groove Diggin'" this month. Support is across the board, from usual suspects Meat Katie, Krafty Kuts, Plump DJs, Rennie Pilgrem, Tayo, Stanton Warriors and Matt "Freestylers" Cantor to big-name radio jocks Graham Gold, Judge Jules and Pete Tong.
A Finger Lickin' press release gushes, "This double A-sided monster is their first production and has already been working the floors after the Plump DJs demanded an acetate. 'Get Above Yourself' is a serious breaks work out with crisp techy beats, mean bassline, and hypnotic phasers. On the flip 'Groove Diggin' works the low-slung funk in true Finger Lickin' style with revving, rugged bass and chunks of stone-groove vocals."
Stereo 8 are Julian, Simon and Tom from Bristol's legendary club nite BlowPop. The lads played a guest mix on Annie Nightingale's BBC Radio 1 show on November 17th. Visit www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/dance/nightingale/ to hear the mix.
For more info see
http://www.fingerlickin.co.uk/

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Sasha

Sasha recently railed against music journos for writing that progressive house is "dead". The superstar prog jock said that UK dance journalists who've turned against progressive house are pathetic and only interested in their media careers, skrufff.com reported last month.
Muzik magazine earlier this year wrote that, "Progressive house is dead - long live the breaks!" and said prog is "the latest byword for boring." The mag named Sasha protegé James Zabiela as one of the prog deejays who are switching to breaks. Zabiela quickly responded by saying he was misquoted in Muzik.
Sasha released an album of mostly progressive breaks tunes this summer called "Airdrawndagger".
"It's just fucking rubbish that progressive is to blame for the problems in UK clubland," Sasha told Kate Oliver from Studentz.co.nz. "The whole club scene, the whole economy, everything, is in a bit of a rut at the moment, journalists are just looking to point the finger ... These magazines are skating on very thin ice because the more clubs that close down, the less advertisers they can have in their magazines," he continued.

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Ali B

Ali B has launched a new label called Air Recordings and the first release will be an electro track "Electric Appliances" by Finnish duo Mr. Velctro Fastener, aka Tatu Metsätähti and Tatu Peltonen.
The single, due out next month, also features a breaks remix by the Plump DJ's. It's the first remix they've done in ages.
The label is named after Ali B's Air nite which started at the famous Blue Note club in London, where Ali B is also a resident DJ of FabricLive @ Fabric. His show on London radio station Capital FM recently won him a Muzik award nomination for Best Radio Show.
Mr Velcro Fastener will appear live at FabricLive on November 29th.

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Elite Force

DJ sHack aka Elite Force has posted an MP3 only release on his site.
"The time is now ripe for the mp3-only release of a brand new Elite Force track. The track in question, 'The Unstoppable Force', was originally penned for release on the forthcoming Elite Force album, but in the final shakedown it had to give way to another track which kept the continuity of the album better. Far from being 'typical' of what I've been doing lately, it's an epic, slamming piece of 146bpm breakbeat-techno ... Feel free to burn it, play it, talk about it....whatever."
http://www.fab.uk.com/eliteforce/eliteforce_unstoppable.mp3
Meat Katie and Elite Force's tribal tech breaks tune "Toba" is out this month on Whole Nine Yards to great acclaim. Support is coming from many top DJs including the likes of Craig Richards, Danny Howells, Pete Tong, Medicine8 and Terminalhead. The followup "JuJu" is due for release on TCR in February of next year.
Two more solo singles are due out on Whole Nine Yards ahead of the Elite Force album, which is expected out in the first half of 2003.
For more info see:
http://www.fab.uk.com/eliteforce/http://www.fab.uk.com/eliteforce/

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Nightingale Awards

BBC Radio 1's Annie Nightingale is inviting listeners to vote for her second annual Nightingale awards.
You can vote online until December 1st on the BBC site and win various prizes, including Sasha's mix for Annie On One and vinyl copies of the last five Global Underground compilations, including James Lavelle's "Barcelona" comp.
Categories include Tune of the Year, Album of the Year, DJ of the Year, Guest Mix of the Year and Remix of the Year. There are no nominees, only write-in boxes. However, Annie herself seems to have a pretty clear idea of who she'd like to win.
"It's been a great year for breaks DJs, who are you going to support? Koma & Bones, Ils, Adam Freeland, Futureshock..." she writes next to the write-in box for DJ of the Year.
The winners will be announced in a special Annie on One show on December 29th featuring Groove Armada.
Adam Freeland will take over the radio show for Annie on December 1st, and you are encouraged to visit the Web address below and submit questions to Freeland.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/dance/nightingale/

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Muzik Awards

Our final bit of awards news comes from London where the annual Muzik Awards were handed out on October 15th at Po Na Na. FabricLive, the weekly breaks / drum 'n' bass night at Fabric in London, won the award for Best Club this year. The Streets was named best new artist while Fatboy Slim's Big Beach Boutique II, bringing a quarter of a million party people to Brighton's beach this summer, grabbed the prize for Best Event.
Also nominated for an award but going home empty-handed were ILS (Best Album, for "Soul Trader") , Junkie XL (Best Remix, for Elvis vs JXL - "A Little Less Conversation"), Ali B (Best Radio Show) and James Zabiela (Best Essential Mix).

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Cyberfunk

UK breakstep label Cyberfunk Music has launched a free dubplate service, making MP3 clips of unreleased, forthcoming breakbeat tunes available on their Web site.
"We believe this service is something nobody's really done before," according to Cyberfunk's DJ Quest and DJ Mutiny.
Already Botchit & Scarper, Sound of Habib, Plastic Raygun and Rat Records have come aboard and posted forthcoming releases on Cyberfunk's Web site, with many more breakbeat labels expected to follow.
For more info contact DJ Mutiny or check out the dubs by visiting:
http://www.cyberfunkmusic.co.uk/dubs.html

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B-Side

Southern California breaks deejay B-Side recently announced that he's become the breakbeat editor of leading American dance magazine URB.
B-Side, aka Ben Hebel, is inviting labels and artists to submit their forthcoming releases to him for review in URB magazine. "Please keep in mind that my lead time with the mag is 3 months so I need your stuff upfront," he added.
The mailing address is:
Ben Hebel
8198 Saint John Place
La Mesa, CA 91942
USA
For more info visit:
http://www.djbside.com
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