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Melbourne trio Nubreed have quickly risen to the forefront of the Australian breaks scene largely on the back of their energetic live performances and the success of their recent first single, "Welcome". After talking with Nubreed for the good part of an hour, I get the feeling that there is a lot more to these boys than a tidy performance and a breaks song that is playable on mainstream radio.

"We have a familiar sound, but not like anything you've heard," they say. "Breaks allow us to do that."

Their unique sound was inevitable, says Nubreed's Jase - the "culmination of ten years of friendship and musical taste" with influences that include "hip hop, old school soul, acid jazz, funk and breaks". Another of the three, DB, pipes in that drum 'n' bass was also a stepping stone to breaks but that it was more part of their "search for the beats" than a prior influence.

"We like that the most often comment heard after our show is, 'I have never heard anything like that!' If we aren't going to take the audience and the scene somewhere else then we and the scene would just stagnate," he says.

To many this may seem like a cliched gloat at musical independence and originality. However, Nubreed certainly have the talent and sincerity to get away with a statement like that. At the recent Two Tribes event in Melbourne they performed on the breaks stage that attracted such a large crowd that the house room emptied out and actually had to be shut down. A situation unheard of in Australia!