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Ms. E is one to watch. She has so much style on the decks, with years of technique on display, and transitions so smooth you can't help but stand and watch sometimes. Her many projects range from internet radio to touring, and we can hardly wait for her to find a little free time to produce some tracks of her own. Ms. E breaks it down for us on regarding her long-time involvement with the San Francisco scene and what's going on that keeps her excited about the future of breakbeat.

GETTIN' HEKTIC AT EKLEKTIC
Hektic was my first residency, and as a co-founder of Eklektic originally, I've always stayed in the loop with the evolution of the club. I stepped down from actually producing the event at the end of 1999 to pursue my career in radio production. In 2000, when Groundscore continued hosting Eklektic at the old spot Rico's at 78 Minna, the Lower Level residents Felix the Dog and Clockwork had a vision of setting a precedent with a breakbeat weekly to be part of Eklektic. So when Eklektic moved to Cat Club, Hektic was born. I was a resident of Hektic from the get-go at Cat Club. That's been awesome because I'm close with the Groundscore crew and as Eklektic has gone through its many phases, it's consistently been a solid place for people to dance, where the music is ahead of the curve and it's one of the best places to play. It's prime time - Saturday night on Folsom Street. The way music is promoted at Hektic/Eklektic, people leave knowing what's up, and people who come know the music. Having personally phased out of drum 'n' bass a bit, it was a really great way for me to still stay involved in Eklektic. There is a lot of crossover potential for breakbeat from the junglists and being in San Francisco especially, there's also a lot of cross-over with the househeads too.

BOTTOM HEAVY AT THE TOP
My other residency that I switch off with is Bottom Heavy, the weekly Saturday night at The Top DJ Bar in the Lower Haight. It's hosted by the guys who I work with on our radio show Future Breaks FM and True Intent Recordings, which is a drum 'n' bass label that relases deeper, more musical material. The Top is the joint, the local spot! Strong drinks and smiles. Not a state of the art sound system, but everyone there is on the dance floor. There we play a range of breakbeat, nu jazz, 2-step garage and d&b. I like playing at both my residencies because I know that I'm at home in both places and I can pretty much play whatever I want—it's a good feeling.

TRUE INTENT RECORDINGS
With the True Intent record label, one of our main goals this year is to do an imprint for breaks tunes to complement the drum 'n' bass we're putting out. The material we chose is really musical, lush and amazing without losing that danceable energy and vibe.

SAN FRANCISCO BREAKBEAT CULTURE
The breakbeat scene is very open here at such an early stage, and people booking the clubs have an appreciation of many styles. Felix is really the main figurehead, because he has been DJing in the city for so long, and he's a great champion of fusion. So we're all about fusion. Young cats come up and expect respect right off, but it's like, "Contribute something first, start a radio show, start your own night." That's happening more and more. I would like to see more labels popping up in the city. The Eyephunk crew is one of the main reasons breaks is taking off in the city because they are actually importing and distributing the music, and Dave there is starting his own label next.

SF grew to be the number one place for drum 'n' bass in the States if not the world, because of the open-mindedness and communication we have going here. The same is possible for breakbeat. In such a small amount of time, everyone says they hear it's great in SF, and it is! Breakbeat is being featured on the main floors of the biggest clubs like 1015, space 550, and there are a bunch of new weeklies and one-offs popping up. People might say it's because breaks are a fad right now but hopefully it will have more longevity, because there is great potential to have fusion with the house music and the electro scene and all of dance music.

COMING UP AS A DJ
I've loved dance music from the start and I've never been a purist. I was classically trained in piano from a very young age and then started doing choreography and dancing and it was all about the good early R&B, hip-hop, technotronic stuff that I was into. It's more danceable if there are breakbeats in it, in my opinion. The breakbeats sound more urban to me.
I've never owned turntables and I got my all my practice on the radio shows at first. Filling those long 3-hour graveyard shifts was all about programming different types of music together, to create a flow. A lot of beginning DJ's think that it's all about mixing and it's not. A lot of the amazing producers like Rennie Pilgrem and Meat Katie will tell you, "We're not the best DJ's but we'll lay out phat tracks!" I DJed out for the first time on New Year's Day in 1998 at Eklektic. My club DJing didn't really take off until that year because I had to graduate school to have the time to put into it! I was looking up to UFO!, Push, Felix - they were like super-heroes to me. They are true performers, totally holding the dance floor. Right now I'm working on living the global DJ dream, I want to travel a lot more!

The beat range in breakbeat gives me more space to cut it up and mix in the electro, 2-step garage, techhouse, and all of that just made me more comfortable as a DJ. Versatility is a big thing for me as an artist and I like being able to play a wider range of music. Look at the producers T-Power and B.L.I.M., coming from a drum 'n' bass world. Lots of people want music you can fit more jiggy beats and melody into.

THE TRIP TO LONDON-TOWN
In late October-November last year I stayed in London for 2 weeks. I planned my trip around being able to play at Chew the Fat, Paul Arnold's weekly Friday night in Brixton. It's like the Hektic of London where you can regularly see the heavy hitters of breakbeat and watch new players evolve. Not the greatest sound system down there, but great vibes. I arrived early on a Friday morning and played there that night. [Laughs] I was cross-eyed tired but I pulled it off. It was one of those great experiences where you arrive and they say, "Play whatever you want!" I only brought enough records for that set because I knew I would be collecting so many more throughout the trip. The crowd was up for it and I couldn't believe I was in London! Those folks are serious weekend warriors.

I went down to Brighton, where Adam Freeland lives and his label Marine Parade is based. He was in Australia at the time, but I hung out with Marie, one of the women who runs his label. I got the treatment there because I got to dig though the back catalog! I was there with my friend Julie, who is friends with Adam. She is the one who made the Orange phone commerical and got that ILS track ["Next Level"] on there. We went up to his apartment and he had laid out a bunch of records for us to go through which was pretty dope. That first week meeting up with labels was a main focus, so I stopped by a lot of offices and said hello, and had tea of course! I knew my trip would pay for itself in tunes, and it was good timing for this because as breaks is growing here in SF, I felt like I needed to get ahead of the curve. I played on Space.FM with B.L.I.M. on the TCR show, which is defunct now. I got to see the TCR crew, Juz from Freakaboom, the Botchit & Scarper headquarters, the Finger Lickin' offices, and Vinyl Addiction of course is right there. I was staying with my friend Ian Williams who started Friction with Rennie, the club night that helped launch the careers of Freeland, Tayo and Pilgrem.

I got to check out the first night of the Botchit/Mechanoise party Collision, and the next day I hooked up with Danny McMillan who hosted me on his what was to be his farewell show on KISS FM. I was the most nervous doing that! We pre-recorded it and I was worried that I wouldn't flow as well, but it went off great I think. 30-50% of that set was new music I had picked up that week. I had just hung out with B.L.I.M., so I started off the set with a tune people are calling "Driving" now, the first track from his forthcoming album on TCR. That was cool to start with and I played both sides of Track 2, which had just come out. I also played some San Francisco tracks from local labels too. That weekend Ian threw a party at a bar in honor of me being in town and had a bunch of locals play, Barry Ashworth from the Dub Pistols started it off with some nice hip hop, and when I played, G (B.L.I.M.) played some tunes with me.

I went to Bristol the next week and hung out with the Knowledge Magazine crew. They've been good mates of mine over the last 3 years. The trip to Bristol was short and sweet. On my last night in London, Felix had just arrived and was playing at the TCR/Whole 9 Yards party HUM. That was super super fun and silly. It's so great to have met people I only knew from the Breakbeat list and emails, to hang out with friends we've hosted in SF, and go by their offices and studios. These relationships are just so much more solid when you can look someone in the eye, you know, and that's rare these days because there are a lot of people jocking the UK labels and producers. No one is making a mint off this, everyone does it for love of the music. It's comforting to meet these people and feel like we're old friends. What I got mostly from the trip was how welcome I felt there, because we're just so much on the same frequency. Smoke a joint, have a cup of tea, listen to some tunes. Yeah! It was fantastic. Next time I plan to roll through London will be in June on my way to Spain and the SONAR Festival. My goal is to bring my own music to them. That's the gift I want to bring next time, some original stuff. It's like, what's your excuse, lay down some tracks! I got a lot of encouragment from everyone over there.

THE LONDON-SAN FRANCISCO CONNECTION
London and San Francisco are not as different as much as people would think. A lot of times, you hear London and think massive sound systems, massive clubs, but while I was there, it was all about smaller venues, weeklies starting up and stuff. So it was similar. Small clubs, decent sound, but mostly great vibes--people care about it. You'll see some players and the heads going for it. It's a lot more male dominated than San Francisco though, a lot more competitive as you can imagine. There are a few ladies into it, who know what's up and aren't intimidated, but women in London generally seem to lean towards R&B, garage more. People in London would ask me what the scene is like in America, and what can I say but, "Well, America is really really big! I can't speak for the whole country, but in San Francisco it's rockin'!" Coming from London, San Francisco is a good destination point because we share that same flavor somewhat. There is something over there, maybe it's the weather, maybe the water, but kids start producing the tight beats earlier on. I hooked up with these kids who were making the sickest breakbeat garage. They are not even that computer-savvy, their studio is kind of thrown together in a corner of their bedroom! They definitely have a knack for the studio stuff, making quality sounds.

CRAZY DJ MOMENT
My sister was producing this huge fashion show at her art school in Los Angeles and the theme was Red Light District. Amazing designs, very erotic, everyone was drinking wine and feeling it so much. I was supposed to come out with the finale. The set-up was so phat, because the decks were set up huge on this amazing system, and the runway was coming around behind the turntables, in a huge auditorium. Chaos hits before I go on because this group called the Fashion Terrorists wanted to take over and stall the show and fuck up the lights and stuff. People outside in the audience thought the show was over, and were starting to leave. Everyone is freaking out and yelling back stage so my sister grabs me, pulls me out on the runway and leads me to the decks, and says, "Start this party girl!" I threw down the first track, the BLIM remix of "Red Light District" and it went right with mood! By the third track or so, everything goes black. The Fashion Terrorists had pulled the main power supply and I think only my monitors were on. Of course, I thought I had blown it out because I was bumping it so hard, and everyone there was so ready to party. I'm looking across at the guy doing the lighting and he doesn't know what's going on either. My sister ran out and told me not to stop mixing, so I pushed it and the power came back on. I did a 3-hour set and it was one of the first times I played for a big group that didn't know the music necessarily, and they were rocking out. It was so much fun because you just don't get to play on a huge system like that, plus it was for my sister's show, and the chaos just made it all better. That was my best gig ever for sure.

THE DREAM PERFORMANCE
I would have my vocalist Audio Angel, because most MCs talk too much, but she is awesome and beautiful, totally helps me connect with the audience, and helps the audience connect with us. She gives it a human flavor. Maybe it would be in Golden Gate Park, on a nice system, on an Indian summer day-that would be wicked! It would be broadcast on the radio, on the net. I would want a house DJ, really good hip-hop. And Ryan on the digeridoo of course, and some other crazy live perfomers. That would be it.

EKLEKTIC http://www.eklektic.net
FUTURE BREAKS FM http://www.futurebreaks.fm
GROUNDSCORE http://www.groundscore.net
EYEPHUNK http://www.eyephunk.com
XLR8R MAGAZINE http://www.xlr8r.com