Back in 2004, a new festival made an appearance in the UK. Glade was a name known to some from Glastonbury, where they had hosted an arena since 2000. I was one of the lucky few who attended that first festival, with a capacity of only around 3000, on the grounds of a country estate near Reading.
In amongst a field of tents featuring various takes on trance music, there was one which hosted three solid days of breaks; the Breaksday Stage. This was the reason I found myself there, having seen a poster slapped up on some hoardings at Tooting Bec a few months earlier. I had an amazing time, met some fantastic people and heard music that kept me dancing for pretty much the entire, hot weekend, spending hours upon hours in that breaks tent dancing like a loon.
There are many memories which stay with me from the first Glade (too many to list here), but one of the those that really sticks in my mind is the set I saw from Jay Cunning, Atomic Hooligan and MC Xander. From memory, I think it was on the Friday, the first day of actual music, in the daytime. It was epic.
As Jay Cunning manned the decks, mixing up the tunes, Atomic Hooligan and MC Xander took centre stage, with Atomic Hooligan scratching like a madman over the tunes and Xander doing the MC business, but with a lot of beatboxing and vocal scratching of his own. At one point (it felt like the whole set tbh) the two of them had a scratch battle, with Xander laying down vocal fx scratch after scratch for Atomic Hooligan to ’emulate’ on the decks, each time drawing approval from the crowd as the sound was replicated in detail. They pretty much raised the roof of the tent for those who were there and transformed a set that was already a break from the norm, into something truly special. The combination of the three, on the day, went down a treat.
Every now and then, you find yourself in a space and time that you kinda know will never be repeated and as the years have passed, this has proved to be one of those memories that instantly takes me back to a time where I was lost in the moment.
I’m yet to find a recording of that set, but my attention was grabbed when I saw a link to this mix, also from 2004, featuring Jay Cunning, Atomic Hooligan and MC Xander, only this time from a gig in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It’s a snapshot in time, filled with huge tunes of the day, great scratching, the cut up vocals of Xander, and it’s the closest I’ve got to reliving that humid day in the summer of 2004.
Breakspoll is back. Now in its 11th year, the awards ceremony for the world of breaks and breakbeat is to be held at Cable Studios for the second year in a row, after a move from Fabric. As the spam rolls in and artists suddenly start sending out newsletters and freebies, we take a look back over the early years of the awards to throw some light on the history of Breakspoll.
The first Breakspoll awards were held virtually, on an internet forum called BreaksWorld. The site itself is long gone, but what possibly started out as a bit of fun on the internet has survived and evolved into the biggest event in the breaks calendar. Back then, awards for the best tunes and DJs, were accompanied by categories such as ‘Best Breakbeat Beard’ and ‘Sexiest Person in Breaks’. Many of the well established and familiar names in Breaks feature heavily in the list of nominees and winners from that year.
Adam Freeland’s live mix ‘On Tour’ won Best Album, with Koma & Bones taking the prize for Best Producer and Best Remix, for their take on Beber and Tamra’s ‘Travellin’ On’. TCR won Best Record Label, with its owner, Rennie Pilgrem, being awarded King of Breaks. B.L.I.M. snatched Best Remixer. All familiar names. Except for one – Jonathan Lisle, who won best DJ and was nominated in the best album and King of Breaks award.
Lisle seems to have vanished from the breaks scene, making an appearance in the nominations in 2002 before never being heard of again, at the Breakspoll awards at least, whilst the others continued on to become household names in the breaks scene. Discovered by Digweed, he apparently continued DJing before hanging up his heaphones in 2007 to concentrate on a legal career.
Track of the Year was B.L.I.M. and Rennie Pilgrem’s ‘Yellow Snow’ mix of Eskimo, a absolute belter of a tune.
With the poll for 2001 out of the way, some bright spark decided to do it all over again, only this time there was a party to celebrate on Thursday 27th February 2003, at Electrowerkz, a club in Angel, London. Winners of the 2001 poll formed the lineup:
Breakspoll Awards Line-up Rennie Pilgrem FreQ Nasty Krafty Kuts Jean Jacques Smoothie Phantom Beats vs Vandal Atomic Hooligan vs Mechanoise Jonathan Lisle Jay Cunning vs Haze & Force Mass Motion
The awards for 2002 were announced and presented on the night, by Annie Nightingale of BBC Radio One. Categories increased dramatically in number compared to the first poll and the Sexiest Person in Breakbeat and Best Breakbeat Beard awards were confined to the history books.
New awards appeared for Best Website, Best Magazine and something called ‘Face Of Breaks 2003′, presumably for whom people thought would be representing the scene in the year the awards were actually presented. Krafty Kuts took that one home. There was also an award for the Best New Act, which is something Breakspoll has continued to expand on over the years, giving new DJs, producers and labels the opportunity to get some recognition in amongst the bigger players.
There were some recognisable names nominated in the Best New Act that year, including iLS, Stereo 8 and Dan F, but the prize was taken by Raw As F*CK, which was actually the pseudonym for The Freestylers, already well established in the breaks scene, but going by a different name after the collapse of their record label. Best Label was won by Finger Lickin’, kicking off a series of wins that saw them take the award a further 5 times. Serial winners were also MOFO Magazine, who won the award for Best Magazine 5 years in a row, beating DJ Mag, Muzik and Mixmag along the way, until they stopped putting out the free magazine. The category was quietly dropped after the awards for 2006. Best Website was presented to NuBreaks.com, with Breaksworld.com, the home of the first Breakspoll awards receiving only a nomination.
Rennie Pilgrem once again took the King of Breaks title, now referred to as Most Valuable Person, while Adam Freeland, his co-promoter from Friction was awarded the prize of best DJ. Best Track was a real classic:
The third Breakspoll Awards Ceremony, for 2003, was held in a new venue, The Egg in Kings Cross. The lineup grew somewhat that year.
Line-up Rennie Pilgrem, Krafty Kuts, Adam Freeland, FreQ Nasty, Stanton Warriors and Meat Katie in a 4 hour breakbeat DJ battle – with a warm up on the night from Phantom Beats.
New Blood Stage:
Transformer Man
Deep Impact
Random Source
SplitLoop (live)
Jay Cunning & Atomic Hooligan (5 Decks & FX ft Xander Beatbox)
Evil 9 (live)
Skool Of Thought
Drunken Allstars
Raising the Bar:
Cedric Benoit
Vandal vs Pete Jordan
Future Funk Squad
Scissorkicks
Friendly
Deekline & Ollywood
In my opinion, 2003 was a special year for breaks. Flicking back through vinyl, it’s amazing just how many of the really great tracks came out that year. The album category was particularly strong, with Freeland’s ‘Now & Them’, B.L.I.M.’s ‘Lost in Music’ and Koma & Bones’ ‘Shutterspeed’ all jockeying for position with the eventual winners of the award, the Plump DJ’s. Their second album, Eargasm, gave them their second award on the night, as they were also crowned Best Producers.
There was no Best DJ award for 2003, but new categories came in the form of Best New Label and Best Retailer. Best New Label went to Streetwise, an offshoot of the record store based in Cambridge, somewhat unsurpringly after unleashing the slab of vinyl containing the Best Remix of 2003, Rennie Pilgrem’s ‘Agatha Stomp’ remix of Zero’s ‘Emit/ Collect’. Many still regard this as the one of the biggest tunes in nu skool breaks history.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78dMQr8qA_g
Vinyl Addiction won the inaugural Best Retailer award, the shop that shared a Camden Town building with Finger Lickin Records and the Best Website award went to NuSkoolBreaks.co.uk, a forum devoted to the sound, something they have managed to repeat every year since. Every year except for 2008, when the award seemed to take a year off. Spectrum won Best Club for the second year in a row. With Rennie Pilgrem once again being named Most Valuable Person, it was Adam Freeland who was declared the Face Of Breaks 2004, having had quite a successful year with We Want Your Soul and his Now and Them album.
After the awards for 2003, Breakspoll moved venues once again, to a new home that would host many years of messy Thursday February nights. All that’s left, is to leave you with the Best Single of 2003, Rennie Pilgrem and B.L.I.M.’s ‘2 Freaks’, featuring vocals from Chickaboo, often found MCing over Rennie’s sets through the years.
Back in 2004, a new festival made an appearance in the UK. Glade was a name known to some from Glastonbury, where they had hosted an arena since 2000. I was one of the lucky few who attended that first festival, with a capacity of only around 3000, on the grounds of a country estate near Reading.