Angalossy.com

*translated from Portuguese, from a Brazilian magazine

LONDON. The musical genre of Breakbeat was formed around the practise of using the ‘break’ in tracks usually reserved for the moment when the instrumental kicks in, over and over again to create a rhythm of its own. Through Hip-Hop and Funk to Techno, Rave, Drum n Bass and Hardcore was born what we now know as Breakbeat.

Around about the late 1990’s dance music was in a state of flux. We had all whistled our whistles, big fished, little fished and made patterns with our glow sticks so many times that the novelty was beginning to wear off.

Techno and Drum n Bass were effectively separated out of the chaos of Hardcore and developed by artists such as LTJ Bukem, Andy C and Dave Angel into genuine genres with there own culture, style and fashion. Out of these developments came Breakbeat which has matured slowly and quietly into various styles. One of these styles champions sing-along vocals, spacious warm melodies and chunky, throbbing bass-lines that make you shout things like “Holy mackerel, I can feel that in my Coccyx”.

Music is adventure and it is emotion. Combine the two and you get all the elements of a good journey. So you choose your ticket and take your ride; and the ride for me, tonight, is with Minuit. Minuit are from New Zealand and are formed of a vocalist (Ruth Carr) and two instrumentalists (Paul Dodge and Ryan Beehre) who play keyboards and laptops and jiggle around with machines which produce seriously funky, bass-heavy tracks.

The men, who manoeuvre mysteriously around the back of the stage mixing beats and samples and melodies, succeed emphatically in dropping phenomenal bass-lines and rich, lush melodies which lift you up high above the dance floor and fill your heart and mind with fantastic thoughts and monumental well-being.

Then, as if from nowhere… BOOM… the beat drops and we whirl together in the air, whooping and throwing our sweaty heads back and forward to the stomping, funky beats. At the end of each track we are floated gently back to earth to raise our arms and shout thanks to the three New Zealanders’ on stage who gradually re-group ready for another assault on our dancing shoes.

This music is some of the finest Breakbeat I have come across. Minuit are following closely in the footsteps of other pioneering musical outfits from New Zealand such as reggae and dub legends Fat Freddy’s Drop, in making it incredibly clear that this is a musical culture, a forward thinking scene and a global leader in defining new music for our generation.

The band is keen to point out that they are ‘Breakbeat with personality’ and that ‘Listening to us should make your body feel like steel’, which I would say is fair. Later that night I did feel like a large piece of steel; but not any old steel, oh no, they left me feeling like a sculpture to the Gods rendered in Cloud Steel and designed to sit atop Nelsons Column like a beacon of modernity and the unadulterated Joy of Life!

Minuit’s album intriguingly titled ‘I Went to This Party and There Were 88 Guards with Guns’, is out on April 29th.
Catch them soon, buy the record, or ideally do both.
Seriously.

EDINBURGH. Ah, the sweet smell of fast food across a dewy meadow… what? What’s happening here? When I looked an hour ago we were in a utopian paradise… and now… now the burger vans have moved in, serving out ugly packages to the hordes of the un-dead.
It’s eight in the morning and I’m stumbling blindly towards a gaggle of brightly coloured people huddled round a humming fast food van. I chew morosely on a limp grey burger.
They call this festival ‘Knochangoric’, some kind of throwback to Paganism… it’s always the same with the Celts, everything relates back to a vague idea of spirituality, weird spooks or fairies. No sign of fairies here… nothing but burnt out ravers and crusties with dogs and crying children; laughing so loudly that they simply cannot mean it.
It’s so cold that my lips are burning. Must be below freezing. We’re huddled like prisoners of war around a fire that offers the only solace to the freezing ravers. A small child approaches the huddle and pulls at the Thai-dye skirt of what must be her mother. The woman resolutely ignores the child and seemingly in direct conflict starts to sing that eponymous song of the doomed raver… “I’ve done much too much, much too young, now I’m married with a kid when I should be having fun”, and starts to groove in the Madness style while her fellow crusties join in as if with enough racket and forced jollity this child, this young bringer of reality, this traitor, this evil reminder that life is happening, will just disappear completely.
She doesn’t.
I walk aimlessly, passing huddled groups of people trying to ignore the cold… and I hear a rhythm, a beat… it’s coming from a marquee… and it’s live… it’s… what is it?
Inside, a group of five people, four are playing drums and one beautiful Malaysian woman is grooving to the beat… amongst this chaotic mash of turbo beats and electronic hammer drills, a scene of real beauty.
I don’t know how long I watched this scene unfold, an hour? But when I went to go, my legs completely numb, I stumbled out of the tent like a drunk.
It was a clear morning… people buzzed around now as if the slate was suddenly wiped clean. In the approximate hour I had been inside the marquee the white faced stragglers were replaced by vital, busy young families, hung-over students and old druid types marching around with ominous looking staffs and multi coloured top hats.
What had I learned from this never ending night? Was there a message behind the predictable chaos? Did it mean something that with every new musical movement the BPM was getting higher and higher… urging us on to push harder, dance faster, get crazier?
To me it seemed futile, like watching a herd of geese chasing a man with a bucket of food only to realise it’s full of cement and the man simply got lost and ended up in the wrong field.
At one gig I remember watching a student don a boxer’s head guard and charge over and over again into the wall of the club as the beat urged him on. I saw him later at an after party and reminded him of his actions. He managed to look me in the eye and mutter, “I was trying to match it up to the beat… I couldn’t feel the music”.
Next year I think I’ll join a swing band and tour the Isle of Mann.
New music needs to stop moving so fast.