RE:WIND: Welcome to RE:WIND, our Friday night radio show, with the best drum & bass tunes from the old to the new school! We’re from the city of Leuven but tonight we’re at the UNTITLED! party in Antwerp. First time in Belgium? BREAKAGE: No, I’ve been here a few times. Always a very good time! The First time I came to Antwerp some guy tried to fight with me. Some of the guys working at the show, he tried to actually fight with me. It was at Dice his night, Bambu? Yeah, it was the last Bambu.
I had some nasty drink: the bird behind the bar couldn’t understand what I was saying so she made me a rum and beer. I was trying to give it to some bird like “Here, take it!”. I was trying to give it to somebody else because it was fucking horrible but I didn’t want to waste it. And some guy said “You know that’s my girlfriend?!” And I was like “I’m not trying to get your girl, she’s not that good looking!” You know, I was kinda drunk, and he just tried to go for me! But: It was funny! [Laugh]
RE:WIND: Good times in Belgium!
BREAKAGE: Yeah, good times! Always a laugh!
RE:WIND: And we’re always happy to have you over.
BREAKAGE: You’re such liars, but thank you! [Laugh]
RE:WIND: Talking about parties: what was your first contact with the underground music scene?
BREAKAGE: I had an older foster brother who lived with us. I was really young, like… 7 years old? And when I walked into his room, which had a football-fucking-printed-wallpaper, it was covered in flyers. Like pictures of raves all over the walls. But my first contact got to be Milton Keynes, one of the biggest places for raves!
It’s crazy looking back at it, cause I can’t think of a 7 year old listening to hardcore and all that… Like early Criminal Minds: they grew up in the same village as me and they were friends with my foster brother. It’s nuts cause I didn’t knew how big they were until years, years, years later!
RE:WIND: When did you start making beats, producing?
BREAKAGE: I started messing around, probably somewhere around twelve?
RE:WIND: That’s really young!
BREAKAGE: That’s not young! You have people like Skream and Benga, releasing stuff at twelve. That’s crazy! At that age I was messing around at my cousins house: making little loops on his computer… I was playing guitar as well so I bought myself a little four-track and I borrowed my mates little drum-machine and a crappy little Yamaha keyboard, trying to make drum & bass. Later I learned how to use Q Base, use a sampler… how to do that thing properly. So I got myself a computer and started doing that all day long!
RE:WIND: So now we’re digging into the history of Breakage: the first, almost legendary story about you is signing on the Reinforced label at the age of 17. Tell u something about that ! Because we are pretty curious.
BREAKAGE: Well, I think I was 18. I had made some tunes when I was 17, but I think by the time the tunes came out I was 18. But yeah, when I signed I was 17-ish…
RE:WIND: But how the hell did you managed to get into Marc Mac his studio?
BREAKAGE: Euhm, it was an accident! [Laugh] You know, everyone wants to make tunes and put tunes out and be a dj and all that. But I never thought that would happen, I was just making tunes and having a laugh!
I went to college with this guy named Adrian and we started making tunes together. Just having a laugh and all that, and one of the guys he worked with was Bug Nyne. He was taking a different course to us, but we sort of knew each other. And he was like “Yeah, come over to check out some beats!” So we were going around his house, which was near of were Dollis Hill is. So we got there, and we we’re like “We’re here, come meet us at the trainstation!” And he said “I’m actually at the studio, so go like two stops more, up to Dollis Hill!” So we got there and got introduced!
I was shitting myself, I actually didn’t say a word! I had to squeez the words out of my mouth, I remember, I was just silent. Absolutely silent, and scared! So Marc asked me about my beats and I played him the first tune me and Adrian made. It had a really big sample of a massive r&b vocal in it and he said “You’ve got to shorten it, you should take less of the vocal. If you do that, we’ll sign you.” I was like [with a little funny voice] “Ow-kay, whatever you want!” [Laugh]
Then he listened to my other tunes: “That’s good, I like that, don’t like this one but I like that one…”, he listened to every single tune I’ve had on my little minidisc player. So I got outside with a bunch of free records and stuff like that, it was great! We got back finishing up a tune, started working on the b-side... It was at this time I decided to remix ‘Here Come The Drumz’.
RE:WIND: One of our personal favorites!
BREAKAGE: But it was a lot of trouble man! [Laugh]
RE:WIND: It had a lot of guts to!
BREAKAGE: Well, I didn’t really matter! I was around 17 and just thought “I want to remix this tune, I’m just gonna do it!” So I played it to Marc and he was like “Yeah!” And because he said ‘Yeah’, I just assumed I could give it to people. So I gave it to Bailey, and that person, and that person… and Bailey played it at Metalheadz. I was all like “It got off, and it got a rewind! This is great!” Little did I know that Goldie and Scotty were pissed! Everyone! All the Headz were pissed off! [Laugh]
I think it was Storm who rang up Gus: “What’s this remix of ‘Here Come The Drumz’ that you are putting out?” And he didn’t know at the time, only me and Marc knew it was coming so he was like “I don’t know what you’re talking about?!” So it got branded as a bootleg. Everyone was like “He has done this bootleg!”, like a witch-hunt! [Laugh]
But it all got cleared up in the end, which is a good cause when you’re 17-18 years old and you hear Goldie is looking for you. That ain’t nice!
RE:WIND: Goldie? I wouldn’t leave the house anymore!
BREAKAGE: It’s bloody scary! My mate actually set me up: we went to Metalheadz one week and he gave him the cd with the remix and he just switched on my mate “Is it you?”, and he was like “No, but I know who it is!” so I quietly shuffled off on my way to go home. I went to go get my jacket and on my way up the stairs I turn around and Goldie is right behind me! I started apologizing, all scared…
RE:WIND: Quite a first impression!
BREAKAGE: But now we get along fine, even with Scotty, It’s all good!
BREAKAGE: I’ve done a track with dj Flight. Can’t remember the name of the tune, but yeah! [Laugh] It came out on one of the ‘Kingz of the Rollers EPs’. (The track is called 'One To Another', under their alter-ego 'Alias')
RE:WIND: Jumping from one label to another: are their any anecdotes about the Inperspective story of Breakage?
BREAKAGE: The Inperspective story of Breakage?
BREAKAGE: Yeah!
RE:WIND: Where does that come from?
BREAKAGE: I’ve always loved Amen, everybody loves an Amen. If you love drum and bass, you love Amen! Some people, like me, used to love Amen more than others. I used to hammer, every opportunity that I’ve got. Certain tunes need an Amen, I think without Amen my tunes wouldn’t sound that good. But if I make a tune and it doesn’t need an Amen, the first thing I do is take it out, I replace it. But I think a lot of them needed to be Amen-tunes.
It was a bit unhealthy, my love for Amen: just cutting up beats, I was happy doing that for a while. It all started because I didn’t hear any music that I liked. It was just like the bass going ‘boooooo’… Some tunes had basslines but with a beat that was cut up into a million pieces and people liked it because they thought of it as a new drumbreak. But you need a tune, a decent tune, and it just seemed like people started cutting up beats and doing all crazy stuff just for the sake of doing it, not because it sounded good. That really put me off!
But then I did my album and I didn’t wanted to do all that because I felt I was pigeon-holed like that kid that cuts up Amens. I can make a tune without cutting up an Amen, so I did that! [Laugh]
BREAKAGE: Thank you very much! I remember I didn’t had any plans on making an album, really. I made ‘Morning Star’, one of the tunes on the album, and that lead me on. I rang up Rohan and told him I’ve got the first tune. I’ve sent it to him and he was like “Yeah!” Once I’ve got the first tune of the album out of the way, that always makes my life a little bit easier. If I can make a tune that sums up the style of the album, I’ve got to make an album after that. It’s got to be done!
So I made it but I worried a bit to much about it being an album instead of just a collection of tracks and… I think I didn’t quite achieve what I wanted. But the people liked it, so that’s good! ATM did something like a ‘Top 20 Best Albums in Drum & Bass History’ and you had like the albums that didn’t quite made it and I came in third I think. I was number 23. That was quite a thing, that was wicked! I didn’t try to make an album to please critics or something. I just made a bunch of tunes at my moms house…
RE:WIND: That’s another question we wanted to ask you: we saw some old footage of guys like Source Direct and Shy Fx, banging their first tunes at their parents home. In what kind of situation where you at that time ?
BREAKAGE: I just had some really old speakers! They’re like thirty years old, I still use them but they’re really falling apart. I need to stick stuff on to them to make them work. [Laugh] A broken computer, I had to kick it all the time. It wasn’t possible to mix out a whole tune at once so I had to split them up into three pieces. That’s how I used to work at my moms house.
RE:WIND: And are you a software or a hardware guy?
BREAKAGE: Software! I like hardware and I love the sound of hardware, but I get lost around it.
RE:WIND: So what kind of software do you actually use? Cause that’s something a lot of the new younger producers would like to know.
BREAKAGE: Well, that’s actually quite boring: Logic 9! [Laugh] That’s pretty much it and all I use nowadays. You don’t really need much else. I think Logic 9 is a program equipped for anything you can think of, and you don’t really need to... Well, you can buy a load of plug-ins and synths and all that, but you can make really good tunes with just what is in Logic. And I think that’s great! Cause you have a load of other software, like Reason.
I don’t like the sound of Reason cause for the most part of the tracks that are made in Reason, you can hear they’re made with Reason. You can probably hear it too when people make their tunes with Logic, but Reason got this sound… It doesn’t hunch properly for me, it doesn’t hit you!
RE:WIND: Now about the new album: 'Foundation'! It’s going to be released the 15th of march and features a lot of bad ass dubstep tunes, like ‘Hard’ and ‘Higher’. What can we expect from Breakage in the near future? Will it be more dubstep music or ...?
BREAKAGE: I have no idea, I just go were I want to go! In a couple of years we could be chatting about me making bloody happy hardcore or something. I don’t know. If I feel like making happy hardcore, I make happy hardcore. If I feel like doing whatever, I do… Whatever! Like people think “Oh, he has quit drum & bass and wants to make dubstep…” and yeah, I do like making dubstep but I certainly like making drum and bass too! I want to make all sorts of stuff! I like to make house tunes, I like to make jazz tunes as well…
RE:WIND: Breakbeat too…
BREAKAGE: Yeah! All sorts, all sorts! I will see what happens, really. I’m not consciencly making stuff all the time. I just make what I feel like! [Laugh]
RE:WIND: Last night you played at Fabric, London, next to Goldie and Doc Scott. Have you played a drum & bass set there ? And was it a good night out ?
BREAKAGE: I’ve played drum & bass, dubstep, house and funky stuff! [Laugh] It was great, I had a really good time! I always worry when you have an all drum & bass line-up, like “Oh shit, should I play dubstep at a drum & bass fest?” But yeah, I should! If I want to, I should do cause I’m the dj! If I just played what the people wanted to hear, I would be bored! I play the beats and tunes I like and I think are right. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I think a dj should show you what he is into, not like a jukebox who plays whatever you want.
RE:WIND: You have to play in like fifteen minutes or so… So maybe it’s time for the final question: what can we expect from your set tonight?
BREAKAGE: … Euhm… Bass! [Laugh] I think that covers it. I don’t know what I’m going to play, I’m sort of guessing.
RE:WIND: You don’t like to prepare your sets ?
BREAKAGE: No, I don’t. I didn’t have decks until I was twenty years old, I didn’t have decks for a very long time. So I got used to listen to my tunes at home, remember how they sound and then just walk on stage. I just flip trough my cds and think of a random tune and if the track doesn’t work, I will remember that the next time. [Laugh]
RE:WIND: Owkey! Thank you very much for the interview, good luck with your set tonight and everything in the future!
BREAKAGE: Cheers!
[Breakage opened his set with his own track ‘Hard’, which set the whole crowd on fire until the end!]
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