Breakspoll 2010

Last Thursday was Breakspoll, the annual breakbeat awards held at Fabric.

In 2009 I won the award for Best Small Club, which was totally mega exciting. Except when I later saw a video clip of it, I realised my outfit – which included turquoise tights – combined with an air punch at the end, made me look like Supergirl. So this year I invested in a full-length mirror and wore clothes that didn’t resemble a fancy-dress costume. It was a good start to a jolly fun night.

But poor breakbeat. It’s suffered so much in recent years. Despite always attracting a great, friendly crowd and possessing some really talented DJs, the scene has almost ground to a halt. The music that’s released now is uninspired and certainly not groundbreaking. The DJs can’t help but drop a range of genres in their sets because breaks on its own just doesn’t do the do. And flagship breakbeat nights such as Chew The Fat have now altered their music policies in order to stay afloat.

Since the beginning, breakbeat has suffered an identity crisis. The scene was afraid to boldly state what it was. About ten years ago I called up Rennie Pilgrem, the daddy of breakbeat and the man who coined the term ‘nu skool breaks’. I wanted his advice on how to label the genre in press releases. He told me not to pigeon-hole myself, to keep it broad. And this, I think, is breakbeat’s biggest problem: everyone listens to it, everyone likes it, but ask most of them what they’re listening to and they won’t have a clue. Now compare this to drum n bass. EVERYONE knows when the DJ has dropped a drum n bass track.

The breakbeat slide was visible at last week’s awards. In previous years, tickets sold out well in advance. The queues to get into Fabric were an hour long, even for guestlist. And the club was rammed. This year, we walked straight in, were able to pick up tickets on the door, and there was so much space on the dancefloor I even did the airplane.

Dance music legends and super-nice guys Shut Up and Dance therefore had a tough job getting the dancefloor going for their 10.45 set. But their trademark jump-up styles did the trick, and room one was finally stompin’ – tellingly, however, the track to kick things off was a dubstep one.

The awards ceremony came afterwards (click here for the full results downlow). The usual array of breakbeat royalty bagged prizes: Krafty Kuts (rightly) won Best DJ, Stanton Warriors and Plump DJs took Best Remix and Annie Nightingale – Radio One stalwart and the only person in the world to rival Bono for wearing sunglasses – won Best Radio Show... again.

Mother-of-all-labels Finger Lickin’ – responsible for bringing artists like the Plump DJs to fame – was noticeably empty-handed this year, though its head honcho Soul of Man didn’t seem bothered, telling me he was happy to see other names coming through.

Production duo NAPT took home a bunch of prizes, as they do every year. Bumping into Ashley at the bar, I was at last able to solve the biggest conundrum in breakbeat: they’re called N.A.P.T, not Napt. ‘Hence the capital letters. It’s an acronym,’ he added. Glad we’ve got that sorted, then.

BSD won best breakthrough producer and played a live set in the main room at 4.15. The music wasn’t particularly trailblazing and neither were the pair’s freaky Dr Who-style masks (pictured above). Don’t they realise Breakfastaz were doing the masked thing years ago?

Most deserved win of the night was former Kiss DJ Jay Cunning for Outstanding Contribution to Breakbeat. As I’ve blogged before, the man is a legend who has earned this award ten times over.

Shut Up and Dance, Future Funk Squad and Swifty B b2b DJ Lock-up (in room three) were highlight sets of the night. Admittedly I did miss Ctrl Z and Krafty Kuts b2b A-Skills, which I’m sure would have been brilliant. But overall, I wasn’t blown away by the majority of DJ sets. Here’s hoping breakbeat comes out of its recession and makes some headway in time for next year’s awards.