Breaks

You can't keep a good breakbeat down. When the lager-fuelled mid-1990s phenomenon known as Big Beat expired, dazzled to death by one of Norman Cook's irksome Hawaiian shirts, some of its smaller players retreated, regrouped and returned with a purer form of hi-octane breakbeat techno that had no desire to marry a TV presenter. As with Big Beat, the spiritual home of breaks (once known as nu skool breaks to distinguish itself) is Brighton, England. This is where Adam Freeland recorded his landmark Coastal Breaks mix in 1998 and started the Marine Parade label. A mongrel form by nature, breaks has enjoyed fertile crossbreeding with electro, 2-step, jump up and even trance genres, and the open-minded approach of breaks DJs has rapidly gained affection with clubbers worldwide, especially in Australia.