- Slowly but surely, breaks as we know it has undergone a massive reinterpretation, with the dusty old 1-2-3-break rhythm losing ground to more chaotic syncopation, rampant effects work and less predictable structures. Adam Freeland, one of the genre’s old guard, has retooled his Marine Parade label as a kind of halfway house where dyed-in-the-wool breaksheads can grudgingly come to appreciate the Ed Banger and Institubes kinda sound that all the cooler kids are dancing to.
In a blind taste test of the recent output of Freeland, his protégé Alex Metric and fresh signee STA, you might be hard-pressed to tell who was who. But upon careful listening it’s STA’s stuff that’ll have you coming back for more. Freeland takes himself too seriously, as his awfully pretentious track ‘HATE’ demonstrated, Metric’s ‘Whatshewants’ from last year was hollow and beige, but Sta’s new In Living Colour EP has nailed exactly what Marine Parade seems to be going for.
‘In Living Colour’ nabs a sample from the theme to the Wayans Brothers comedy show of the same name, chops it to hell, pummels it with blown-out drum kicks and runs it through with a chainsawing, heavily distorted guitar riff again and again. The carnage rarely lets up for the entire running time, with Sta only teasing a break three-and-a-half minutes in before yanking it back and soldiering on. Clever guy.
Like ‘HATE’, ‘SEX’ is a loaded word titled in all caps, but luckily that’s all it has in common with the Freeland track. Yes, there is a break where a chick that sounds like Sharon Philips says “Sex” over and over. But aside from this dumbass addition it sounds like SebastiAn-lite (which is not necessarily a bad thing). The playful bassline, shitloads of claps and eerie synths make it sound like the song from the haunted house levels in Super Mario World.
Electrohouse producer D.I.M. hasn’t made one wrong move the last couple years, with ‘Sysiphos’ and ‘Is You’ both hypnotic, paranoid, stunning tracks. His remix of KIM’s ‘Fistogram’ earlier this year was heavier and more straightforward comparatively, and his remix here feels like an autopilot-on retread of that track, using virtually the same low-slung bassline, filter effects and industrial-sounding
tools. It goes left where ‘In Living Colour’ went right by having a canyon-steep drop and massive build-up, but Sta’s original is still the better of the two.
TracklistA In Living Colour
B1 SEX
B2 In Living Colour (D.I.M. Mix)