Fusion for the 21st century, rare groove for the new millennium, broken beat was at its apex between around 1998 and 2003, a shining new direction for jazz-informed blacktronic endeavour. It was nostalgically futuristic, revising various themes from the jazz fission pantheon and ever-balancing complexity and simplicity, darkness and light, street corner and art house. It took pretty much all the other popular black electronics of our era, drum and bass, garage, house, hip-hop and fused them all with healthy dollops of Mizelle Brothers, George Duke, Weather Report, Airto and Flora, and well, frankly anything else relevant to a bunch of West London DJs, producers and record shop junkies. For an interim ten years of my life, broken beat made sense of everything I had ever absorbed, made sense of everything that all of us had absorbed. Late 2000, Co-op the club sessions started taking place twice a month, and when it first started I was living in Shoreditch on the east side of the city, a ten minute bike ride away. In deepest coldest London winter weather I’d make the journey religiously, and from those first sundays through to the last ever those were the greatest club nights I have ever experienced. Broken Beat is dead now, let no one tell you otherwise, the maggots moved off fat and heavy from that well stripped carcass some time around 2008. Yet, it refuses to be wholly forgotten. Maybe it will revive, maybe not. In all seriousness, the only practitioners of the art today, are the irrepressable duo Dego and Kaidi, featured extensively here. Most of the rest have wandered off elsewhere and dropped down other genre holes – I guess that includes myself. This music defined my passion for a significant part of my life, yet what am I best known for? House.

Anyone new to it, enjoy, and remember, contrary to popular South African belief, the aim IS to sweat! Get the fuck up and dance like a nevertheless well coordinated lunatic.

1. Likwid Biskit Substance

2. Murky Waters Non Commital Yes

3. Da One Away The Mind

4. Mustang feat Vanessa Freeman Give a Little Love

5. Focus Bamba

6. New Sector Movements feat Frank McComb Anthem

7. Donnie Masterplan

8. DKD feat Lady Alma Getaway

9. Shokazulu Ditzy Blue Jacket

10. Kaidi Tatham Do What You Gotta Do

11. Kaidi Tatham He Laughs She Cries

12. Gene Harris Losalamitos Bugz In The Attic Remix

13. The Rebirth Talking Me Down Domu Remix

14. Shokazulu Part 4

15. Willie Colon and Ruben Blades Plastico Bugz Remix / Nauts Ricanstruction

16. Brotherly System

17. Cherie Mathieson Tomorrow’s Day

18. 4 Hero Something In The Way

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