I'm glad to see discussion of the whole broken beat movement on here. Not
only is it one of the most interesting musical mutations going at the
moment, but it seems to be percolating along in truly underground fashion.
More and more people are picking up on it, and yet "it" still refuses to
crystallize into any one given style. Despite my shorthand use of the term
"broken beat," you really can't talk about it without resorting to a host of
hypens, slashes and reference to a slew of artists and labels (People/Laws
of Motion/Archive/Co-op/Main Squeeze/Sonar Kollektiv, et al). To me,
anyway, it's an incredibly exciting moment in musical evolution, where it
feels like anything could happen--that this non-genre is going to keep
mutating in any number of directions, simultaneously, over the next 18
months.
But bringing it back to 313, I saw Recloose spin here in San Francisco a
month or so ago, and I was struck with the way that he seems to be fusing
Detroit techno and the broken beat/future soul sound. There are certainly
elements of Detroit techno running through the entire genre, especially with
Nubian Mindz (and now a feedback loop's been created, with Planet E
licensing The Good Good), but Recloose--at least in his DJ style--seems
unique in combining the silvery hammered-metal sounds of classic machine
funk with these pockets of deep, deep soul. Amazing stuff, and it makes me
wonder what his next recordings are going to be like. I don't know of
anyone else spinning like that--if there is, I'd love to hear them.
-philip
