Informace

After some time the Breakbeat Conference strikes back! We´re moving it back to Roxy on 10th May. The headliners of the event are Mark Yardley and Dominic B. aka The Stanton Warriors, who´ll be supported by Koogi, Stanzim and Dys-Martin. You could have heard a preview of the Stanton show on last year´s OAF, where Mark played a wonderfull set with Lee Coombs. Hopefully Dominic catches the plain this time.

Breakbeat Conference:

Breakbeat Conference is a regular Prague's club event, where we want to introduce the biggest world's delegates of breakbeat culture like Rennie Pilgrem, Koma & Bones, Krafty Kuts, Soul Of Man, Adam Freeland, ... You can also listen to our vibes on Radio 1 Prague where Josef Sedloň and DJ Kaplick set a regular show (Tue 6-7 PM), as they present the hottest stuff at the breakbeat scene.

STANTON WARRIORS (XL, UK):

Dominic B: "Put it this way: at Carnival a few years ago, we were in a pub in Notting Hill with a soundsystem on the crossroads outside. They were playing a Stanton Warriors tune and everybody was dancing: trendy Notting Hill people, rudeboys, fluffy house people - it's a good metaphor for what our music is. It's just good street music: that's what Stanton Warriors are about". Dropouts, ravers, scammers, pirates. Decent chaps all the same, but the fact that Dominic B, 25, and Mark Yardley 26 chose to name their production outfit after a successful model of drain cover should should tell you a lot about where Stanton Warriors are coming from: straight out of the underground and sounding nasty all over your stereo system.

It wasn't always this way, and the events and places that led Stanton Warriors to the cusp of crossover success in 2001 began on the free party scene of the west country some time in the mid-Nineties. Dominic B hails from Bristol, and back then he's working in a record shop, booking DJs for local nights and consolidating links with the London music biz. He probably shared more than floor space with Devon-born Mark Yardley at the free parties the pair routinely headed to. 'They were amazing,' says Mark, the kinds of thing were some kid whose dad was a farmer would get a sound system and invite 1,500 people. And 15,000 would turn up.' At the time, the West Country massive rocked to deep house laced with breakbeat and the seismic bass frequencies that have always been the West Country's calling card. However weird it seems, among the fields and forest clearings of Avon is where the Stanton's ultra-urban sound was born.

Mark Yardley had been playing guitar and obsessing over over Prince from the age of 12. He'd always wanted to be in music and live the dream. "When I found out Prince could play about 32 instruments, that was it", says Mark. "I wanted to play 32 instruments as well". He headed for a degree in electronic music at Salford University and managed to stick it out for two years before learning that nothing he needed to know could be found in a textbook, and that nights at the Hacienda were far more illuminating than any seminar could be. So he quit, headed for London and took the 'tea-boy route' into engineering for Tuff Jam's 51st label.

Either way, the flood of remix commissions that followed already produced a clutch of tracks of minor genius. After the their sizzling 'Da Virus' single on Mob records and their mixes of Missy Elliott's 'She's A Bitch' and DJ Scribble's Flipmode-featuring 'Everybody Come On' emerged, barnstorming versions of 'Dooms Night' and Basement Jaxx's 'Jump & Shout' had the dance demimonde all aquivver, unable to bracket the Warriors as the brightest hope of breakbeat or two-step heroes gone leftfield.

Which brings us to 'The Stanton Session', a compilation that's the perfect expression of the Warriors' worldview. Just like their inability to adhere themselves to the easy bracketing of two-step, breakbeat or house, this 23-track concoction mirrors all that's good and all that's nasty about British dancefloors in 2001. It begins with Dom and Mark's own full throttle mix of 'Jump & Shout', moves off to Jammin's 'Distraction' paired with The Streets' eponymous state-of-the-garage-nation acappella, and somewhere en route pulls a dazzling pallet of disparate styles, from US vocal house and UK garage, to deep house, funky breaks and vintage rave. Thus you'll find Masters At Work shouldering up to Shut Up & Dance, Plump DJs cohabiting with Isolee's spectral 'Beau Mot Plage', and the Warriors' own breakadelic joints 'Da Virus, 'Da Antidote' and 'Right Here', all topped off with just the right amount of mic chat from MC Moose. Swapping wanton eclecticism for stone-cold classics with every revolution, it's dazzling box of audio fireworks, chopped up and chopped out as a minor feat of technical invention into a world of identikit mass-market mix CDs.

"We just think a tune is a tune if people start nodding when it's played in a record shop," says Dominic. "It doesn't matter whether it's house or breakbeat or hip hop. It's just street music". Got you ear to the ground? Then you'll already know what they mean.