Ah, Nutshell, how I love thee. You make me late for work and are contributing to the rapid degeneration of my liver at an alarming rate, but yet I keep coming back for more punishment. You truly are the cruelest of all mistresses. But my issues with “self-control” are irrelevant, what’s really important is how the most recent installment of this most fantastic of all breaks nights went down.

With a stellar lineup, featuring legendary producer, and bloody nice guy, General Midi, the prog-break-don-dada, Jody Wisternoff, the master of all things breaksteppy, DJ Mutiny, and the usual local suspects, there was pretty much something for everybody across the breakbeat spectrum.

A licensing issue with the venue resulted in the night kicking off at 6pm and running until 1am, rather than it’s usual 9pm to 5am timeframe, and attendance was looking a bit dire when Anfrenz kicked off the evening with a quality set of rolling breaks, closing out with some bassbin shattering garage in the way of tunes from Zinc, and the still spectacular Runnin’ from T-Power. Anfrenz was followed by D*Steady and Fallon playing back to back, and as per usual, these two impressed. As the crowd swelled somewhat, the two put on a display of ridiculously tight mixing, touching on an electro break tip, and got the headz on the floor for General Midi.

It’s refreshing to see someone enjoy themselves so much behind the decks, in this day and age of chin-stroking, “technically brilliant” DJ’s who are boring as batshit when it comes to playing out. The smallish crowd showed Midi mad love, and he gave it back in spades. Causing a general ruckus behind the decks and responding to crowd tomfoolery at every occasion, he put on a great performance. Midi started out hard, and got to peaktime style acid breaks within about 15 minutes of coming on. It seemed rather surreal to have someone like General Midi playing at 8 in the evening in a club in Newcastle, but it was quickly forgotten. Midi knocked it back a notch with some rolling bassline gear in the middle of the set, and closed with a dope 2004 remix of his classic The Westerner. Midi was proper bo, I tell thee.

One half of Way Out West, Jody Wisternoff followed on from the onslaught of Midi, and kicked it prog-break style. Dropping a heap of fresh stuff on CD-R, a few Evil 9 tunes, and some chugging trance-esque breaks to close, Wisternoff played what was probably the most different set that Nutshell has seen this year. Lots of four to the floor stuff, away from the straight up breaks that Nutshell usually provides, it seemed the punters were loving it.

DJ Mutiny had a pretty hard act to follow, in that the hardcore breaks that he was to provide were a world away from the tunes that Wisternoff played, but he adapted brilliantly. Huge tunes abounded, with the Shopliftas and Mutiny co-lab Daily Operation, along with breaky stuff from Rat, Hardcore Beats and Supercharged, even a spot of hammering 4×4 garridge being the order of the day. Easily the biggest tune he dropped was a fan-bloody-tastic stomper from Deep Impact, the name of which I wrote down, but couldn’t actually decipher from my notes. If you catch Mutiny in the near future, you’re bound to hear it. If it was a jungle tune it’d probably get rewound about 7 times in a row to a resounding chorus of “What the f**k was that!”

As Mutiny was wrapping up, General Midi ran up like an excited schoolboy with a record in his hand, chomping at the bit to drop it. It turned out to be a straight up dubstep roller, called Shatterbox, I’m pretty sure, but it was a killer, no doubt. Watch for this one, it’s massive, I say.

Aux closed the night, as per usual, and had the floor hammering to the 1am closing time. A shame, because it could have easily carried on until 5am. Alas, licensing laws are there for our benefit (or so I’ve been led to believe by our remarkable police force), and the night was to close. A fitting end to a great year for Nutshell, and on the strength of this night, all things bode well for 2005.