Chris Carter may not be a name that is instantly recognisable to everyone, but lovers of low down, glitchy, techy breaks and bouncy bassline driven tech house have been loving his sound right from the beginning. It was obviously then a real pleasure to witness one of the underground’s greats in action at Break Inn, ably supported by plenty of local talent.

The Impossibles fired the starter’s gun in the Laundry in typical party-rocking fashion, laying down their usual high-class blend of funk and party breaks all mashed-up and layered to the bullshit on laptops, midi controllers, CDJs and whatever else the boys can get their hands on. New bits and pieces from Plaza De Funk and 10sui Featuring The Ragga Twins featured alongside on-the-fly bootlegs and mash-ups of classics like Coldcut’s Everything Is Under Control, Voodoo People by The Prodigy and Lil’ Kim’s The Jump Off. As usual Impact and Munky’s mixing, sampling and layering was highly creative, and Forey was his ever-lively self on the mic.

Next up, Elroy delivered some decidedly booty/ghetto tech sounding party breaks which although not to this reviewer’s personal taste, kept the punters already on the dancefloor moving and coaxed those who needed some extra encouragement in to getting off their backsides. Perhaps inspired by The Impossibles, Elroy dropped a couple of bootlegs of big tunes of yesteryear, including Alter Ego’s Rocker and the unashamedly rude Just Fuck by Tom Neville. Technically he was on form, displaying clean mixing and even showing off with some (slightly excessive) scratching.

Once midnight rolled around however, it was all about The Cave. First up, Sydney big man (literally) of breaks Dopamine showed the pretenders how its done with an absolutely fantastic warm up set. Seizing the opportunity to explore a rarely witnessed side of his musical repertoire, Dopamine included plenty of four-to-the-floor selections in amongst his more recognisable ballsy tech-influenced breaks sound. The outstanding General Midi remix of Dylan Rhymes & Jono Fernandez’s Breathe, The Bassbin Twins’ quirky reworking of Stop The Revolution by Meat Katie & D. Ramirez, as well as new bombs by Deadmau5 and Chris Carter & Dopamine were clear highlights of the set, although it’d be a crime to say the entire 90 minutes wasn’t all class. And of course it goes without saying that Matt’s mixing was as tight as nun’s unmentionables and his phasing and overall progression and direction in his set was of unsurprising high quality.

At 1:30am a straight faced Chris Carter took over the controls, put his head down and dived face-first in to his two and a half hour set. I wish I could provide a nice compartmentalised description of each hour, but Chris decided to be stubborn and do what he always does: throw caution to the wind and just play some freaking good music regardless of what genre each individual track fell in to. While I’m personally one who values smooth progression in a set, I’ll happily admit when a DJ is able to play a variety of sounds one after the other and not have their set sound disjointed, and this is exactly what Mr. carter succeeded in doing.

However, if one desired a few key words to describe his set, the following spring immediately to mind: quirky, techy, ballsy, and most importantly, different. In a time where breaks is constantly being written off as “dead” (or at least stale), it’s so refreshing to hear a producer and DJ try to change peoples’ minds by playing something that every man and his dog isn’t smashing out in his bedroom. And while not everyone in the room necessarily “got it”, those he did reach absolutely loved it, and that’s all that matters really.

His set featured plenty of quirky, glitchy breaks such as his own productions Creature Feature and Fear (under his pseudonym Roxiller), Frog March (a collaboration with Fine Cut Bodies) and Misnomer, nicely juxtaposed with crunchy tech house including the awesome body jacking Dolodub (produced alongside our very own Dopamine) and some stupidly head-caving, disgustingly bass-heavy and generally massive techno like LoStep’s Because We Can and an as yet untitled production from Madox & Dopamine. As far as sets in the Cave at Break Inn go, this was easily one of the best and definitely one of the most well-suited to the vibe of the room. Technically Carter was also on song, mixing as smoothly as one would like and using clever cuts and effects to piece together tracks that otherwise would never mix well together.

Unfortunately for the other lads in The Laundry, Chris Carter kept this reviewer thoroughly entertained for his entire two and a half hours so I wasn’t able to catch their sets, but from all reports the remaining local contingent properly destroyed the place. So there you have it: the locals smashed it, and Chris Carter smashed it. The end.