It was East meets West at The Empire’s Moonbar. Breaks and Enter had returned for another weekend of funked up and groove ridden bout of breaks. The night had grown to become extremely popular for those in the know, and for those that just love breaks. This weekend saw Perth beauty Mali paired up around some of B&E’s finest residents: Devastatin’ Dave, Verner and one of the most promising up and coming duos in the breaks arena at the moment: Bitrok. The prospect of East meets West was an intriguing one at that as well, what differences would we see? What influences would Mali and Bitrok throw against each other. It’s that prospect that would surely pull people in left right and centre. However, with such a unique line-up for Breaks and Enter, it seemed the punters weren’t exactly turned on by the bill of artists due for their pallet of breaks. Unfortunately, in spite of the quality of tracks and talent, the punters at Moonbar were strangely absent for the night. While many would come wandering in and be held by the energy, towards the end of everyone’s sets, the crowd would simply vote with their feet and leave. It was a strangely quiet night for what should have been a night for breaks lovers wanting to groove.

Nonetheless, Bitrok warmed things up jumping on the Dex N FX, opening their set with their collaboration from their forthcoming album with N’Fa Satellite Disco. With such a dirty bassline and thick kicks of beats, things were looking up for the duo and for the night to start off. Bitrok continued with some more originals before throwing down some other tracks, but one felt that they lacked energy after such a big start. The great thing usually about the boys is their confidence and experience in reading the crowd. Still, the boys managed to pick up the lack of energy and threw down some killer tunes. With a glorious mix and mash of Muse’s Supermassive Black Hole they ended their set on a rough and tough breaks remix of the now seemingly unavoidable MGMT track Kids.

Devastatin’ Dave jumped on the decks after the Bitrok boys. Charging up the style, he dropped a fresh line of Fingerlickin’ tracks;* Drumattic Twins* Under The Lights and their vocoded electro Don’t Be So Drumattic on top of The Plump DJs downright dirty remix of their own Beat Myself Up. Dave continued to drop the tracks, but after a while, the flow of the set seemed to become predictable. It was as though he had trawled Beatport’s Top 10 for any of the popular tunes from the last few weeks. While it might be great to drop some of the bigger known tunes, it’s also just as pleasant to hear fresh tunes. While the energy was at a high, the reaction was becoming a bit more ho-hum.

Finally, Mali bought up her bag of vinyl behind the decks, looking confident and ready to bring it all on. However, just as Dave dropped his final track for the night Mali jumped on followed by a three minute nightmare of total silence. Rumors went around that someone pulled the cable out of the mixer or it just fell out, but whatever happened, completely ruined a fantastic start to a very interesting set. Happily though and to her absolute credit, Mali kept a level head, waiting patiently for the sound to be sorted. Then, with a great deal of style, she smashed down a fantastically consistent set of rough, tough, rolling breaks. I’ll say this: undoubtedly Mali is Australia’s answer to Lady Waks. Her assurance in dropping tunes, laying down rhythms and mixing tracks tidily into the next all show promise for an upcoming femme DJ, and Brisbane looks forward to hearing more of this femme fatal’s lethal beats on the east side of Australia.