Not so long ago in a galaxy not so far away breakbeat was in fear of a fate worse than death – losing the funk. As beats got glitchier and basslines more warped two young studio engineers, Dominic Butler and Mark Yardly, came together with a mutual desire to keep the funk alive. Drawing inspiration from garage, breakbeat, hip hop and more they decided if no one else was going to produce the sound they wanted to play they’d change the playing field and make it themselves. Through producing, remixing and re-editing they created often whole sets of their own material to play live. With Dominic on the turntables and Mark on a sampler/laptop their sets took on their own dynamic quality which was summed up brilliantly on their highly acclaimed 2001 compilation The Stanton Sessions. Since then they’ve been touring endlessly, working on their own production album and planning a tour down under over the summer break. Dominic B took a few minutes after a heavy night in Southampton to discuss the year that’s been and what Australian audiences can expect this summer. I for one can’t wait.
What’s happening now with the Stanton Warrior’s?
Very hung over in bed.
We’ve finished the album now basically, we’re just mixing it now, at long last. We’re still massively DJing every weekend, we seem to be doing a different continent each weekend. Basically we’ve been immersed in the studio each week, every week, and DJing on the weekend. It’s good because all the stuff we’ve been working on is about to come out soon. It’s been heads down for the past eighteen months and the rewards of that are starting to come out now.
Almost exactly a year ago you were scheduled to come down to Australia for a DJ tour but that was cancelled due to recording commitments.
Yeah we had too many studio commitments. It was a hard call to make because we really love coming to Australia. We had to get some stuff done and we were a bit behind schedule. We’ve got the bits and pieces done and are definitely looking forward to coming back there.
So it’s been a pretty full on year as far as making the album goes?
Yeah it’s been intense. We’ve been working really hard and trying to write songs and at the same time committing to a very busy and intense DJing schedule, burning the candle at both ends.
To someone who may be familiar with a few of your club tunes and the The Stanton Sessions, how would describe the sound of your new album material?
It’s moved on a bit and our production skills and values have developed. It’s a lot more textured and song based. It’s got more longevity than just banging out the club stuff. We still do the club stuff and we’re got a label called Punks which we put out our boot legs and clubbier stuff on. It’s different to the Stanton Sessions because obviously that was a mixed CD, but we are going to do a Stanton Sessions II which is going to be reminscent on our big live sets. The album is our more mature kind of thing, more a listening album.
Has it been a lot of fun to make, a chance to explore wider influences?
Yes, it’s been hard work but at the same time it’s been educational. Instead of just nicking samples it’s taught us to make tracks from scratch. It’s been a massive learning curve. We’re looking forward to getting out of the studio though, I think we’re getting a bit studio crazy.
When are you expecting to be able to release that?
We’re going to chuck a sampler out soon, some white labels. The actual album will probably be early next year.
It’s been a big twelve months for breaks albums. Has there been any highlights or albums you’ve identified with strongly?
This time last year there was nothing but now there’s been a lot of different artist albums which have covered a wide variety of angles which has been good. It’s good that these breaks guys are being seen as artists in their own rights now instead of just remixers or one hit ponies. I think it’s cast light on the scene as a whole, which is really good, and an exciting time for breaks right now. There’s certainly breaks parties going on everywhere. Last night, Monday, we did a party and it was wound up at capacity in Southampton. The party was crazy and then I got taken to an after party and I’ve had no sleep…
...and then you get stuck talking to media all day…
I can’t believe I’ve got all these interviews (laughing). It’s testament to how great the scene is if you can get people going crazy until 6am on a Monday night, it’s just a very exciting time basically.
When The Stanton Sessions came out it really did have a fresh sound of it’s own. Breaks was well and truly on it’s way but you were mixing breaks and garage and whatever else, is that what you’re still doing in your DJ sets?
When we made The Stanton Sessions there was really a lack of records that we could really put together and play out. We’d take records from different scenes and chuck them together to make that sort of sound basically. Since then we’ve been able to find more that we like, there’s more producers making that kind of sound. I think at the time it was very nu-skool breaks oriented and we weren’t really feeling that, we were into more of the funk. Those tracks are now there so we don’t need to “nick” tracks from other genres. One thing we do lots of is if we hear a good house track or a good hip hop track or whatever we’ll take those parts that we like and make our own little version or edit of it.
Just for your own live sets?
Yeah basically our set consists of a lot of one off tracks where you’ll recognise the track that it’s a version of. We’re quite open to that sort of stuff.
I remember when you were here last time two years ago in Perth, it was the weekend before Christmas and everyone was in party mode. You played a four hour set and really did incorporate a large range of music within that and it really felt like you went somewhere over those four hours. It’s one of those nights that’s still looked back with high regard by many who were there. What can people expect this time around?
I think I was really fucked last time I was in Perth. I think that four hours went really quick which was mad. You can definitely expect to see me more sober! I think we’re lucky in that, one of the benefits of spending all our life in the studios is that we’ve got so many bits and pieces, hundreds of CDRs of beats and edits. People can expect to hear from our sets literally stuff they haven’t heard before. We could do an entire set of fresh bits and edits which gives a whole new dimension. If you’ve got four or five DJs on the same bill there’s only X amount breaks records you can choose from and a lot of guys end up playing the biggest tunes.
That seems to be one of the things at the moment. People come over from overseas with lots of the same records many locals already have because they’ve bought them on the internet or even locally. You end up hearing a lot of the same records all the time. You’re always looking for that individual touch.
That’s why we hold on to things. People ask us why we don’t put out more of the clubbier tracks. But it is so nice where, as you’ve said, all the DJs before you play all the big records, which the locals know those records, to blow up tunes and everyone goes mental and they’re tunes that no ones heard before. I think it’s important as a DJ to stay fresh and come with a fresh angle.
You don’t see it much in breaks DJs but I have this memory of you last time doing things like the spin backs and stuff to keep the crowd going throughout your set. Is that something you still enjoy doing?
Yeah I was doing that last night actually. I do get carried away sometimes. It’s more a jungle/garage thing really isn’t it? It does seem to work though I don’t really do it as much these days, maybe once in a set. Sometimes you might drop a new tune with a mental bass line and everyone in the place goes crazy. I’ll stop it, rewind it, meanwhile Mark will keep an acapella going whilst I’m doing that, then I can scratch the tune over the top of the acapella. It just creates a bit of an interactive moment for the crowd. It definitely seems to work and is a way of hyping it up. Instead of one DJ just playing records all night you can really fuck with shit cause you’ve got the lap top and can get away with more stuff like rewinds and more interesting stuff.
So is it still the same sort of setup with one of you on turntables and one of you on sampler and everything else?
Yeah the sampler became a laptop and it can do a bit more stuff. We’ve got it down to more of a tee now. When we first came to Australia we were still working it all out really. It was all off the cuff live remixing and we never really knew what was going to happen next. Now we’ve got more at our disposal and we can do some crazy shit. We can literally sample it whilst it’s playing, and really fuck with that tune and work it in a different way to what everyone thinks it’s going to go and basically give the crowd something a bit extra.
Is that something that’s got better and better over time as the chemistry between the two of you improves?
Yeah definitely. I can cut the cross fader out without even looking at Mark and at the same time he’ll drop a little hip hop thing on, a little vocal bit, and I’ll cut a tune back in and it’ll time up perfectly. It will sound like we’ve really choreographed it well but we’ve just done so many gigs together that vibe off each other really well. We get things in really quick, everything’s in key and smoother than it ever was.
The closest you get to a bass player and guitarist feeding off each other in a live band?
Yeah a sort of sixth sense.
You’re playing an assorted range of gigs when you come to Australia, you’re doing a few big outdoor festivals. How do you find those kind of gigs?
I love festivals, especially when it’s nice weather. Last time we were there we ended up doing the Falls Festival on New Years Eve with a mostly rock lineup. The crowd were plainly a rock crowd. When we first went on and played the first few records we weren’t very well received and someone threw a bottle from the crowd. After four or five records we’d won them over and half way through the set they were going crazy, they were stage diving and off their fucking heads. Sometimes with these festivals you don’t have a captive breaks audience like you do in a club but I really enjoy winning over new crowds. They might be into indy music or house music or something else, but seeing them getting down by the end of the set is always an achievement. It’s a challenge to win them over.
Is that sometimes a bit more satisfying?
Yeah. We get booked to play mad clubs on not one particular circuit. A couple of weeks ago we got booked to play at a jungle club in Estonia and they were going mental. The night before we played a progressive house club and they were getting into it too. It’s nice to hit different musical genre crowds but hit them with the same shit.
Has it been a bit strange having Can You Feel It getting big now a couple of years after it appeared on the The Stanton Sessions?
Yeah we were just selfish and held on to it. It was a good trick in our box so to speak, just like one of our edits. We could pull it out and everyone would go mental but no one else had it, which I think is important for DJs to have. I’m not sure how it did in Australia but it charted here in the UK and was on MTV, Radio 1 and got lots of exposure and became a little too well known so we stopped playing it.
The thing is, because of who we sampled we knew that when it came out, now matter how well it did, we weren’t going to get anything out of it. But it gets us out to the masses which is good.
I guess you’re always referred to as breaks but do you find you have a much wider audience?
Yeah definitely. I think if you just play one kind of breaks, like some breaks guys just play prog house breaks OR funky big beat breaks OR nu-skool breaks. If you’re a DJ, which I think the Stanton Sessions showed, you’re taking the crowd on a journey which can incorporate different things. If you play three hours of bass lines you’re going to bore the shit out of everyone. If you play a bass line track, then a vocal track, then a tribal breakbeat track, then a hip hop mixed up with a bassline track, each of those tracks is going to sound better being set up by the one before. It’s the age-old argument that too much of one thing is boring. If you go back to the old hip hop block parties, those guys were mixing up Kraftwerk, The Clash, early hip hop – that’s what gave the party bounce. It’s the age-old DJ ethic of “if it works throw it in”.
You can catch the Stanton Warriors throwing in their own special brand of party beats around Australia over December and January. You’d be a fool to miss it.
Stanton Warriors Australian Tour Dates:
Fri 26/12 – Perth – Breakfest Belvoir Ampitheatre (BUY TICKETS)
Sat 27/12 – Wollongong – Bustin (BUY TICKETS)
Wed 31/12 – Byron Bay NYE – c-moog
Thu 01/01 – Melbourne NYD – 33&1/3 (BUY TICKETS)
Thu 01/01 – Sydney NYD – Field Day (SOLD OUT)
Sat 10/01 – Canberra – Lot 33
Sat 17/01 – Hobart – Morpheus
