The terms ‘funky’ and ‘breaks’ have been bandied about so much over the past couple of years that it’s easy to forget that the sound has roots which are many, many years old.

DJs like Martin Reeves, better known to many as Krafty Kuts, have been cutting up beats of a rather irregular nature for over a decade. With a passion for old school hip hop and electro, and drawing inspiration from legends such as James Brown, Martin immersed himself in old skool DJ culture at an early age. The man actually won a DJ comp at the just 12. By the late eighties he was a man in demand, DJing at a range of clubs all over Britain’s south.

Martin soon found himself behind the counter of his own record store in Brighton, and to his surprise, the sounds of early break beat rave tracks slowly won him over: “You’d go into some of the underground clubs like Stern’s in those days and the bass was like nothing you’d heard before – it literally reverberated through your chest. Old hardcore DJs like Carl Cox and Lenny Dee were regularly playing and the sound in these rooms was quite phenomenal – so intense. I wasn’t really too keen on it to begin with, but I was selling so much of that stuff in the store that I couldn’t help but get into it eventually.”

Martin dropped a few early nineties numbers into his sets here in Australia and I queried why he felt the need to do so: “I play those earlier tracks because I think they’re an important part of the build up to where break beat is at now, I spin them almost to educate younger clubbers I guess. A lot of UK break beat DJs are doing it at the moment, guys like the Plumps, Rennie – they’re all playing a few older tracks in their sets.”



Krafty has recently reworked an old rave number many of us know, and possibly remember with fondness- Praga Khan’s ‘Injected With A Poison’. I was amused, and damn curious to find out exactly how this came about: “I was down at the beach with my family one afternoon and Peter Pritchard from Nuklez records [UK hard house label] called and said he’d heard my remix of Stakker’s ‘Humanoid’, liked it, and wanted me to remix Injected With A Poison’. I wasn’t sure what to do with it, but I think I’ve stayed true to the rave sound while giving it a good update with dose of electro bass and the nu school breaks sound.”

Much of Krafty’s production work to date has centered around the remix, due to being contractually unable to make his own music for a year or so. “I was unhappy with my old record label, but unable to get out of my contract with them for a year and a half. During that period they wouldn’t let me produce any new music, so remixer it was..I think I’ve done more remixes than just about anybody in that period!”

His discography is filled with quite a desirable array of clientele actually – anything from the incomparable Eric B & Rakim (‘I Know Your Soul’) to The Detroit Grand Pubahs. The latter track – ‘Sandwiches’- is Krafty’s fave piece of rework: “Yeah I was really lucky to be offered that one, and to actually do a good remix was so exciting. EVERYBODY seems to love it and I think it made people realise that ‘Hey, this guys does do something a little different to us.’ I like to use the track’s predominant sound but take it down a slightly different route to anyone else, put in the Krafty sound.”

Martin now runs his own label, Against The Grain, and is busily working away on his first solo outing. He lists artists Freddy Fresh, Atari Playboys and Disco Assassins as label stable mates and some-time collaborators.

As for his solo piece: “I haven’t decided what to call it yet actually, but I think that it will be an integral part the album. You need something with meaning, something that will stick in people’s minds, something that suggests that it’s a Krafty Kuts album I guess. Lots of my track titles have drawn on funk and hip hop for their titles, because that’s my background, so it may well work on that theme.”

He’s pretty happy with how the album itself is coming together: “Yeah really well, I’m aiming at a market who hopefully want a diverse range of ‘dance’ elements – funk, hip hop, up tempo breaks numbers..it’s all about different moods and moments. I’m working on instrumental tracks, hip hop numbers with guest rappers and vocalists as well as including some of the material you’ll be already familiar with, such as ‘Ill Type Sound’, ‘Street Freaks’, ‘Gimme The Funk’ and ‘Come Alive’

“I think if people listen to 4 or 5 tracks on an album regularly you’ve done well…it’s my first outing, and a little later in my career than most producers, so it’s really important to me to get it right. I’m really excited about where it’s going – there’s so much material I’ve been desperate to get out for so long and it’s all starting to fall into place.”

Expect to see the Krafty Kuts album, whatever he decides to call it, out early next year.