It’s been a long wait but the British breakbeat duo The Freestylers – Aston Harvey and Matt Cantor – are about to reinvent themselves with a new album, Pressure Point.
The Freestylers delivered their debut set, We Rock Hard, back in 1998 and were, perhaps inevitably, swept up by the big beat movement, largely because of their image as party-lovin’ b-boys. Now with Pressure Point the Brits are shedding any characteristics of big beat with a nu mix of breaks, ragga and house. In fact, Aston admits that The Freestylers have been influenced by two-step garage – at least, the more underground end.
“We wanted to depart from what we did for the first album – you know, using less ol’ skool hip-hop references and sample bases,” Aston says. “I think we’ve made it a bit clubbier, we’ve used influences from a lot of other different areas, like rave – well, subtle hints of rave, anyway – and it’s just a bit clubbier, a bit harder.”
The Freestylers cringe at the common perception of them as ol’ skool hip-hop romantics – hence the greater emphasis on live instrumentation and ragga MCing this time around. “I still love the ol’ skool hip-hop records and it’s part of my musical history, what actually got me into making music, so, yeah, being younger and a bit more naive at that time is probably the romanticism of it,” Austin says, “but then obviously you’re influenced by sounds that are more current as well, and I’m feeling a lot of different sounds at the moment.”
On Pressure Point the duo also recorded with more vocalists including old MC ally Tenor Fly (‘Phenomenon One’, ‘Weekend Song’), and singers Petra (‘Told You So’) and Valerie M (‘Calling’).
Aston and Matt started out as b-boys who moved on from hip-hop to rave in the late 80s. Before forming The Freestylers in the mid-90s the two were pursuing individual careers as DJs and producers – Matt was in the moderately successful house group Strike. They took the name Freestylers from a sample of Freestyle’s ‘Don’t Stop The Rock’ used for their first foray ‘Drop The Boom (AK-48)’. The pair followed this up with ‘The Freestyle EP’ in late 1996 and later crossed over into the pop charts with 1998’s ‘B-Boy Stance’, which featured Tenor Fly. The Freestylers went on to remix acts like Afrika Bambaataa and The Jungle Brothers.
As with The Wiseguys and Propelleheads, The Freestylers have forged out an American fanbase. Yet Austin is cautiously optimistic when asked about their expectations for Pressure Point across the Atlantic. “The first album was really well received in America, and we got loads of support, we did some really good tours, and we were supported by MTV over there, so if it could do exactly the same I’d be very happy – obviously if we could sell more copies that would be a bonus – but actually that’s where we sold most of our records.”
If overground outfits like Basement Jaxx and Groove Armada have delivered anti-climatic albums this year, then The Freestylers have been able to cut their second LP under much less pressure because they were less of a commercial force to begin with. Still, Aston alludes to creative strain, record company politics, and a backlash to the over-hyped big beat as the scenarios that prompted the album title. “I think basically the perception of The Freestylers is actually bigger than the amount of records we’ve sold – I mean, groups like Basement Jaxx have sold hundreds of thousands of records, we’re nowhere near that,” Aston observes. “So I don’t think the pressure was commercially on that level, but the pressure was to come up with something that we thought we could be happy with, that we could play in clubs still, and just generally was a bit different from the last album.”
The Freestylers are touring Australia from 28 September to 5 October with dates in all major capitals. For more info, log onto Agent Mad’s Website www.agentmad.com.au.
