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Unlike many other producers who have fallen by the wayside in the ten years since breakbeat exploded from the late eighties acid house movement, Danny Breaks has weathered the storm retaining both credibility and integrity with a no-compromise attitude and a production style which is well respected within drum & bass and beyond.
In 1993 Danny established the Droppin' Science imprint, originally as an outlet for his own material though later home to producers Dylan, Facs and Use Of Weapons. Breaks chose to remain independent with his recordings.
1999 saw a renewed concentration at Droppin' Science, with the much vaunted "Dislocated Sounds" finally surfacing after a year on the shelf, rapidly followed by "From Beyond Infinity." Both double pack EP's set out a new agenda, interspersing full-length drum & bass pieces with an array of hip-hop instrumentals whose lo-fi percussives, constantly evolving low end and dysfunctional, b-movie atmospherics truly flipped the script.
His long rumoured debut for True Playaz came by in the "Music For Martians and Other Extra Terrestrials" project. One of the most dynamic albums to appear from the drum & bass movement saw the listener broken in gently with "Sign" and "Random" before turning on the complexities by way of the mermaid voxed "Aquatika" and "Resolves" spooked strings and detuning wood bass. A triple chambered heap of instrumental hip hop closed the vinyl, as Mark Pritchard explains, "Danny has always strived to use new and different breaks, and dug for those beats in the same way that hip-hop artists do. Because he's into hip-hop, though its not obvious, his material has always had that vibe of attitude and a lo-fi funk."
Words: Kingsley Marshall
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