They say “a picture paints a thousand words,” although in this instance it’s more a case of the picture signifying 21 tracks. Easy to miss at first, but a quick glance at the back cover of Colombo’s forthcoming new album, ‘Station 21’, reveals a meaning behind the cover art.
I thought it was a cool shot even before I made the connection – I mean who doesn’t like railways and the all the industry they represent? I’ll forgive London commuters for piping up here, but I think it’s an awesome image to marry with electronic music; conjuring expectations of beats that have the unstoppable momentum of a freight train. Admittedly, I’m easily pleased when it comes to cover art (probably because design skills of any kind continue to evade me) but you can imagine the level of approval when I counted 21 visible sets of tracks in the photograph. Don’t worry, I’ll wait while you go and double-check…
The album didn’t disappoint sonically, either. It’s been a long time since I heard breaks that transported me back to the record shops of Manchester’s northern quarter in the early 2000s, where I’d seek out cuts that had the required pace and general grunt to mix with, dare I say it, hard house and trance. Even then, tracks with enough punch & fluidity to drop out of a juggernaut 4/4 record without ruining the afterparty were hard to find. Labels like Passenger served up a few, but it wasn’t long before it seemed the bolder sound of nu skool breaks was fading. I’m sure the light never went out, but my interest in the tougher side of house waned and with it, my search for compatible breakbeat.
As a result I’ve been relatively out of touch with the scene throughout the many intervening years and honestly had no idea whether or not breaks with such heart still existed, so mad props to Colombo and iBreaks for very plainly flagging up the fact that they do. The label’s final release for 2013, ‘Station 21’ takes a diversion from the Spaniard’s big beat-inspired 2012 LP, ‘Abandoned Factory’, and follows the producer on a journey back to the early noughties and a nu skool breaks scene that was still in its infancy. “The album,” says iBreaks, “is a love letter to the sounds, the beats, and the vibe of the scene’s roots.”
No need to take their word for it, though, because we passed the album to someone who should know better than most if it really is a faithful blast from breakbeat’s past – Steve Thorpe, resident and founder of Tangled Breaks (cited by Rennie Pilgrem as “probably the longest-running breaks night in the world”) and promoter of Lowdown…
“The write up is pretty accurate,” said Thorpe, “it’s an album full of high quality tunes that are how breaks were 10 years ago – a sound that many breaks fans are still searching for, since a lot of new rhythms are influenced by the now-fading dubstep scene and just lack groove. My favourite tune is ‘Takes The physical’, but I will play numerous tracks from the album in my sets. It’s similar in style to Colombo’s first LP; it doesn’t try to be too clever or ground breaking, and each tune follows the same structure, but are all good, solid breakbeat tunes. Just how we want them to be.”
It’s interesting that Steve should pick out ‘Takes The physical’ as his favourite cut off the album, because this is one of two tracks that iBreaks describes as sounding “like actual undiscovered classic gems from the early 2000s.”
‘Station 21’ gets an exclusive release on the iBreaks website this time next week, December 10th, before hitting digital download stores on the 17th.
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