Invurt

Over the past decade, breakbeat bloomed from its 80s roots into a new, modern sound, and ever so slowly it has morphed into a multitude of genres, as well as influenced the creation of others. From the beginning of the nu-breaks renaissance, Elite Force has been in amongst it all as a driving force in its development, so much so that his sound has now become synonymous with the coming genre that is tech-funk – music that decisively crosses traditional ground by blending a variety of tracks from different and diverse genres into a single, unified sound. This pioneering effort of pushing a new musical manifesto has moved traditional breaks away from the common-main stay of breakbeat to new heights, and into a distinct sub-genre of its own, even though many would disagree that there is even a still-existing “mainstream” of the breakbeat genre in its watered down, present day incarnation.

“Actually, there definitely is a mainstream in breaks,” he remarks on the thought of a now almost too-diversified genre. “I’m here at the Snowbombing gig this week in Austria, and last nights party with Deekline, the Plumps and the Freestylers. For me, that’s the mainstream sound when it comes to breaks. As far as I’m concerned, I think tech-funk’s a nice catch-all term for what I do – it’s pretty much an inclusive terms that embraces techno, breaks, electro and house to some degree or another.”

Tish amalgamation of various, often disparate genres into a music that is accessible by a larger cross-range of people has lead to more opportunities for Elite Force, as bookings at gigs such as the Burning Man festival testify, allowing him to not only push the sound, but to attempt to document the genre in order to present it to punters, who may still be a little unsure as to how tech-funk sticks together.

“It’s a first time Burn for me. Have been speaking to the organizers about it for years as I’m a regular visitor to San Francisco, but everything seemed to come together for it this year, so me & Meat Katie will be planning a special back2back set for the Saturday night. We’ll also be doing a load of video filming as well for a little tech-funk documentary we’ve had in mind to do at some stage.”

From jet setting around the world playing to his fans, to spending time as the head of his newly renamed U&A records (renamed from Used & Abused due to a copyright issue), Elite Force seems to utilise the hours of the day to the full. With the recent hit of his latest single, Dark & Deep, an almost straight back-to-breaks track with long term collaborator, Meat Katie, Elite Force is consistently at the top of his game.

“‘Dark & Deep’ was #1 in the breaks chart in Beatport for a while, and the responses were as good as the sales, so it went over pretty well.” he enthuses. “Meat Katie and I have been doing tracks together for 5 years now so we have a pretty good idea of how each other work. We’ve released two 3-track EPs as well in the last three months under our Dustbowl alias, which we’re saving more for the techno side of what we do. We also have another single coming out in July on U&A called ‘Believe’ which is a very full-on breaks outing.”

Beyond it all, Elite Force has, and always will be, about the crowd ,and delving into the music he believes his fans want to hear, an ethos that Australian audiences are more than happy to follow along with.

“Well, I’ve played out in Oz a few times now and it’s always a total pleasure, to be honest. The crowds are always well clued up, really passionate about the music, and just bang up for the party. As a DJ, you can’t really ask for more than that, can you?”

Tags: ambar, elite force, meat katie, rock like this, tech-funk

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 9th, 2009 at 2:58 pm and is filed under Breakbeat, Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.