A sizeable portion of the dancefloor will always love breakbeat, but just like that audience, breakbeat’s DJs and producers have no intention of sitting still. No one DJ has epitomized this more over the years than Brighton, England’s Adam Freeland, who as producer, DJ and head of the label Marine Parade has represented the “nu school breaks” scene to clubgoers and ravers the world over.

Freeland initially started off playing New York-based house, but as he discovered the West Coast breaks records of Uberzone, Bassbin Twins and the Hardkiss Brothers alongside the fledgling drum-n-bass scene in the U.K., he and others heard another sound within their heads. “I kept using that idea of the fat bass and high-tech sounds and the intricate productions [of drum and bass],” he recalls. “Using that kind of idea with the energy of breaks and house music is how we came about with this whole sound.”

Since then, he’s gained the respect of decidedly non-breaks-oriented jocks like Carl Cox and Sasha for the progressive and futuristic approach to breakbeat he’s taken in his DJ sets and production work. For his DJ sets, Freeland has steadily added more gear to the two turntables and mixer that the clubs usually give him. More often than not, he’s using an Apple Mac G3, a Zoom Studio rack and a sampler in addition to three turntables. “When you’ve got two decks, you’re kind of limited with those two dimensions,” he says. “If you’ve got three decks, you can always have a record in the mix. I was always influenced by DJ sets that would start at point A, take you somewhere else and bring back references to where it started from. When using a sampler, I can have a few themes run through my sets, loops that you can trigger and bring them in and out of the mix. And obviously, with effects, you can fuck things up, which is what we all like doing, dub shit out, layer things down differently. What makes a great DJ is someone who can make a record that you’re used to hearing in one context and put it in a completely different context, and you’re like, ‘Whoa!’ But it works. When you’ve got these toys to play with, you can add to that context.”

Production-wise, Freeland works with a combination of digital and analog equipment. He feels this mixture gives successful tracks their heart and soul. “You can risk being very clinical and sterile,” Freeland says. “If you use digital in audio, mixing through a digital desk down on to DAT on to hard drive, it never breathes some real air. It’s working with tools. I’m on an Apple Mac G3 now, which is an essential part of making any form of music, but if you combine that with a bit of old-school gear, then you’ve got a clean set-up as far as I’m concerned.” For instance, he works on an Akai MPC-2000XL and sequences then resulting drum program on Cubase, and counts some guitar pedals and an old Moog among his gear.

Now up to his third domestically released DJ mix CD, Tectonics (Ultra Records) and one collaboration with trance messiah BT on “Movement in Still Life” (“Madskills”), Freeland is currently working on a solo project and shopping it around to a few majors here in the U.S. As Fatboy Slim has proved, breakbeat definitely possesses a mass appeal. But mixing it does demand developing skills most 4/4 dancefloor DJs don’t need.

“House is very easy,” says Freeland. “If you can count to four, then you’re all right. And it doesn’t change that dramatically – whereas with breakbeat, you’ve got different rhythms. The way people make breaks is generally more choppy.”

And his advice? “Know your mixes. People say to me, ‘I’ve got these great records that work really well with this record.’ But you can never play the same set twice. The whole point of DJing is that you’re going with the moment.” – Justin Hampton