NEW YORK (Top40 Charts/ Fabric Records) - Bridging the gap between the most current scenes in London's bass culture, FreQ Nasty rumbles with underground thunder on FABRICLIVE 42, a staggering showcase of some of the rawest breaks-led beats around. Evading the pitfalls of a genre-controlled mix, yet at the same time avoiding the stop-start feel of a 'mash up' mix, on FABRICLIVE 42 he's imaginatively arranged a flowing, tightly-connected blend of FreQ-y tracks. With the bass heavy stomp of L-Vis 1990's UK take on Baltimore house, the blistering shatter of TRG and several of his own storming productions, including his
Santogold hit 'Creator,' the mix is a terror to bassbins worldwide. Buckle up!
'It's balls-to-the-wall from the very beginning! But that's the way I'm playing these days - there are so many good, full-on tracks out at the moment, I just come out and go BAM!...and then think about chilling out. I ended up finding that the relationship between the tunes in this mix wasn't about genres - it wasn't 'it's a breakbeat tune' or 'it's a dubstep tune' or 'it's a Baltimore tune' or whatever else - it was more about the feeling of the tune, the intensity of it. It's odd because really, there isn't a straight up breaks tune on the mix, but that wasn't intentional. It's bassline and breaks all the way through, just different permutations of them.' - FreQ Nasty
Born in Fiji and raised in New Zealand, breakbeat pioneer FreQ Nasty grew up listening to his father's stories about his rowdy rock shows ('I remember him saying when he was 14 or 15, he was earning more in a week than his dad was in a month from playing in bands!') and dreamed of bigger possibilities. He decided at the age of 14, while working his first manual labour job, that he didn't want to succumb to mundanely being a cog in the machine. That very same boundary breaking sensibility has always transcended through his music, from his scene-shaking classics like 'Boomin Back Atcha' and 'Move Back,' to his remixes of pop icons like Fatboy Slim, Kelis and KRS One. At the same time, he's always been very receptive to all that surrounds him, especially when he made the move to London and immersed himself in its developing scenes. His seminal releases on Botchit & Scarper for example, forward thinking and progressive, were a sign of the fast-moving times.
'I remember one of my roommates' boyfriends worked in a vinyl shop on Edgware Road and I used to go up there around '93, '94 - just at the point where the rave scene had kind of split into happy hardcore and darkcore. Literally, you'd walk into the store and one side would be happy hardcore and the other would be darkcore! I liked the darkcore stuff that was heavier and darker with reggae samples - I guess that was the beginnings of jungle. Through a friend of a friend, I managed to join up with Sour Records, which put out UK Apache and Shy FX's 'Original Nuttah.' Then Botchit & Scarper started doing the early beats and breakbeat stuff as a sister label to SOUR/Emotif and amongst others Matt (MJ Cole) started out engineering there before he moved onto his garage stuff. It was interesting because that one studio was an intersection for the burgeoning jungle scene, speed garage scene and breakbeat scene, and so many seminal artists came out of it�. Shy FX, T Power, MJ Cole, BLIM and more. I think that's why some of the early Botchit & Scarper releases were so varied, because people were making half time jungle records, because it was the same engineers that would be making the jungle records.' - FreQ Nasty
No matter what new genre or new scene steals the media spotlight these days, FreQ Nasty has the wisdom and experience to see it for what it is. After all, the cycles have spun around countless times within his vast, expandable career. Continually shape shifting under the wide umbrella of bass culture, FreQ Nasty forever stays one step ahead of its ongoing hype-fuelled evolution.
'London still seems to have this thing of spitting out a genre - a distinct genre - every 18 months. I think it's as exciting as it ever was; there's loads of good new music out there and it's interesting to see where those things come from. If you look at the Garage side of things, there's that bumpy four-on-the-floor Bassline/Niche stuff coming out and there's Dubstep, which draws its roots from Garage as well - so there's two radically different, distinct scenes that have branched off from the same place. And there are some great records that came out in-between 2 Step Garage and dubstep. I remember when Tempa were putting out those Horsepower records of these crazy, chopped-up drums and mental syncopations - not really on the double time, but not really on the half-time, like dubstep, either. I thought they were really interesting phases in themselves; they never took off into a scene but who knows, if some journalist had picked up on it and gone, 'Hey, you know those mental syncopated rhythms that sound like a jazz drummer on amphetamines, I'm going to call it such-and-such genre' - perhaps that could've been a scene in itself! So at every stage in the evolution of dance music, there's really interesting points that maybe don't get the hype to become a scene as such.'- FreQ Nasty
Fabric 42 - Tracklisting:
01 Saul Williams - Not In Our Name - Pledge Of Resistance - Ninja Tune
02 Santogold - Vs Switch & Freq Naty - Creator - Warners
03 Freq Nasty Vs Propa Tings - Peacemaker - Freq Nasty
04 Madox - Duckalicious [Baobinga's Thugalicious Remix] - Expanded
05 Leon Jean-Marie - Bring It On [Rusko's Granny Smasher Remix] - Universal
06 Reso - If You Can't Beat Em - Civil Music
07 Cadence Weapon - House Music - Big Dada
08 L-Vis 1990 - Change The Game - Tres Cool
09 ZTT - Lower State Of Consciousness [Original Munich Version] - Turbo
10 Rob Sparx - 2 Faced Rasta [Reso Remix] - Dubting
11 Lee 'Scratch' Perry Vs. The Moody Boyz - God Smiled [Remix] - On-U Sound
12 Tayo - March Of The Soundbwoyz - Cool & Deadly/Supercharged
13 Freq Nasty - Come Let Me Know [Acapella] - Skint
14 Baobinga - State of Ghetto Jackin (Ft. DJ Nasty) - Trouble & Bass
15 Epydemix - Thunder Gutter [Dub] - Epydemix
16 Backdraft - Living Like A Hustler Ft. Sporty-O - Passenger
17 KRS One - Sound Of Da Police [Freq Nasty Breakbeat Bacon Mix] - Zomba
18 The Beat Monkeys - How You Like Me Now ? [Rico Tubbs Gangsters Mix] - Passenger
19 Buraka Som Sistema - Kaslemba Wegue Wegue (Reso's Aguadente Mash Mix) - Enchufada
20 Freq Nasty Vs Heavyweight Dub Champion - Snared (Freq's Donkey Kong Mix) - Giveback
21 TRG - Oi! Killa ! - Cool & Deadly/Supercharged
22 Freq Nasty Vs Bassnectar [Dub] - Viva Tibet - Giveback
23 Radioclit Vs No Surrender- Godda Get It - No Surrender/Ghettopop Records 2007
24 Nate Mars Ft. Jahdan- Above & Beyond Dem - Complex Dubz
