left very little room for new talent to move on up, which then restricted it from being a permanently evolving medium. If you look at drum n bass, there is a constant flow of fresh artists coming up and being nurtured by the big guns and the big labels that showcase them and push them into the limelight. That didn’t really happen in breaks. I’m not taking anything away from the big guys – they were out there week in and week out, plugging it, but the scene did miss those ongoing injections of new angles and new sounds. The other thing that didn’t help the breaks scene was overdosing on bootlegs. People realised that they could make a few quick quid out of rinsing an old tune and next thing you knew – the market was totally saturated. Don’t get me wrong – I’ll drop the occasional bootleg and they are a great tool to give your sets a cheeky edge, sweeten up crowds who might be a bit resistant to breaks and bring the flowers off the wall. The problem came when you walked into Vinyl Addiction, Know How Records or Dexterity, and half the tunes in there were bootlegs. At which point of course, new music just got pushed to the side
and again – the upcoming wave of originality didn’t get a chance to breathe.
How much was that dip an opportunity for new strains like what’s now known as future jungle to emerge? Well – one of the other problems with the breaks scene was its breadth. The last thing I want is for range to sound like bad thing, but there were so many sub genres all grouped together under the one banner, that it got potentially confusing to people who were into