Stanton Warriors // Concorde 2

Photos by Eliot Gill

Here are some shots from the Stanton Warriors at the Concorde 2. This night was also the supposed Brighton Fusion x-mas party, about time we had one since our formation in 2004. A great night had by all – ears still feeling the pain. The bellow is an article which Fusion’s Amy Riley did for Trash Menagerie.

Trash Menagerie is a music culture and lifestyle blog dedicated to delivering its listeners and readers upfront music, artist downloads, features, DJ mixes, news, listings and commentary from around the globe.

Check it…

I recently talked to Dominic Butler from Stanton Warrior’s on the eve of their latest Fabric release Stanton Warriors Sessions Volume III.

Do breakbeat pioneers Stanton Warriors need much in the way of an introduction these days? Americans might not think they’re into Stanton Warriors’ breaks, but they’re more than just manhole covers, you know.

For just two guys who started out playing at West Country parties, Mark Yardley and Dominic have managed to push their music via Bristol and later down to Londontown, where they’ve honed their bass-driven breaks sound, filtering the party music around them. Their sound is distinctive, with big chunky basslines, capitalising on sounds from garage, house, hip hop and electro to create their own version of breakbeat – their tracks are like the backing tunes to a great lowrider car chase.

The duo have remixed Basement Jaxx, Mylo, Missy Elliot, Fatboy Slim, Azzido Da Bass, Bentley Rhythm Ace, Jocelyn Brown, Gabrielle – to name the proverbial few – and the number of awards and accolades littering the Stanton Warriors mantelpiece must be enough to qualify them for a heavy metal mark of distinction: Breakspoll Number One DJs, DJ Magazine’s Number One Breaks DJs, DJ Magazine’s 50 Best Remixers Of All Time. Their Sessions Volume II was voted album of the year by breaks Radio 1 DJ Annie Nightingale.

Dom’s feet had only just touched British soil when Fabric set him up with an eight-hour interviewing stint. He and Mark had just returned from LA, after a worldwide tour. Despite the extreme jetlag, Dom was charming and funny during the allotted 20 minutes – not really the cocky, bad-boy attitude that could be expected from a superstar DJ. Got him on a good day perhaps?

Many hours later: there’s a massive party going down in Shoreditch for Oakley’s Design Brief contest, with hundreds of trendies crowded in the warehouse space at Cordy House. The free booze is flowing, sunglasses designs and visuals are plastered on thewalls and the dancing drunk crowds are making square shapes to some serious bass-heavy dubstep from TM’s T and his Patchwork Pirates crew – and guess who’s there? You’d better believe it. Jetlag not withstanding, Dom was perched next to the DJ booth, as tall as the tower of speakers and bassbins he stood by. He was flanked on either side by a bouncer and few others checking out the DJs do their thing.

A few sets later from DJ Session, Young&Positive, The Equalizers, Soda Boys and The Nextmen, Dom was still there, hanging out next to the t-shirt printing factory and the free bar chatting with a blonde woman. Dom explained that he’d ended up doing interviews til 8 o’clock that night and that he was out to hear his mate Deekline play.

Unlimited vodka, redbull and beer all night – and free. It was a long night.

Similarly, Stanton Warriors Sessions Volume 3 is also made for a long night – it’s like having the club follow you home after you’ve left with your mates for a private session in the living room. The guys throw in a bit of everything – and it is very much rubberstamped with “their sound” on it all – so you can either take the view that they’re being diverse or you can think that they’re just jumping on musical bandwagons because breaks is, to some minds, at an all-time low.

The Stantons don’t waste any time warming up listeners and immediately punch below the belt with a remix of the killer Yo Majesty tune “Club Action”, followed very closely with another hit with their remix of Deekline and Ed Solo’s “Handz Up!” featuring Benzo, Flipside and Big Booty Kim.

There’s been a lot of knob twiddling on the tracks featured especially for this mix, and in all, the mix is an enjoyable stuck-on-repeat experience.

Electro fans might like the fact that Digitalism and DJ Mehdi get a look in here, but the money’s on the bootie bass tracks, everytime. The two tune that blow everything out of the water, though, are first the Douster remix of Bryan Cox’s “Let’s Go to Work”, which is a booming tune and a half, and Basement Jaxx’s “Nifty”.

The boys end on a fuzzy farewell note with the “Hope Time” accapella that’s played at the end, which features an inspiring speech from Jesse Jackson and ties in nicely with the US election and that was no doubt influenced by their recent time in the States:

“Don’t you give up! Don’t you surrender! Your spirit and faith will be tested; you are the light of the world. It’s healing time, it’s hope time.”

Stanton Warriors Sessions Volume III was released in the UK on the 27th October 2008 and will be released in the US on Tuesday 11th November 2008. It features tracks and remixes from Yo Majesty, Plump DJs, Boyz Noize, A-Trak, DJ Icey, Hysterix, The BPA, Bryan Cox, Alan Braxe, Bassbin Twins, Douster, Digitalism, Chromeo, DJ Medhi, The Chemical Brothers, Basement Jaxx, and more.

Interview with Dom Butler

Stanton Warriors on Sessions Volume 3

A: How are you today?

D: A bit jetlagged to be honest. We just got back from our American tour.

A: Ah, how did it go?

D: Good. The last show we did was in LA. It was a Monday night and it was sold out.

A: Wow, that’s pretty good going. Where’s Mark?

D: He’s in bed. He can’t speak.

A: Partying hard?

D: You could say that.

A: So, the Fabric Session 3 mix – tell me why you guys chose these particular tracks.

D: The mix is representative of the tracks we’ve been playing this year at our night, big parties and festivals. We get tracks from the different scenes we like – French housey stuff, American ghetto stuff like Bryan Cox – and then we do our own thing to them. It makes them unique and varied. It would be a shame to keep them to ourselves.

A: Do you guys look out for new undiscovered talent?

D: Yeah definitely – we keep close eye out for all new music. In the US, we found a new wave of rappers – they’re not famous but they’re distinctive and hungry for influences. A while back, we found the Streets on a pirate radio station and we used them on Volume one.
A: Are there any up-and-coming artists we should look out for?

D: Yeah, but they’ll be featured on our next artist album after this mix. I can’t drop their names or everyone will want to use them!

A: Is there any new technology you’re using these days?

D: In our live sets, Mark adds a new dimension with the laptop. He has all of the parts of all our tunes and remixes live. He has like the acapellas and stuff and does it all on the fly. It smashes the crowd! I wouldn’t do a dj set only on a laptop purely though. I’ve been djing for a decade – I know how to dj.

A: In the breakbeat scene there’s been a lot of talk that breaks is dead in the UK and it’s actually gone over to Oz, but that it will boomerang back. What do you think?

D: I think that most breakbeat is shit. There’s a lot of shit out there. I think we draw on so many genres and sounds in breaks, it needs a new definition. The guys in the US call breakbeat discobass. I find that interesting. It conjures up an image of one sound and it’s never good. For instance, when we dj in the States, we’re booked to play in big house clubs, not breaks clubs – and we don’t play house. We play in dubstep clubs and it still works. We have this reoccurring thing that happens when we play in the States – people come up and go ‘what is this?’ Volume 3 is a testament to the variety in breaks, from ultra funk to French touché. People say they don’t like breaks but I think they don’t really understand what it’s all about.

A: So you think mixing up the genres is the key for breaks djs right now?

D: If you only play breaks, you alienate the girls for a start. We’re still there with a heavy bassline, but anything for two hours is boring. I think we’re going back to that old school NYC thing of playing different sounds in one night. That’s what’s interesting at the moment.

12►