Birmingham’s bass music event Break Thru, run by drum & bass veteran Dan Blindside brings forth a heavyweight selection for the bank holiday weekend.
Hosted by the freshest eatery in town, Alfie Bird’s will be celebrating a year of “gourmet eats and beats” and will be making it a night worth attending.
With an international star-studded line up, Break Thru continue to keep Birmingham on the map for the biggest and most respected bass talent to pass through. It’s the turn of SpectraSoul to step up; a duo from Brighton with a bank of releases across the scene; Exit Records, Critical and of course Shogun Audio, with whom they’re due to release ‘The Mistress’ on…
Organiser Blindside told us:
“SpectraSoul are revealing their LP on a UK tour so we thought that would be a treat. Ivy Lab are really firing at the moment with their last EP on Critical . Randall has always been at the top for us. He’s the pioneer molten rivet welding Daddy!
We’ve been talking to Command Strange for a couple of years but each time it didn’t work out. When Muzik Hertz had to postpone they were kind enough to offer him to us and it would have an awful shame for him not to have played in Brum having travelled from Kazakhstan.”
Anyway, as if that wasn’t tantalising enough, here’s a chat we had with the duo that are SpectraSoul in preparation for their gig this Saturday in Digbeth. Check out the lineup at the bottom
Welcome to Fortitude and welcome soon to Birmingham! It’s been a while since you played here (a PROspec night at The Bull’s Head ‘13 we believe); it’s a pleasure to have you!
Thanks for inviting us again. That PROspec night was great, I’m sure Saturday will be just as good. Birmingham is always a fantastic place to play.
Break Thru has brought names like DJ Marky, Dub Phizix, Calibre, S.P.Y & Mc DRS through and now you’re about to be added to that hallowed list. What vibe can we expect this bank holiday? Album exclusives?
Absolutely. We kicked off our album tour last week and are so happy to be bringing ‘The Mistress’ to Birmingham. We’ve been playing most of the new album in our recent sets, along with plenty of other brand new music from our peers, all of which goes down really well. We can’t wait to showcase our new music to people.
“We also went a bit deeper into our song-writing, wanting to explore the potential within d&b, and other tempos/genres whilst retaining our sound palette.”
‘The Mistress’ will be your second album to drop on Shogun Audio, with the lead single ‘Always’ announced back in February. How was putting together -what can be- the tough second album?
We approached it in a relatively similar way to ‘Delay No More’, although this time around we had a bit more of a hands-on approach. Used less samples, created more sounds from scratch, played actual real life instruments (!) and involved more vocalists. We also went a bit deeper into our song-writing, wanting to explore the potential within d&b, and other tempos/genres whilst retaining our sound palette.
I once read a KMag (RIP) interview which talked about you guys graduating from being leaders of the new school to teachers. Do you see veins of your previous work in younger artists these days?
There’s been a few occasions recently where you’ll hear a track, and it will remind us of something we wrote a long time ago. It’s probably down to production methods more than anything else. All we know, is if we’ve had any impact on influencing someone to want to be creative and make music, then that’s awesome!
More generally, who are you guys jamming to at the moment? Fresh and classic, DnB & otherwise…
D&B – Ivy Lab are making some great music at the moment. Calibre’s still consistently good and Lynx’s new album is wacky, we love that.
Otherwise – D’Angelo’s new LP was another game changer. Jungle’s debut was an instant classic and the new Jamie XX album couldn’t come soon enough.
Finally, do you have any funny artist stories from gigging? We know you guys must get up to some mischief on tour…
One time we were on a Shogun [Audio] tour in Australia and on a night off in Sydney, one particular member of the gang got refused entry into a bar for having a mullet. Not mentioning names. Ahem.
Thanks for taking the time to chat, looking forward to seeing you alongside headliners Ivy Lab, DJ Randall and Command Strange as well as the live graffiti (via City of Colours) which we think you should definitely check out!
Oh we definitely will. Looking forward to it. See you there…
Head over to the Break Thru Facebook page to find out more and book tickets, as well as becoming a Break Thru member for reduced price tickets!
BREAK THRU
presents:
SpectraSoul
The Mistress LP Launch – Shogun Audio
Special Guests:
DJ Randall
Command Strange
support from:
Dan Blindside
The Skeptics
Hosted by Mantmastt & Fozz
City of Colours live Graff & Beats from:
JEKYLL / Becky G
Positive Vibrations / Flip
Venom / Dantics / Fash Harry
Digbeth, Birmingham, B9 4AA
Tickets available from:
Drinks 2 Go (Selly Oak)
Kompass Records (Oasis Birmingham)
Buy any vinyl on the Shogun Shop and receive the MP3’s of the equivalent tracks for free! Download links will appear upon order confirmation.