The story of How The PLUMP DJS Saved Breakbeat, as told by LEE ROUS to FRANCES STEPHENSON.

Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there were two nice young men called Lee Rous and Andy Gardner. Lee and Andy were the Plump DJs, and they created and played a type of music called Breakbeat. When they first began to play together this broken-beats music was just a nascent, fragile creature, but as they played they loved it more and more, and it loved them back. Gradually other people came to also like the music, and eventually people all over the world were dancing. More and more people began to create similar music. Great smoking factories were built to churn out more and more and more records to feed the swarming masses until eventually poor Breakbeat was reduced to a set of bass notes and drums that could be replicated without the need for Creativity, which was too difficult and expensive. One day, however, people began to realise that this mass-produced Breakbeat wasn’t making them feel good any more, and they started to call it names and spit on it. The great factories fell into disuse and the breakbeat clubs turned to the devil, Electro. Through all of this confusion and chaos little Lee and little Andy had continued to make Breakbeat as they had always done it, painstakingly and with zest and love; and throughout Electro’s reign they and other guerrillas experimented underground, cooking up beats and breaks in their cauldrons, to find the right spell to bring Breakbeat back. Eventually they hit on the formula, which they called Headthrash.

Lee is very excited about the effects of the new potion. “It’s been pretty well received. People are enjoying the eclectic style of the album and everyone seems to have picked their favourite tunes. Triple J has picked up Shifting Gears. We’ve got the most supporters of our music in Australia per capita than anywhere else in the world, so it’s very important to us.”

The thing that has always set Plump DJs apart is that they make music only for themselves. “We’ve always chosen to work for an independent record company, Finger Lickin’ Records. They’re not backed by a major record company, and we don’t have major-record-company financing. One of the main reasons we choose to go with them is that we get artistic freedom – we don’t get any pressure to make music as per someone else’s idea. It’s a very luxurious situation – we make whatever we like, and we make it purely because we want to. We never compromise at all.” They do, however, hope that people are pleased with the result. “It’s great seeing people enthusiastic about your work. That shows you that you’re still inspiring people. We’ve been making music and DJing now for a long time, so it’s great to still be considered in the underground independent environment.”

The “underground” is not always kind to its progeny. After the electro coup proponents of breakbeat had to regroup and take stock, and it became clear that if breaks were ever to regain its previous popularity it would have to evolve. Splinter groups of Amish-style purists formed and to this day they continue their resistance. “We do get frustrated,” Rous says. “We’re very pure in our beliefs about what we want to achieve when we’re making a record, and we’re very uncompromising artistically, so in a funny way we’re purists ourselves. But there are a lot of people out there that are really passionate about their idea of breakbeat, and some times they’re a little bit blinkered. That sometimes annoys us. We’ve always had a very open-minded approach to making music.”

During the dark ages of breakbeat the best artists began to look further afield for inspiration. Lee and Andy had always enjoyed a very wide range of music – breaks, electro, techno, disco – and they embraced influences from those genres. Headthrash in particular is more song-based than the Plumps’ previous work, and there were new skills to be learnt. “Yes, it was a challenge,” Lee admits. “Song-writing is an ambiguous thing. You can take it any way you want: you don’t necessarily have to follow traditional structures or templates. I can’t read music, but Andy’s been classically trained, which helps out massively. We’ve both got different skills, and we bring them together in the studio. When we first got in the studio I knew nothing about making music at all. All I was was a DJ. Andy is a massively talented musician, though, and we found this common understanding – and now we’ve been making music for over ten years. Both of us have gained skills along the way. Andy’s learned to read between the lines a little bit more, and I’ve picked up some classical training.”

However, the partnership hasn’t always been simple and beautiful: the duo has had some difficult times. “Maybe about two years or so ago we weren’t getting on,” muses Lee. “We were in a bit of a low patch. But at the moment we’re getting on better than we have for six years. We’ve been having great fun in the studio, really supporting each other, and getting really good results, in our professional lives and as friends. It’s the same as any relationship – you have to not try to mould each other into your own idea of what that person should be. You have to try to support the other person in their skill set and give them some space. We make sure we always have a day or two away from each other every week, and we have some friends we don’t share. Our relationship definitely affects the music – there is a noticeable difference if we’re not getting on or one of us has pissed the other off. We’re just like any other mate relationship: if we get pissed off then our ability to work as a team is impaired.”

Mostly, though, the two get on splendidly. Everything they do is about the music they create, and that can involve many long hours spent slaving in the studios with a common goal. “I’ve been accused of being too involved in the music,” Lee says, “and too heavily involved in what we’re doing. That was particularly so with regard to the finishing of this album. We were intensely involved in the record, as you can imagine. Those tracks were the cumulation of two and a half years’ work, and it was really important that we got our ideas across. Sometimes you can get too involved. It’s important to step back and look down at yourself and try to understand what’s going on. You have to look at the bigger picture. You can get caught up in yourself – but that’s the joy of the process. It’s a wonderful thing to be doing.”

In the end, dear readers, Lee and Andy smuggled Headthrash out of the underground, and it was loved by little boys and girls all over the world. The dictator Electro was overthrown and the fickle clubs once again welcomed Breakbeat onto their sound systems. The Plump DJs are taking their rightful place on decks on every continent, and people all over the world have begun to dance again. It looks like everyone will live happily ever after.

The PLUMP DJS will bring their fairytale to Brisbane for Parklife on October 4 2008. Tickets for the Goldfrapp and Soulwax-headlined festival go sale today (Tuesday) at midday from www.parklife.com.au. HEADTHRASH is out now through Finger Lickin’/Inertia.

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