FRANCES STEPHENSON clamours for a glimpse of the red-carpet release of the year, SOUL OF MAN’s first artist album.

As you suck the deep funk breaks of Plump DJs off your pinkie and nibble the remnants of A*Skillz’ hip hop beats from your thumb, spare a moment to pay your respects to the genius duo who baked breakbeat from unshaped dough to Finger Lickin’ good. Justin Rushmore and Jem Panufnik, founders of the most successful breaks label in the world, have after ten years of success finally put together a producer album, Re-Licked.

What format does the album take?

It has two parts: one side is a retrospective of the tracks that mean the most to us, the ones that had a bit of an impact; and on the other, to add to the celebration, we commissioned a load of remixes.

What do you hope the album will accomplish?

Ten years is a long time, and people often don’t realise some of our tracks are by us – but when you hear them all together, you recognise a theme and a vibe in the sound.

What vibe is that?

It’s that four-letter word with ‘f’ at the beginning. It’s funky, dubby, with a bit of a house tinge. There’s a party factor and a feel-good factor, but with an undercurrent of darkness.
Do you think Soul Of Man has had an influence on breakbeat and the dance genre?

When we started the label the breakbeat genre was very young. Then there was the whole nu-skool breaks thing with Adam Freeland, and a lot of producers jumped on the scene and it became very dark. We wanted to distance ourselves from the male-testosterone-techy sound and really fly the funk flag, which is where our roots are at. Now a funk-driven thing is commonplace. I think we definitely had an impact and influence on the breakbeat scene, and perhaps within the dance genre as well: We put the funk in.

Are you happy to describe yourself as a particular genre, or does it offend you?

I don’t like it when people make camps and decide what they think is breaks and what isn’t. That’s basically encouraging separatism. It gets to the point where it’s less about dancing and more about what tracks you’re playing. A lot of electro-house DJs won’t play on the same line-up as breakbeat DJs (perhaps they’re worried about being upstaged, or perhaps because we’re quite happy to mix up their music as well). It should be about having fun, but what you notice in electro-house is that although the music is exciting and inspiring and the rest, it seems to attract fashion over music. For us it’s more about the music, having fun and doing silly dancing, not about being super-cool, which is fortunately why breakbeat as a scene has always attracted people who just go out and have a laugh. It’s great to look good, but don’t be ashamed to let your hair down and dance to good records.

Soul Of Man Re-Licked is out July 14 on Finger Lickin’ via Inertia

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