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Aquasky
Teamplayers
Passenger/Inertia

In UK breakbeat trio Aquasky's tenth year, the boys have given breaks fans everywhere a very thoughtful birthday present in the form of their latest studio album, 'Teamplayers'. This album of collaborations is an exploration into different facets of the breaks genre with hard yet funky beats, pulsing basslines, crystal melodies and typically tight Aquasky production, all of which combine to provide a completely innovative breaks experience.

The album opens with a ridiculously danceable, electro-fuelled breakbeat track Good Sound, co-produced by the Breakfastaz and featuring a couple of short, catchy vocal samples by Diane Charlemagne. With one of the best basslines ever written by a breaks group and wicked drum programming, this is an absolute smasher of a track. Apparently not content with MCing on the biggest track on the biggest drum'n'bass album of the last few years (Tarantula, on Pendulum's 2005 debut 'Hold Your Colour'), Spyda pops up again on Time Up and What Can You Do?, which are co-produced by Backdraft. The man's in fine form, with his trademark deep baritone, ragga-influnced rhymes flowing over solid breaks foundations and, surprisingly, chunky distorted-guitar riffs.

The dirty house/breaks crossover track Overneath with Meat Katie is a refreshing 3.5 minute break of mediocrity amidst such overwhelmingly great tracks; there's just nothing particularly special on show here and no real inventiveness displayed, which is unfortunate given the talent of both artists. However, then the album slows down for a ragga/breaks cross as Earl 16 sings in his chilled reggae style about Looking For A Session with Tayo providing the musical assistance, before picking up for the Drummatic Twins smashing up the place with the dirty breakbeats of Bring It On Down. Big Shugg from Gangstarr and Diane Charlemagne team up to provide vocals for the inventive nu-skool hip-hop/breaks hybrid, Rough.

The full scope of this incredible piece of work just can't be expressed in this format but anyone into breaks, dance music in general or simply with an appreciation for talented electronic music production must own this album. A breakbeat masterpiece.

Ben Ford Smith

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