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Aquasky.
 After making a name in the 90's as some of drum'n'bass' hottest producers, Aquasky shifted in a purer breakbeat direction, perfected on their latest studio album 'Teamplayers'. Regarding the enormous quantity of collaborations on 'Teamplayers' (every single song's one!), Brent Newitt is more than happy to explain the decision. "We got to the pinnacle of what we were doing, production wise," he admits. "We knew what we were doing before we were doing it. We'd made a formula..." He pauses for a second, "and we weren't too happy with the fact."
Aquasky moved away from drum'n'bass initially because the genre had become very predictable, as Newitt puts it. "Breakbeat was a fresh alternative for us as producers, but then five years on we realised we'd created our own formula."
Despite making drum'n'bass and breaks respectively for a decade (which is a damn long time in dance music), Aquasky had never collaborated at all prior to 'Teamplayers'.
"A lot of people had wanted to record with us over the years but we'd never actually recorded with any other artist and [we thought] it might be a good time to open up the studio doors, to let some fresh ideas in."
Initially intended for only a few tracks, the idea snowballed and as the songs progressed more and more musicians came knocking. "We thought 'So let's just wrap it up into an album and present it as sort of a 10-year anniversary as a coming-of-age of Aquasky within the breakbeat culture'." He laughs. "Sounds like I'd written that out, doesn't it?
"I think the one that really kinda freaked us was Phil Hartnell," Newitt immediately replies when asked who he really wanted to work with, "who's a big legend in the Aquasky studio. He was making music when we first started going out partying." Newitt's not embarrassed about admitting nervousness when approaching Hartnell about the collaboration. "Oh yeah, I'm more nervous about contacting the people that inspired me when I was younger, like Ragga Twins, like Drum and Bassline Smith, who I've got on a pedestal. I think you always do have respect for those that have had a blueprint on your life."
An album of collaborations is going to have its logistic difficulties when the artists involved are scattered over the country, but Aquasky Twins managed to bypass this issue with tracks with DJ Icey and the Drummatic Twins by taking advantage of internet messaging, "We started something and sent it to them, they did a bit more and sent it back... It was internet ping-pong. The majority of acts came down to our studio or we went up to theirs, though."
Obviously lots of traveling has downsides. "It was a lot quicker to be doing it across AIM. The way it would've gone, we wouldn't have got anything done," he says with a bit of a chuckle.
Originally producing drum'n'bass, the shift towards breakbeat hasn't been a heart-wrenching move in the slightest.
"I've kind of lost my vibe for it. The thing with drum'n'bass is it's a music that we try and progress from, but it always calls you back. I could probably put my hand on my heart and say I'd never do it again but within two or three years of saying that I'd be producing again. It's just weird; I don't know what it is."
Even though he can't see himself tearing himself away from drum'n'bass forever, Newitt doesn't think he could stop producing breaks at all. "I'm so immersed in breakbeat now that I couldn't even envisage ever saying that I'd leave breakbeat. I just love it so much. For a producer it's a wonderfully broad musical medium and it's just open for any artistic impression or vibe or idea."
And are there any producers he's impressed by right now? Nope. "I don't particularly follow music, producers; I've more to do with the actual individual track. When I DJ out now, with breakbeat, I'm very, very picky with what I play, I won't just play such-and-such a person's tune because he's hot right now."
Ben Ford Smith
 | 'Teamplayers' is out now through Passenger/Inertia. |
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