Champion Breaks – Extasy Make You Lovely (The Remixes) (Kut Off Records)

An unbearably nostalgic three-track remix EP from our favourite acid-breaker Champion Breaks, this begins with a real Rave Digger-esque take from Dodders, complete with tingle-on-the-back of your neck piano sections, and quick-hug-a-friend samples from Human Traffic. The DJ Slim vs Menace mix gets all junglistic on your ass but at the risk of playing Rabbit favourites, it’s Benji303‘s rub that really rules the roost. Benjio retains the manic  breakbeats so beloved of Champion but teases them into Acid Techno shapes and the result is phat and fast and highly addictive.

Champion Breaks – Sex, Drugs & Love EP (Kut Off)

“You know how to get a girl going,” says the vocal for Sex on the Decks, the EP’s opener. Held fast by the kind of bassline from which speaker cones run terrified and screaming, breakbeats attack like fleetfooted assassins until after a minute or so, when the 303s start up and the whole thing fireworks into a kind of joyous, controlled pandemonium.

Therein lies the appeal of the Champion Breaks sound. It’s the rawboned attack of old skool breaks – that first-heard smiley, rushy feeling – meeting the relentless drive and funk of 303. It’s hectic, man. It’s wired on sulphate and wide-eyed with its own potential and it springs off cackling in unexpected directions.

So on Love Me Always, a fidgety acid line and sampled vocals do the hard work, whereas Music For Drugs plays with a more traditional-sounding jungle bassline, lashed by a high-pitched, squirly 303. Where is the sound going? You’re never quite sure. What’s it like? It’s like being on a bus that’s been hijacked by killer dolls on nitrous oxide. Like that.

And there’s more where this came from. In a former life, Mr Champion Breaks himself tore it up as a DJ/producer in Acid Techno, but for the last three years he’s tinkered to refine the project he’s calling ‘the future (pirate) sound of London’, or Acid Breaks for short. Infused with a sense of humour to match the jaw-clenching propulsion of the tunes, the project’s wellspring is the website, here, where Breaks’ guiding philosophy harks back to the freethinking optimism of rave (its principles not dissimilar to System Rejects, in fact) and you can download plenty of tracks for free.

Meanwhile there’s a supremely caffeinated and justly popular label showcase mix on Soundcloud (called, pleasingly, It’s Intelligent… It’s Acid Breaks… And It’s Still F**king ‘Avin It!) to which you’ll find the link below, plus Breaks’ remix of Oscar G’s Twisted by Nature can be found here. As the Breaks maxim goes, ‘It’s all about 303 acid lines, the old-skool hardcore breaks, and throbbing Reece bass to give you endless thrills!’

Get it here:  Juno Download

Champion Breaks Facebook.