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Chew the Fat

Author: Fat Records
Saturday, June 10, 2006
Fatmail - Breakbeat Is Dead

What was that terrible stench in the music world- That sickly throat-raping rancour of rotting flesh- Who was that pale, lonely figure lost in the wilderness- Who was that walking corpse, struggling for breath and stumbling blindly along- What was that awful rasping cough, the sound of someone taking their last breaths, occasionally broken by the pathetic, dying whimpers of a stuck-pig- Well, we'll tell you. It was Old Father Breakbeat. The obese, bloated old sot got so fat and bloated that he couldn't even see his own cocaine-ravaged cock. So, he's finally seen sense and lost the will to live. He's kicked the bucket, thrown a seven. Damned to eternal obscurity in the graveyard of pointless music genres.

Yes, sorry to disappoint you all, but it's official: breakbeat is dead. Pack away your raving helmets, chuck out those old TCR 12"s and feed the pills to the cat. If you want to rave, try a minimal house night: it's all the rage, apparently. Old Father Breakbeat won't be seeing you any more - he's getting felched by the worms as we speak.

But here at Fat, that's not going to stop us digging the old c**t up and parading round his rotting cadaver, week in, week out, month after month, the hands of time meaningless against the recurring nightmares of our regular club nights, as we plod slowly towards middle age and oblivion, undeterred by the foibles and fads of the contemporary dance music scene.

However, we'll make it look like we're jumping ship by booking a series of minimal-house DJs and tired has-beens to prop up the same old breaks tosh. Starting this very month… so, crack out the valium suppositories and pull down your pants - it's another fucking Fatmail.

'Chew The Fat: Special Edition: ARNOLD: A LIFE IN BREAKBEAT'

Paul Arnold has often been referred to as the rodent of the breakbeat scene: a gnarled, hairy critter, crawling about between people's legs, getting into dark and stinky holes and clawing away at people's creativity with his ratty little paws. But this weekend it's time for rattus rattus breakbeatus to clamber up onto its hind legs and make an unholy screech of its own. To make their personal mark on the world, some people write an autobiography. Others perform a great feat of strength or undertake an epic voyage of discovery to foreign soil. But Arnold's cherished legacy - the weighty tome that he'll leave behind for generations to remember him by - will be the tawdry collection of breakbeat also-rans that have been pre-programmed to sound like the same old fucking Paul Arnold set you hear every fucking week at Chew The Fat. Join us this weekend as we prostrate ourselves at the feet of one of breakbeat's most colossal erections: the towering boner that is Paul 'Trombone' Arnold, with that very same set you've heard weekly at Chew the Fat for the last thirty years.

And just to stick the proverbial rocket up the clenched butt-cheeks of all the breakbeat purists, in support of the great man this month are a pair of Johnny-come-lately-house dullards guaranteed to bring 'plodageddon' to the Fat dancefloor. Paul Woolford and Elite Force will be demonstrating how many minimal ways you can mix one rhythmically identical, featureless house track into another. The former is a dance music throwback who has repackaged himself as a Lance Corporal of marching music, apparently, while the latter has produced some of the most memorable breakbeat since the last instantly-forgettable breakbeat tune you heard.

Fat caught up with 'Paul Woolface' this week and asked him some questions. But the answers are so tedious we almost can't bring ourselves to include them. But just to keep the marketing department happy, here's a sample quote of the full-length diatribe that you can find on our web site:

'I read an interview with an ex-prog producer,' explains Paul, 'who referenced the track and made a comment regarding "bandwagon-jumpers" and it made me
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