What is breakbeat?

Breaks, short for breakbeat, is the wider family that drum & bass grew out of. Instead of house’s steady four-on-the-floor, breaks are built on sampled drum breaks from old funk, jazz, and R&B records, looped and chopped into something new. The tempo range is broad, anywhere from around 110 to 175 BPM.

It’s an older idea than dnb and a broader one. Nu skool breaks pushed it in a harder, more electronic direction from the mid-to-late 1990s. Rennie Pilgrem, Adam Freeland and Tayo ran the London night Friction, and Pilgrem put the name on record with the two Nu Skool Breakz compilations on Kickin Records in 1998. The sound reached its widest audience in the early 2000s. Proper folds breaks into the mix alongside the faster stuff, part of the full range the crew has always played.