FreQ Nasty - FABRICLIVE 42 CD

Born in Fiji and raised in New Zealand, breakbeat pioneer FreQ Nasty grew up listening to his father’s stories about his rowdy rock shows (“I remember him saying when he was 14 or 15, he was earning more in a week than his dad was in a month from playing in bands!”) and dreamed of bigger possibilities. He decided at the age of 14, while working his first manual labour job, that he didn’t want to succumb to mundanely being a cog in the machine. That very same boundary breaking sensibility has always transcended through his music, from his scene-shaking classics like ‘Boomin Back Atcha’ and ‘Move Back,’ to his remixes of pop icons like Fatboy Slim, Kelis and KRS One. At the same time, he’s always been very receptive to all that surrounds him, especially when he made the move to London and immersed himself in its developing scenes. His seminal releases on Botchit & Scarper for example, forward thinking and progressive, were a sign of the fast-moving times. No matter what new genre or new scene steals the media spotlight these days, FreQ Nasty has the wisdom and experience to see it for what it is. After all, the cycles have spun around countless times within his vast, expandable career. Continually shape shifting under the wide umbrella of bass culture, FreQ Nasty forever stays one step ahead of its ongoing hype-fuelled evolution.

"It’s balls-to-the-wall from the very beginning! But that’s the way I’m playing these days – there are so many good, full-on tracks out at the moment, I just come out and go BAM!...and then think about chilling out. I ended up finding that the relationship between the tunes in this mix wasn’t about genres – it wasn’t “it’s a breakbeat tune” or “it’s a dubstep tune” or “it’s a Baltimore tune” or whatever else – it was more about the feeling of the tune, the intensity of it. It’s odd because really, there isn’t a straight up breaks tune on the mix, but that wasn't intentional. It’s bassline and breaks all the way through, just different permutations of them." FreQ Nasty

Bridging the gap between the most current scenes in London’s bass culture, FreQ Nasty rumbles with underground thunder on FABRICLIVE 42, a staggering showcase of some of the rawest breaks-led beats around. Evading the pitfalls of a genre-controlled mix, yet at the same time avoiding the stop-start feel of a “mash up” mix, on FABRICLIVE 42 he’s imaginatively arranged a flowing, tightly-connected blend of FreQ-y tracks. With the bass heavy stomp of L-Vis 1990's UK take on Baltimore house, the blistering shatter of TRG and several of his own storming productions, including his Santogold hit 'Creator,' the mix is a terror to bassbins worldwide. Buckle up.