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Krafty Kuts Interview
Krafty Cuts, alias Martin Reeves, has become a regular visitor to our shores with almost three visits in as many years. Maybe it’s the great response he gets from Australian punters, maybe it's his obvious love for DJing and the break laced music he pushes, or maybe he just likes the weather.
One thing however is for sure; Martin has the skills to pay the bills, and probably a hefty line of credit on the aforementioned bills to boot. He’s been breaking beats from the tender age of 12, when his impromptu performance in a DJ competition saw him through to the finals. It should be noted that this was Martin’s first attempt, at DJing that is, not competing. Some things were just meant to be.
Since then his Kraftyness has done the rounds of the breakbeat world. Running a record store then a record label, surviving the big beat phenomenon with his dignity and cred intact, DJing around the globe, producing seminal breaks stormers such as Latin Bounce and Gimme the Funk circa 1997, remixing his way into the UK top 40 on four occasions. The list goes on, and hell, he even lives in the breaks capital of the universe, Brighton. Who better to speculate on the deeper nature of the breakbeat.
“I’ve been thinking deep about the way that breaks begun,” Martin ponders. “Breakbeat originated in about the early 90s from the Prodigy era, that’s where it theoretically begun and that’s a little bit of where it is now, but more condensed and cleaner and crisper – the equipment has got so much better. Rather than big ravy riffs, people are using more intelligent sounds. It’s not that different from what was going on in the early nineties and that’s why I think people connect when I play stuff like that in my sets.”
One thing that has stamped Martin as a premier breaker of the beat is his diverse take on the style, sourcing his influences from and playing everything from classic funk, hip hop, soul and disco through to nu skool breaks, 2-step and drum & bass. Both his DJ sets and his label Against the Grain share that diversity, but at the same time are united in their ambitions to get some action on the dancefloor.
“Hip-hop-funk-soul-and-drum-and-bass, all as one word,” says Martin concerning his preferred sound. “It’s an amalgamation; like a history of breakbeat. I just come there to party [when I DJ]. It’s gonna be funky, there’ll be some big bassline stuff in there, all sorts really. I just throw exciting music on that’s gonna make people want to dance. Whatever – be it breaks, hip hop, drum & bass – there’ll be something you’re into.”
“With Against the Grain we’re coming at a different angle. We’re not going to put out releases you can pigeonhole, there’s some variety to them. It might be two-step, or nu skool or a gnarly bass tune, but they’ve all got that ‘well that sounds like an Against the Grain release’, ‘cause they’re all that sort of big club tune – stuff people can dance to. We’ll settle into a more suitable sound once we get established, but to captivate and get the label noticed we need to get the big dancefloor tunes out there.”
Apart from his knack for lashings of funk and the ability to throw in the occasional unique tune (his Sydney set finished with EMF’s Unbelievable), his sound - like many of his breakbeat colleagues - thrives on huge basslines (“Me personally, I always loved that big bassline…the [insert dirty bass-heavy-grunty-noise here] sound.”) and the ability to deliver that ‘monster’ tune at just the right moment.
“When you play that kind of [monster] record you don’t want to play too many in a row – it can be a kind of overdose – and that’s why I try to break up my sets with different styles. I feel my music is like a wave in the ocean; it goes up and down so people can condense everything I play within a space of two hours nicely, rather than just attack with big monster tunes, which are just going to exhaust your audience. You’ve got to come in between so that when a big monster comes on, you can digest the monsters and you can appreciate the monsters more than you would if you just play two hours of monsters. That’s a good way of playing a good DJ set – it evens out.”
“I just hope to entertain people, that’s what I intend to do. Just make people smile.”
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Published / Saturday, 27 July 2002
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