- Broken beat isn't afforded the reverence of other strains of UK dance music, though it's easy to see the pendulum swinging back in its favor. Like jungle (and pretty much any genre that undergoes a revival) it never really left, and the influence of broken beat—and its beating heart, the Co-Op club night—continues to linger. A central cog in the Co-Op scene was Dego, AKA Dennis McFarlane, one of the founding members of the influential trio 4hero. Dego also worked as Cousin Cockroach, and one of his tracks under that name, "This Ain't Tom And Jerry," has been reissued by the gritty London-based label Berceuse Heroique.
The word that springs to mind on "This Ain't Tom & Jerry" is "rude." The husky, percussion is rude, the vocal samples and bleeps are rude, and the bassline is downright rude. I never went to Co-Op, but it's not hard to imagine Plastic People's soundsystem heaving to this in its smoked-filled, dimly lit pomp. "Chewy," Max D's effort on the flip, is a well-chosen sidekick. It has more in common with his early Ramp material than House Of Woo, his stoner house album for RVNG last year. The beats are slippery and unpredictable, while the piano bassline is both deranged and strangely epic.
TracklistA Cousin Cockroach - This Ain't Tom N' Jerry
B Max D - Chewy