Making a breaks album can be a tricky job as the end result can easily
emerge as just a bunch of breaks, requisite nasty riffs and hiphop vocal
clips. Ed Solo and his merry men have stood above the hordes through
crowd-detonating singles like the ska-propelled ‘When I was A Yout’ and
‘Love Your Life’ while ‘Babylon Breaks’ paid glorious homage to King Tubby.
The reggae is a major flavour, especially on tracks like ‘Life Gets Better’,
but Ed’s main virtue is the diversity of street strains running riot in the
music from hiphop [‘Sometimes’] and bleep sounds [‘Tug Nut’] to drum ‘n’
bass [the seismic 2007 mix of ‘Feel The Music’] and electro [the vocodered
‘Believe In The Funk’]. There’s even a version of Incognito’s ‘Always
There’. But the multi-tones never sound forced for the sake of it, mainly
down to raging party-starting mentality which is never far away, although
the acoustic rendition of ‘We Play The Music’ is a nice touch. A very solid
debut flying the flag for the UK dance underground.
4 Out Of 5
Reviewed By: Kris Needs
