When the break is the main event
Here the drums aren't the backing, they're the whole tune. Drumfunk is a break-driven strand of jungle and drum & bass in which the pattern itself is what you came for: constantly shifting, chopped from rare obscure breakbeats or well-known classics, and flipped until it won't sit still. Chopping and dicing is the craft, and Paradox has been pioneering it for over two decades, so any junglist who lives for a proper chop will end up on his doorstep sooner or later.
Producers pass the word around as a badge. Fanu, the Finnish producer, uses the adjective "drumfunky" for the "awesome drumfunky, extremely dirty kind of style" of the producer Infader. Seba, a Swedish drumfunk producer, makes occasional label cameos on Paradox Music.
Slices, seams and a patient ear
Paradox has laid out his workflow in detail, and it is a masterclass in patience. He starts slicing a break at its original tempo, remaps the same groove in slices and changes the BPM later. Every slice and chop has to be seamless. He keeps going back to certain breaks for their octave ranges, likes breaks with subtle ride-cymbal undertones, and finds his grooves by switching between patterns in blocks. He puts the standing of the Winstons' "Amen Brother", the original amen, down to its unique ride cymbal pattern. Lyn Collins' "Think About It" is another break he returns to, for its snap and tambourine, and he mentions a track, "Transfigured Knut", that ended up with 230 slices. Proper surgery.
Tempo and feel are a problem to be managed, not a given. In his view, fast double bass drum kicks would eventually squash a break's groove above 160 BPM, and slowing down the feel of a break can help retain its natural funk at faster speeds. He never uses kick drums at the same level, because that is too robotic. That said, his crew Mixrace upped the tempo to 180BPM with "Too Bad For Ya".
The rig is old-school and deliberately limited. Paradox works on a Commodore Amiga running OctaMed alongside an Akai S3000XL sampler, and the Amiga is a jungle-era tool through and through. A tracker, a sampler and a very good ear for where a break wants to be cut: that is the whole recipe.
The proof is on wax. Paradox's 2011 single "Ambiguity" came out on Paradox Music. The same year he put out "Boreal" under his alias Alaska, the ambient jungle side of the same producer.
Paradox, Trax and the Moving Shadow days
The best-documented line of descent runs through Dev Pandya, who records as Paradox. He recalls that in 1989 he and his production partner DJ Trax were fusing fast funk breakbeats with 8-bit techno stabs and 808 basslines, that Moving Shadow owner Rob Playford offered them a contract the day they met, and that their first Mixrace 12-inch came out in 1992. Mixrace, his UK hip-hop crew, was signed by Moving Shadow in 1991.
Reinforced and the album years
Paradox has released on Moving Shadow, Metalheadz and Reinforced, the jungle and d'n'b label run by 4Hero's Dego and Marc Mac. On Reinforced came the albums Musician as Outsider (2000) and What You Don't Know (2002), and The Esoteric Funk (2004), credited to Nucleus and Paradox. There is also a 1997 release, Transmograpfication, made with Noise, an earlier name of Nucleus (Dave Sims).
Wax Breaks: sample it off the vinyl
Paradox runs his own imprint, Paradox Music, home to the 2011 "Ambiguity" single. Wax Breaks was due on 11 March 2016: a collection of 16 breakbeats prepared for mixing and sampling at 33 and 45 RPM. Alongside long-standing collaborator Nucleus, he has made a name by excavating obscure breaks, manipulating them and handing them back to be sampled in the Wax Breaks series, with one condition: they must be sampled from vinyl. A crate-digger's rule if ever there was one, and the vinyl-only series was influenced by the Ultimate Breaks and Beats LPs.
Heads to check for
- Paradox: has been pioneering drumfunk for over two decades. He was prepping his 150th release in September 2013, and in February 2022 he was working towards his 200th 12-inch, having released his 196th.
- Alaska: Pandya's ambient jungle alias, the quieter side of the same producer. If that is your lane, the atmospheric page is next door.
- Nucleus: Dave Sims, Paradox's long-standing collaborator, credited with him on the Reinforced album The Esoteric Funk.
- Trax: David Davies, Paradox's production partner. The 2007 compilation Paradox Presents: The Age of Outsiders has one disc mixed by Nucleus and one by DJ Trax.
- Fanu: Janne Hatula, part of the first wave of Finnish drum & bass acts of the early 2000s and the only Finnish artist with a full EP on Metalheadz. His Paracosm EP appeared on his own Lightless Recordings in July 2014.
- Equinox: Marlon Sterling began his career in 1993, at 15, with the Brain Crew EP alongside Bizzy B. He has released for Planet Mu, Metalheadz and Paradox Music, and runs Scientific Wax.
- Seba: Swedish drumfunk producer with occasional label cameos on Paradox Music. His 2019 collaboration with Paradox is Over Now.
Still rolling
Whether virtuoso chopping still hits the same way is down to taste, and that one is for the heads to settle. What the record shows is a producer who keeps going: a 150th release prepped in 2013, a 196th 12-inch by 2022, and the 200th in his sights. The pattern is still the point, and the next chop is always the one that counts.
