Breakbeat Recommendations Best Of 2013

Review: A fine four-pack of party treats here as the Ghetto Funk family gather for a range of vibes. Funkanomics take the lead with a subtle funk jam that develops subtly into a killer slap bass jam. JFB & Dancefloor Outlaws, meanwhile, flip the switch with a tongue-in-cheek D&B reboot of Desmond Decker that's ideal for lighting up the moodier 170 floors. Elsewhere Timothy Wisdom applies his nu-funk technique to Magic Mike while Tom Drummond takes a well-known Mylo vocal and gives it a really cool lo-fi early breakbeat flavour that sits somewhere between early Cut La Roc and even earlier Chemical Brothers. Not a dull moment throughout, the Ghetto Funk crew deliver once again.

Review: French funk baron Morlak returns to Breakbeat Paradise with a textbook quad of mid-tempo booty-shakers. "Chinchillas" takes Snoop to the disco, "Cele-FUNK-Tion" stomps with walloping 80s boogie flavour. "Ready Ready" gets Dizzee and spins with vibrant jazz funk fusion. "Party Time" finishes the set with Rick James/Bootsy style groove garnished in a healthy sprinkle of ragga. Lovely.

Review: Slow and sludgy bass vibes abound as Some DJ utilises the vocals of MC Imagine This. Bold, bashy and beefy, it's the ideal meeting point between breakbeat and nu-funk and comes armed with heaps of ghetto attitude. Remixes abound with highlights coming from D-Funk (big warble bass tricks), Pimpsoul (twisting electro vibrancy) and Some DJ himself with a thundering, heads-down tribal stomper. The title speaks for itself... it's not hard to get your body moving to beat like these.

Review: The mysterious Itinerant Dub outfit return with their third outing of raw machine music taking inspiration from classic jungle, dub, techno and grime. Those who have heard the first two records will know that Itinerant Dub have been responsible for some of the most essential music from the bass axis this year, and this third EP caps off their year in style. "Ur My ID" comes split into two parts, the first all rolling subs and whip crack snares with rusty delay trails taking the form of some kind of primitive UK funky, while the second takes a more frantic approach, with wobbling synth textures propelling some seriously hardcore vibes. Finally, "One Step" goes in a more explicit steppas direction, with something that sounds like Kahn & Neek's Gorgon Sound project filtered through subtle layers of tape hiss and distortion.

Review: Two more stunning rollers from the GLO camp. Malarky's "Drifting" is as deep as it gets; hypnotic pads, subtle sub bass and skippy breakbeats. An ideal pace-setter or mood changer. The prize fighter, however, is Submorphics' "Cosmic Blue". Armed with a flourishing string sample that sweeps with the right amount of melancholy, it's guaranteed to whisk your floor off to faraway places. There's some great dynamics at play, too, as the strings and beats are broken down to a near silence before dropping back into the mix at full force. D&B doesn't get much more beautiful than this.

Review: Raving crew are you ready? Steve pays homage to electronic music's firmest foundations with three separate step-backs to the mid 90s. Likely to find favour with the Braindance and Bangface crews, each one of these tickles a different part of UK dancefloor history; the drums on "(You Need) To Believe)" are straight-up classic hardcore, "Superhighway" conjures up memories of very early progressive with traces of evangelistic piano slammery while the more emotive, synth driven "Bleep Crash" recalls a young Brandon Block or Jeremy Healy (before they went all boshy and hard housey). For a smoother, more contemporary piano fix (think Aeroplane) jump on MNLTH's remix.

Review: Given that Italian funk-breaks duo Skeewiff have been plugging away for some 15 years, a 'best of' is definitely in order. For the uninitiated (or even those who lost track of their output years ago), Greatest Wiffs offers an excellent summary of their career to date. Their sound - a fun, funky an unfussy fusion of floor-friendly breakbeats, kitsch '60s easy listening samples (see the triumphant "Soul Bossanova"), horn-totin' soul, heavy funk and Blaxpolitation attitude - is unfussy and joyous, unconcerned with the vagaries of fashion. As a result, Greatest Wiffs is a good old-fashioned blast of party-starting fun. We could have done without the silly country-breaks of "Delta Dawn", mind.