Reg.: Feb 2004
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28.4.2004 @ K4, Slovenia>>>Stanton Warriors

28. April 2004

@ Club K4, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Breaks massive:

Borka
STANTON WARRIORS (XL Recordings / Anglija)
Mique




The warriors world:
Dropouts, ravers, scammers, pirates. Decent chaps all the same, but the fact that Dominic B, 25, and Mark Yardley 26 chose to name their production outfit after a successful model of drain cover should tell you a lot about where Stanton Warriors are coming from: straight out of the underground and sounding nasty all over your stereo system. It wasn't always this way, and the events and places that led Stanton Warriors to the cusp of crossover success in 2001 began on the free party scene of the West Country some time in the mid-Nineties.
Dominic B hails from Bristol, and back then he's working in a record shop, booking DJs for local nights and consolidating links with the London music biz. He probably shared more than floor space with Devon-born Mark Yardley at the free parties the pair routinely headed to. 'They were amazing,' says Mark, the kinds of thing were some kid whose dad was a farmer would get a sound system and invite 1,500 people. And 15,000 would turn up.' At the time, the West Country massive rocked to deep house laced with breakbeat and the seismic bass frequencies that have always been the West Country's calling card. However weird it seems, among the fields and forest clearings of Avon is where the Stanton's ultra-urban sound was born.
Mark Yardley had been playing guitar and obsessing over Prince from the age of 12. He'd always wanted to be in music and live the dream. "When I found out Prince could play about 32 instruments, that was it", says Mark. "I wanted to play 32 instruments as well". He headed for a degree in electronic music at Salford University and managed to stick it out for two years before learning that nothing he needed to know could be found in a textbook, and that nights at the Hacienda were far more illuminating than any seminar could be. So he quit, headed for London and took the 'tea-boy route' into engineering for Tuff Jam's 51st label.
Meanwhile, the fact that 'speed garage' was fast mutating from a underground concern into a full national phenomenon, had been duly noted by Dominic B, now working in A&R for the label. At 51st, he and Mark met, compared notes, traded histories and resolved to work together. Bored and pissed off with patching together tracks for garage chancers who'd arrive at the studio with four old records and instructions for Mark to blend them into one new tune, the pair took their own skills to the mixing desk and cut 'What you Gonna Do'/'Too True', which duly got played by their mentors Tuff Jam on the radio. Next was 'Determined', where the nascent Stanton's sound bassline theory and hip hop attitude force fed with Anglo bounce of two-step, began to emerge. Even if they did do the tune just to get their mitts on the £500 advance so they could go to Miami for the conference.
Either way, the flood of remix commissions that followed already produced a clutch of tracks of minor genius. After the their sizzling 'Da Virus' single on Mob records and their mixes of Missy Elliott's 'She's A Bitch' and DJ Scribble's Flipmode-featuring 'Everybody Come On' emerged, barnstorming versions of 'Dooms Night' and Basement Jaxx's 'Jump & Shout' had the dance demimonde all aquiver, unable to bracket the Warriors as the brightest hope of breakbeat or two-step heroes gone leftfield.
"We've always been really fussy," says Mark. "We haven't got any dodgy mixes in you cupboard. You can't just accept all the mixes you get, because you'll just burn out. We've had to turn down people we really respect - Roni Size and Stereo MCs - to get on with our own stuff." According to Stantons' own philosophy, what gets left out of the mix is more important that what goes in. "So many breakbeat records are all about showing off a new modulator or plug-in or something," says Dominic. "And you think, hang on, there aren't any girls dancing! Garage went so vocal and used all the same old cliches and we didn't rely on a bassline formula either. What we do is about so much different music." That could mean Fast Eddie, early Murk, Mos Def and Outkast as it could Mr Fingers' 'Can You Feel It', the Ragga Twins' 'Spliffhead', Massive Attack's 'Blue Lines', and Eric B & Rakim's 'Paid In Full'.
"We just think a tune is a tune if people start nodding when it's played in a record shop," says Dominic. "It doesn't matter whether it's house or breakbeat or hip hop. It's just street music". Got you ear to the ground? Then you'll already know what they mean.

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