Broken Robot Recordings are providing some of the newest, freshest sounds I’ve encountered in a long time. With their superb genre-redefining breaks sound and emphasis on quality production, they really are the hottest new label you want in your music collection.

I made first contact with Broken Robot this New Year. I had witnessed Far Too Loud performing earlier in the summer at other events, and this time they were headlining the New Year’s party at Planet Angel. They were of course awesome, and if you haven’t heard them yet then get out there and do so. Anyway, as I snapped event photos I got talking to another photographer. After bonding through both a mutual love of Words: Will Poole
Pics: Will PooleFTL and a mild annoyance at a particularly persistent clubber who thought she would give both of us a quick lecture on photography and how everything we were doing was wrong, I met her husband Peak, from RMS and Peak. It was then that I first heard the name Broken Robot Recordings.

They hadn’t officially launched at that point, but at the mention of some of the artists involved – Far Too Loud, Rex and Hedflux to name a few – I was excited to say the least. I was told the launch night was coming up soon and that I should check it out. If anyone has visited Broken Robot’s Myspace page and listened to a few of the songs, then you will know why I was looking forward to the upcoming night. I was like a junky about to get his next fix.

So with camera in hand, I got my ass to We Are Live, an event reviewed elsewhere in this issue of Toxin, and it was a wicked night. They really did steal the show from the other rooms and had me dancing like an Amazon warrior late into the night. I loved how every single track was filled with psychedelic, experimental sounds, and with heavy techy touches too. You could loosely describe a lot of the music as psybreaks, but none of it keeps to the formula. Each artist has his own style and displays an individual take on the breaks genre.

Back at home later that week, I received the news that Rex had just released a single and picked it up immediately (also reviewed in this issue of Toxin). The problem with being a Broken Robot addict is that you always want more – and luckily, more is not too far away. Expect a heroic dose of tech-infused, speaker-shaking psybreaks coming to a speaker system near you soon.