London's fabric Records hasn't put out a dedicated broken beat release since 2006. That's how long the genre, London's own bruk sound, had been sitting outside the label's catalogue while it built out house, techno and bass compilations elsewhere. SELECTS VIII closes that gap on August 28, and it does it with the people who built the sound the first time around.
What's actually on SELECTS VIII?
Eleven tracks, curated by the fabric team as the latest entry in its SELECTS series. The anchor is 'Carnival (AfroForce Vox Dub)' from Mark Force featuring Afronaut, a reunion of former Bugz in the Attic members that had already gone out digitally on August 11 to set up the full release. The rest of the tracklist pairs unearthed CoOp-era material from Maddslinky with newer work from Ben Hauke, D'Monk and Last Nubian, plus contributions from Donsurf, Streeton, Bruk Rogers, XL Regular and Bakura. It spans the genre's founding CoOp/Bugz in the Attic axis and the producers keeping it moving now.
https://fabriclive.bandcamp.com/album/fabriclive-selects-viii
DJ Mag's review of the set put it plainly:
The ten tracks share a fondness for syncopated rhythms, complex percussion and the harmonic language of '70s jazz, funk and fusion, but rarely settle into one formula.
Why does the vinyl scarcity matter?
fabric pressed just 100 white-label 12 inch samplers, sold only on release day. No reissue has been announced. For a genre whose entire identity is built on dubplates, white labels and small pressings that circulated among a tight West London scene in the early 2000s, that scarcity isn't a marketing gimmick, it's the format bruk was always meant to live in. The digital release carries the tracklist to anyone; the vinyl run is aimed squarely at the DJs and collectors who kept the sound alive on the shelf between 2006 and now.
Why has fabric waited two decades to return to broken beat?
Broken beat never went mainstream and it never fully disappeared either. It stayed a working tool for a specific lineage of London DJs and producers, the ones who came up around IG Culture, Dego and the CoOp collective, long after fabric's last dedicated outing, Bugz in the Attic's FABRICLIVE.12. SELECTS VIII reads as the label finally acknowledging that lineage rather than discovering it.
