Essential Progressive Breaks: an Exclusive Mix plus insights from an essential Producer…
Danny was deep in daily responsibilities when we contacted him. “You good to go? I’m just in the car, about to go pick up my kids from school.” This is a million miles away from his pioneering past as a member of Nubreed, the Melbourne-based trio associated with a brand of nu-skool and progressive breaks which saw them travel globally.
Nowadays, a more regular lifestyle complement those school runs. Danny runs Liquid Mixes, a mixing and mastering studio which also offers a Dolby Atmos mixing service, and he still finds time to produce. Some of those works are even featured in the Balance catalogue: his most recent, “Colours“, a collab with Luke Chable, is a reissue which updates the 2010 release with an Alex O’Rion remix and a certfied Danny Bonnici breaks take.
Listening to ‘Colours’, it’s hard not to feel nostalgic. Crafted in high spirits, it’s an earworm from a time when Steve Aoki brainstormed throwing cakes at fans to show them affection. But we digress: ‘Colours’ marked the first significant collaboration between Chable and Bonnici since their 2004 genre-defining hit ‘Ride‘.
“Around 2010, Luke moved to Doncaster, which was close to me,” Danny explains. “We realized, ‘You’re living around the corner; let’s make more records.’ Colours’ was one of those.”
Fast forward to now, Alex O’Rion sparked the re-release when he started playing a bootleg version in his sets. ‘Alex hunted Luke down for the stems. He just loved that record and wanted to create his own mix.’ Danny shared Alex’s version with Tom (Balance) who greenlit the project and assigned Danny to remix duties.
“Alex did such a great job remixing it. I didn’t think I could add much difference stylistically, so I decided to lean towards an old-style breakbeat—almost like a slowed-down jungle break, isn’t it?”
Danny’s state-of-breaks take feels contemporary without ignoring its roots, striking a balance somewhere between Bicep and Rennie Pilgrem. Unfussy yet effective, he employs jungle-inflected percussion over which the melody deftly wanders. It’s the work of a man at the top of his game.
Eager to discover what essentials a connoisseur like him would identify in the world of progressive breaks, we were not disappointed. As you would expect from someone at the coalface of the scene’s genesis, anecdotes abounded.
Zero Tolerance Recordings
2000
“The whole Progressive Breaks era really felt like Melbourne’s own sound to me and my mates: Phil K, Luke Chable, Andy Page, Steve May, Jono Fernandez (though he was in Canberra). All these heads were just nailing that sound. I feel like because we were all such good friends we managed to get along and create great music together. It was a special time – it made waves around the world, which was pretty cool.”
Yes indeed, something was cooking in Melbourne. The year 2000 officially introduced the world to what many regard as the official drawings for the progressive breaks blueprint. Hi-Fi Bugs consisted of the late Phil K and Andy Page, two local electronic music mavericks who engineered, produced, and danced to their own terms.
Originally produced in 1997, ‘Lydian & The Dinosaur’ is a debut entry into a genre that, at that stage, didn’t exist.
As Phil explained during a 2003 interview on Tayo’s Kiss FM show, during its production both he and Andy knew this was something unique: ‘It took us ages to do. It was the kind of record we really had to get our heads around while we were making it… it was a strange-sounding record.’
Later in the interview Phil recalls how the single was originally slated for release on Adam Freeland’s Marine Parade imprint, but the deal fell through after they lost the production parts in a computer crash. It was the first track that Phil and Andy had made on a computer.
This is a gargantuan production which is best experienced from start to finish. Via many twists and turns, it growls its way through 12 minutes of what sounds like a wounded animal escaping twisted metal. Or, as Danny puts it, a sound that lives up to its title: ‘The way Andy made that guitar sound like a dinosaur was just ridiculous.’
Three years later, this gem was finally released through local label Zero Tolerance. To this day it stands as a one-off record, a phantasmagorical production unlikely to be repeated. For many, it was a watershed moment in electronic music. A sentiment Danny experienced at Melbourne’s legendary but now defunct Sunny party.
“I first heard it during a Phil K set around 6:30AM as the sun was rising. I remember everyone putting on their sunglasses just as Phil dropped that record. Absolute chaos ensued. I had never heard anything like that before. It sounded like brand new music. That was the moment I fell in love with breaks.”
Trojan Records
2005
Released in 2005, on Luke Chable’s then newly minted Trojan Records, ‘Tokyo’ is a collaboration between Luke and Danny under his Dirty Fours alias, which is basically the Nubreed lads in 4/4 mode.
The entire release feels cinematic; if the original version is Oscar-nominated, then Nubreed‘s breaks version would be the repackaged exclusive for IMAX screens. Its appeal is due in no small part to an epic plucked melody that sounds forged in the Far East – or like a soundtrack sample from a hard-to-find arthouse classic?
‘Nah, Luke wrote that melody. He truly is the absolute god of writing incredible melodies. I mean, I think of that record and I think of ‘Melburn’ too.’ (Another Luke Chable cut released on Bedrock Records).
The real beauty of the remix lies in the under-utilized details: the ‘Tokyo’ melody is used only once during the track’s 9-minute runtime.
‘Yeah, that’s right. See, the melody was so important, it was not to be overplayed. Like, it was almost like the whole song was built around that moment.
Another official entry for Melbourne into Danny’s progressive breaks pantheon.
Global Underground
2004
“You know, I remember the night Phil and Luke wrote ‘Burma.’
As Danny recalls, it was completed on the same night Phil was booked to play another Sunny party.
‘They were both like, ‘We just finished it, it’s gonna blow you away,’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah, we’ll see. You know, play it, whatever, haha!'”
Sasha forever immortalize ‘Burma‘ as that track from his pioneering Involver mix, albeit in its remixed Sasha version – which is a total shame. Somehow packing more emotion and propelled by a proper progressive breakbeat, the original is the money shot.
LoStep is another Phil K collaboration, this time with Luke Chable. With Phil’s storytelling fingerprints all over this, you can draw a straight line from ‘Lydian & The Dinosaur‘ to ‘Burma‘. Both are sprawling journeys into aural wonderlands. But where ‘Lydian & The Dinosaur’ could soundtrack a bout of night terrors, ‘Burma‘ is an organic dance bomb with a soft centre.
It exudes a pastoral and meditative energy that’s highly nostalgic. And Luke Chable‘s golden-child production elevates this into a certified classic. This qualifies as the track to present to arriving intergalactic aliens inquiring: ‘What even is Progressive Breaks?‘”
Now imagine being one of the first humans to hear that track in club.
‘Well, they ended up playing it and I’m not kidding, man. I cried, right, when I heard it. Totally broke me,’ laughs Danny. And as he recalls he weren’t the only one in the club affected.
‘Everyone sat up and went fuck… this is different. People just didn’t know what the hell was going on… people absolutely got smacked by it. I was just in awe. To be honest It fucked me up so much, like, emotionally, that after the record was over, I left the club. After hearing that I couldn’t listen to any more music that night !’
Distinctive Records
1999
We would love to make some tenuous philosophical point here about how the 90s were effectively bookended by two symphonies: Massive Attack’s unfinished version in ’91 and Hybrid’s finished one in ’99. But we won’t.
Metaphysical musings aside, not many stand taller in the progressive breaks pool room than the original Welsh trio (now duo) of Hybrid. Their sound occupies that section in the Venn diagram where prog house, trance, and breakbeat meet. It’s safe to say they were one of a handful of underground breaks acts to garner some sort of mainstream exposure.
In 2000, Moby personally handpicked them to be the official warm-up for his massive US tour. And with his album ‘Play’ selling close to 10 million copies in under two years, Moby was at that stage the biggest electronic music act in the world.
“Hybrid had so many incredible records, but it was their ‘Wide Angle‘ album, which this was featured on, that really struck me. When I heard that track, I just thought, these guys are soooo good.’
‘Finished Symphony‘ was Hybrid‘s pièce de résistance. A classy combination of live orchestral string arrangements (performed by the Russian Federal Orchestra) and intricate drum programming.
This emergence with classical music showcased a more conventional and ‘musical’ side to the genre, a ‘legitimate’ song to play your parents without completely offending them. Hell, Top Gear even featured it on an episode.
Nubreed went on to play shows with Hybrid in London (fabric), Brighton, and a few other places.
‘We became good friends. You can say we really enjoyed our time with them throughout that whole era.”
Audio Therapy
2002
Indeed, Junkie XL‘s production prowess was so remarkable that at one point, the Dutch producer was well poised to become music’s next big thing.
In 2002, he soared to fame after remixing the 1968 Elvis Presley hit “A Little Less Conversation” for a Nike World Cup ad. It was a monumental moment: the first time the Presley estate officially allowed an Elvis track to be remixed.
And their faith in Junkie XL paid dividends. The remix exploded globally, topping charts in 24 countries. Yet, with the mainstream world at his feet, he remained loyal to his dance music origins.
In 2003, he embarked on a tour, which included various Australian dance festivals, promoting his new album: ”Radio JXL: A Broadcast from the Computer Hell Cabin”. It was a double CD release of original music filled with big beats and pop house featuring notable guest vocals (Depeche Mode, The Cure, Gary Numan to name a few).
Included in that bumper release was ‘Aquaman’, a chill, lounge-inspired track featuring Infusion‘s Manny delving into themes of the ordinary versus the extraordinary, highlighted by the memorable line ‘Aquaman knows what to do‘.
This gem caught Dave Seaman‘s attention, who also knew what to do: he released it under his Audio Therapy label as ‘Legacy’.
The package showcased a dynamic Infusion 4/4 remix on one side—still a destroyer of dancefloors today—and Junkie XL‘s utterly euphoric progressive breaks rework on the flip side.
It’s a massive remix, its bottom end so potent it threatens to clog up the grooves on the vinyl it’s printed on. ‘Yeah, the bottom end of that track is incredible,’ Danny reflects fondly. ‘I don’t know how he did it. He’s truly an engineer’s engineer.’
The magic isn’t confined to just the sub-200Hz frequencies; it boasts one of the crispest, most ethereal, and evocative guitar licks of any release that year. It turns the original ‘Aquaman‘ from a stoned-out groover into a theophanous dancefloor moment that hit many high notes.
‘The emotional level of that remix is next-level, man. Honestly. It’s probably one of the biggest prog break records to ever hit the scene.’
1. Dark Globe – Take me to the Sound
2. Lostep – Burma (Sasha Remix) Edit
3. Ivan Gough & Mark Edwards – Believe (Luke Chable’s Bliss Remix)
4. Filter – Take a Picture (Hybrid Remix)
5. D.Bonnici/J.Catherine/Luke Chable – Nougat
6. Infusion – Legacy (Junkie XL remix)
7. Dirty Fours & Luke Chable – Tokyo (Nubreed Remix)
8. Blackwatch Pres Professor Okku – Word Unspoken (Luke Chable Remix)
9. Freefall – Skydive (Hi-Fi Bugs remix)
10. Sasha – Georgia Decay
11. Habersham – My Effingham Sound (Edit)
12. Danny Bonnici & Andy Page – Vermouth
13. Andy Page & Bruce Clark – Oblivia Newton Bomb
14. Luke Chable – Melburn (Luke Chable & Dan Mangan remix)
15. Gab Oliver – Drowning (Danny Bonnici breaks remix)
16. Luke Chable & Danny Bonnici – Colours (Danny Bonnici Breaks mix)
17. Hi-Fi Bugs – Lydian and the Dinosaur
