Music
'IT'S strange calling it 'nu skool'. For me, it's come from West Coast breakbeat - from Miami, Tampa, Orlando, San Francisco. All the UK has done is incorporate that into our sound. It's always the same - when we started playing house, we played all-American house, then adapted it. The same with speed garage. And the nu skool breaks scene has only really come through over the last six months.
"It's about creating a new sound, and it's very dark. People like Adam Freeland won't have anything to do with being commercial, or sampling old songs, like big beat does. The problem is that it turns people into purists. You get breaks that are so over-produced you can't dance to them. The boys stand around going, 'Yeah, that programming was wicked'. But if you're playing it out, you want people to rock on the rhythm.

"There's no rivalry in big beat, they don't give a shit! But the nu skool breaks people pour scorn on any kind of commercial success. I remember one night in Brighton: Adam Freeland was on the same bill as the Freestylers and Derek Dahlarge. When Adam was playing, the Freestylers were like, 'Yeah, this is wicked!' When they came on, Adam was just standing there with a long face - until he couldn't stand it any more and he left! That was funny. "At Friction, I play all styles of breakbeat. The crowd is 60 per cent girls, so I can't go too dark. It's funky and bubbly, and the breaks are a nice tempo, so everyone can get into it. Some people are surprised I'm playing breaks. It's weird, 'cos at one time that was all I played. Even when I played hardcore, it had breaks in it. It's good for people to remember the master of the breakbeats was Carl Cox!"

Object
Straight from the 'Dam - helped clubbers identify dog worming tablets from the real thing. Great news, unless you're the Drugs Czar

News
Cream announces plans to stage a 40,000-capacity festival with Mean Fiddler. The May event will be called Creamfields
- Universe, meanwhile, announces a line-up that includes Beck and Reprazent, although an injunction is served by Mean Fiddler preventing it using the name Tribal Gathering
- Allister Whitehead makes it into Company magazine's 50 Most Eligible Bachelors list, describing himself as "gallant, comical, interested, relentless and affectionate"
- Ecstasy guru Nicholas Saunders dies in a car crash in South Africa, aged 60 Goldie releases 'Saturnz Return' to universal disdain. Mixmag says of the hour-long 'Mother', "perhaps the sounds that Goldie hears in his head aren't what we want to hear anymore"

Year Review: 3/1998