Broken beat, also known as future jazz or science-fiction funk, was born in West London and counts Bugz in the Attic, Afronaught, and Seiji as its most prominent producers. The music blends jazz, hard funk, house, hiphop, and electro with beats that seem to skip, stutter, or nearly break down. It is sophisticated and lush, and often features powerful soul singers who have a very positive attitude toward life and are future oriented. Their music looks ahead to a utopia of racial and sexual harmony that digital machines have finally delivered and perfected.
Upon realizing that they shared a similar fascination with this new type of club music from London's underground club scene, Seattle's J-Justice, Atlee, AC Lewis, and Mikey, along with Vancouver's Dr. J, formed SunTzu Sound late last year, and soon after established the Baltic Room as their base of operations. They invited all of the big names in the broken beat game (Seiji, Afronaught, Trüby Trio--who are from Germany), and on Sunday night spun the music they loved and hoped would propel Seattle into an alternate future. Though Beat-Bop encountered several modest successes, for the most part SunTzu Sound's brand of music and its aesthetic failed to catch on. Some of their big shows were poorly attended (which meant big financial losses for the crew and the bar), and their regular Sunday-night gig was met with near-indifference.
Shortly before Beat-Bop's last night at the Baltic Room, four members of the crew went on a tour--the "Goin' Back to Cali" tour, as it was ingeniously called--which turned out to be a huge success. L.A., San Diego, and especially San Francisco provided them with an audience they had failed to find in their stubborn hometown. "The tour was fantastic," J-Justice told me a few days after he returned to Seattle. "The gig in L.A. was a lot like Beat-Bop. It was a Sunday night. It was free. It was right on Hollywood [Boulevard]. But the people came and they knew what we were doing. We didn't have to coax them along like we did [in Seattle]. The San Diego thing was great; the dance floor was totally jam-packed and the people were just going nuts.... San Francisco was fantastic. It all went uphill...."
I asked him what this triumph meant for the crew. "All we wanted to do was come home and work harder--find a way to make it work--because it should work in Seattle. You've got a hiphop scene. You've got the people who are into soul. The house people. And the stuff that we're into is a little bit of all of that. I think people will learn and eventually come out to our events."
They also, he had me understand, want to focus on producing the music locally, and make SunTzu Sound more of a Seattle movement rather than a mere medium for music that is produced elsewhere. "At first," J-Justice admitted, "we thought if we got Bugz in the Attic, if we got these people, that would be what sparked it. But that didn't really work, so now we're going to focus on us, get our name out, and get people to come to see us and have a good time."
Though defeated for now, SunTzu Sound are no means pessimistic; indeed, they have in the works an ambitious September show at Chop Suey that will feature the full force of Bugz in the Attic. Hopefully that will be the night that Seattle finally opens its ears and moves its feet to a different beat.
Check out the fresh sounds at www.-suntzusound.com, www.jazidup.com, and www.bugzintheattic.net (SunTzu sound designed Bugz in the Attic's site).
