BY HUW ELLIS
UK-based DJ Adam Freeland's debut album Now & Them, with its killer single "We Want Your Soul", will be released in Australia on September 29. With Now & Them, Freeland has spread his wings well beyond the dance floor. The album's elements include Freeland's breakbeat genius, the punk-rock energy of the Prodigy, the social consciousness of Michael Moore, the luscious atmosphere of Massive Attack and the cheekiness of Fatboy Slim.
Freeland has travelled the globe for the past five years, spreading his brand of nu-school breaks across Europe, Asia, North and South America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and beyond. Regularly featuring in DJ Magazine as one of the world's top 100 DJs, Freeland is revered by the dance community as an innovator.
"Although my roots are on the dance floor, it's a relief to be able to express my influences beyond that. The idea of making 12 breakbeat tunes and calling it an album was about as appealing to me as a hard kick in the nads", Freeland said.
From the crawling, paranoid breakbeat-metal of "Mind Killer" through the hip hop/electro bounce of "Heel 'n' Toe" and the crunchy electronic soul of the cover version Ben E King's "Supernatural", Now & Them is an album dense with statements, musical and lyrical.
In "We Want Your Soul", Freeland takes on "corporate overload" to the sound of rocking, guitar-driven breakbeat groove. Featuring spot-on samples from sadly deceased US comedian Bill Hicks and Freeland's computerised voice, listing in relentless detail every area of life that has succumbed to the corporate buck, "We Want Your Soul" is a personal, as much as a political, statement for the dance-music firebrand.
"I don't think you can opt out of consumer culture unless you want to go and live in a tee-pee somewhere. I'm very dismissive of corporate power but at the same time I'm wearing jeans and trainers that were manufactured by some sort of corporation", Freeland explains. "I'm a part of it, just like we all are. It's just a question of being aware in the system you're living in, of opening your mind to the shit that you're being force-fed. It's impossible to get away from it but you can identify the worst culprits and avoid them."
"We Want Your Soul" is accompanied by a frenetic video shot by UK audiovisual virtuosos, Happy (go to ). Now & Them released in Australia on the Jam Recordings label. Visit .
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, September 17, 2003.
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