My 25 Favourite Albums: Plump DJs - A Plump Night Out

A key moment in the history of rave came in the mid-90s when the scene split into Happy Hardcore and Drum & Bass. As both genres evolved, by the end of the 90s they were both completely different to the original rave sound they grew out of.

At the same time, it was becoming more common for Old Skool sets to feature at raves to cater for those who missed the older sound.

My tapepack collection only went back as far as 1993 so when I got my first tape pack to feature the Ratpack doing an Old Skool set I thought it was great. However a few tapepacks later I started to realise the limitation of an Old Skool set was that there are only a finite number of tunes from 1992. You were never going to hear anything new and ground-breaking, it was all from the past.

The solution to this was Nu Skool Breaks which basically took the old skool breakbeat formula to create new music.

In 2000, Nu Skool Breaks DJs the Plump DJs released "A Plump Night Out". It's a DJ mix album as opposed to studio album, but it consists entirely of their own material either as the original artist or remixers.

It's not an album that sounds like it's from 1992 though, in fact the beats are where the similarities end. The rest is essentially a mix of all different kinds of dance music.

That's what makes the album so great, the beats keep the album flowing and you get variety everywhere else.