INTERVIEW with Soul Of Man: Keeping it funky

Any serious breakbeat fan is somewhat familiar with Soul Of Man, otherwise known as Jem Panufnik and Justin Rushmore, head honchos of Finger Lickin' Records. Finger Lickin' is of course, home to the biggest names in breaks including Plump DJs, Krafty Kuts and Lee Coombs, just to name a few.

Soul Of Man's latest project is the mixing of the Y4K Breakin' In The House compilation released through Distinctive, which according to Annie Nightingale is the best Y4K compilation to date. This is certainly a flattering remark considering the calibre of artists who've previously mixed Y4K compilations.

It's significant too that Soul Of Man were asked to do a Y4K compilation, considering the series hasn't been traditionally known for funky breaks, which is something Soul Of Man and Finger Lickin' is best known for. "All the previous ones have been quite purist. When they asked us to do it they just said "we want you to put your sound to it, just do whatever you want to do'. So, that's what we did," said Jem.

The release of the Y4K compilation and many other upcoming projects means that Soul Of Man get to pay us another visit. At almost 10am on a cold winter morning at Finger Lickin' headquarters in London, I had a Q&A phone session with the "nearly awake' Jem and Justin. Here's what they had to say:

How many times have you visited Australia now-

It will be our eighth time.

Would you ever consider moving to Australia for part of the year, like what Adam Freeland's done-

We have thought about it. It's just not as realistic as one would hope it to be. Maybe at a later stage, I don't know. We've had the debate many times, in fact every time we're there.

Breaks are huge in Australia and you said a few years ago that it's more popular here than anywhere else in the world. Do you think that's still the case-

Um you've certainly got the biggest breakbeat events in Australia. You have huge open-air events, which you couldn't do over here just because of the weather, but the rest of the world is catching up. We've done a lot of festivals here over summer. Glastonbury had a very large measure of breaks and a lot of other places have got their own breaks tents. It's getting bigger but definitely the enthusiasm over there is bigger than anywhere else.

What's going on at Finger Lickin' at the moment- Have you got anything special coming up-

We've got loads of singles coming out, which is quite good because we haven't put many out this year. We've done Lee Coombs' album, Finger Lickin' Thang 3 came out. We've done four new tracks for Stereo 8. The Plump's [Plump DJs] have done about ten tracks, which will come out in May. We've also got this project that's top secret at the moment, which will get released about May too.

Any hints so I can try and guess-

[laughs] No. It's just a whole marketing concept that's going to be a little bit different; you'll see the Plumps sense of humour is in there.

What direction is Finger Lickin' heading in- Will you delve into any of the progressive or rock breaks that are around at the moment-

No chance. Not progressive, we've never been about that kind of thing. We've always just been about good funky, party atmospheres. We've touched on slightly nu skool stuff in the beginning, but that's not really our vibe.

Keeping it funky-

Always.

How did you guys meet and start making music together-

We were both working for this dodgy label putting out Ibiza compilations and we met and started knocking up tracks together. It sort of developed from there really. We started off doing a few house projects but we kind of got swept up in the whole breaks thing. It was quite big beats at that time... there were a lot of great labels... and we just got drawn in to it that way really.

What about before that- Have you always worked in music-

We'd both been doing school discos, mobiles<

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