In the first video from Breakestra’s Dusk Till Dawn album, Miles Tackett, Mixmaster Wolf and vocalist Afrodyete lead the funk outfit through their bumping soul burner as a young lady walks the streets of Los Angeles with a portable turntable in her hand. 

After a four-year break from the studio, L.A.’s finest practitioners of gritty soul/jazz, party funk & breaks, BREAKESTRA, returned to the fray with Dusk Till Dawn.
The brainchild of producer, engineer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist “Music Man” Miles Tackett, Breakestra was formed from a love of golden era late ’80s / early ’90s hip hop and a fascination for the dusty samples that peppered the era’s classic records. From watching revered West coast DJs like Cut Chemist and Mixmaster Wolf cut up hip hop, funk and breaks, Tackett looked to form a live collective of musicians that could play the originals live with all of the same sounds, feel and musicianship. Through weekly jams at a local coffeehouse session called The Breaks, Breakestra was created.

From then on, with their base at fabled Thursday L.A. club night Rootdown, Breakestra became renowned as one of the great live funk bands of their era. An amorphous line-up of L.A.’s finest players, led by Tackett on bass and vocals, ensured that the grooves were kept super-tight with local musicians. The band’s recordings have been rare to savour, numbering an early live cassette-only mixtape, a handful of singles and second mixtape release on Stones Throw and a debut studio album, ‘Hit The Floor’, on Ubiquity in late 2005. For 2009, Breakestra return with their long-awaited sophomore set exploring all colours of the funk spectrum. Built around the vision of “Music Man” Miles and Mixmaster Wolf, the trademark Breakestra touches remain intact.

Dusk Till Dawn is a tribute to Tackett’s late DJ partner at Rootdown, DJ Dusk, whose life was tragically taken in a road accident in 2007. Dusk himself appears alongside Jurassic 5′s Chali 2na on the funky rap joint ‘Posed To Be’ and the album is a fitting tribute to a much-loved L.A. figure and integral member of a scene which has become globally respected.

Fresh off of performing at this year’s SXSW, you can also check for a 2 page feature on Breakestra in the current issue of Wax Poetics. 

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http://www.breakestra-dusktilldawn.com/