DJ Fresh Escape From Planet Monday

Breakbeat Kaos, 2006

- Roy Spencer

Much like Garfield, the cartoon cat, DJ Fresh hates Mondays. The grind. The deflated soul-sapping feeling as you wearily join the rat race for another week. But, unlike that lasagne-fiending mute, this drum & bass maverick did something about it.

“It’s a theme that’s been important throughout my life,” says Fresh, as he actually strolls down a beach in Thailand, phone in hand, sand under foot. “You need to take hold of your dreams and make them happen. That’s what life’s for. That was something that I really wanted to explore with this album.”

Joining him on his mission were a cast of extras so extraordinary that the double taking could give you whiplash. Is that DJ Shadow laying down life-affirming beats? No way! Elsewhere, Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant is telling us not to throw our life away! And, crikey! That can’t be ’80s TV prankster Jeremy Beadle book-ending the whole album with sage life lessons and surreal shout-outs, can it? It is! It is!

“He was a really special guy, and very academic and literate,” says Fresh of the much-loved Beadle’s About host, and now unlikely DnB vocalist. “He really makes the intro, and helped us make the album an experience, bringing people in and setting up the themes.

“I wanted it all to be like it was someone telling you something that you needed to hear – something that was going to wake you up. That concept runs through the album.”

Of course, there are dancefloor bangers on here, too – it’s a DnB album from 2006. But, they’re the sweet sugar that coats the truth pill DJ Fresh offers up.