Pat Pardy and Tom Beaufort first started producing and DJing together back in 1998, when their lives were slightly less glamorous than they are now, and it’s been a combination of hard work and natural talent that has propelled them to DJ superstardom. “I don’t really think we had a first big break,” explains Tom. “It just sort of happened for us over time. I mean, before this Pat worked in a factory and I worked in Poundland, with people always asking me ‘how much is this, mate’?”

 

If Evil Nine struggled to get off the ground for a little while, when they first became airborne, there was truly no stopping them; with the backing of breakbeat Godfather Adam Freeland, the duo released ‘Cakehole’ on Marine Parade, a brooding monster that can only really be described as, well, evil.

 

The alliance between Adam Freeland and Evil Nine was born, and neither has looked back since. “Adam’s our boy,” they shout. “He’s been instrumental in getting us to where we’re at now. His unfailing support and encouragement has been a massive inspiration to us and we’ve grown together now into a Marine Parade mega-monster mutation thing.” An Adam Freeland set without an Evil Nine production is now unheard of, and the trio have gone so far as to work together on remixes, for Adam’s live project Free*Land among others.

 

The boys’ sincerity in talking about Adam Freeland comes as a shock, if only because they seem to spend most of their time having fun and being generally mischievous, including when answering some of my questions! Although the name Evil Nine sounds cool – it’s one of those names that you’d want to have yourself if you were a superstar DJ duo – the origins of their title are slightly less salubrious. “We used to be ‘Evil Sixty Nine’, referring to a particularly disfiguring sexual encounter that Pat experienced as a youth,” laughs Tom. “After a while we dropped the ‘Sixty’ as we thought it was catchier that way.” Hmmm, we’re not sure we want to delve any deeper into this particular story, especially as they’ve innovatively titled a track on their album ‘Pearlshot’.

 

So what’s behind the name of their debut album, “You Can Be Special Too”? “That came to us in a dream,” they begin, promisingly. “In this dream Bill Cosby was there and he said, ‘Guys! Send out this small message of positivity so that people will endeavour to better themselves and hence make the world a better place for the children (and small animals)’, so that’s what we did.” Right. If this interview is teaching me one thing, it’s that you can never predict what these two are going to do next, and to be fair to them it’s a philosophy they live their lives by; whether it be a DJ set, or production work, the pair are quick to move from one musical genre to another, never staying in one spot for too long.

 

Evil Nine’s finest hour so far has undoubtedly been with the release of their aforementioned album. However, there was a horrible waiting period for breakbeat fans as one of the most anticipated breaks albums of all time nearly never saw the light of day, when Marine Parade briefly went under. So were the boys worried? “Yeah, we were worried,” admits Pat. “But then we were strangely liberated by it too because we’d done all the hard work and we’d completed what we thought was a pretty fucking good album, so we were quite optimistic about the future - whatever it was. And it turned out alright again…”

 

It wasn’t just “alright”; the album was heralded by many critics as a modern-day masterpiece, Pete Tong named it among his “albums of 2004”, and it was seen by most to be a much-needed breath of fresh air into a rapidly stagnating breakbeat pond. Not even the boys themselves were ready for the praise… “We were actually pretty surprised by the acclaim we got for the album, but it was more about where the praise came from and the wide range of peeps that were diggin’ it. We’ve really been feeling the love!”

 

If you haven’t heard the album you might be asking yourself what all the fuss is about. Well, ‘You Can Be Special Too’ is a breath-taking journey through musical genres, from fairly down-tempo tunes to rocking breakbeat with a crazy infusion of hip hop and ragga thrown in for good measure.

 

While the tracks ‘Hired Goons’, ‘Restless’ and ‘Lovers Not Fighters’ are truly great in their own right, the highlights of the album come via ‘Pearlshot’ and the classic ‘Crooked’, both of which feature MC talents and extremely random vocals: on ‘Crooked’ Aesop Rock shouts about roller-skating parrots, and on ‘Pearlshot’ guest vocalist Juice Aleem offers his insight into Lois Lane, Wichita and, well, pearlshots.

 

I’m scared of asking, but fortunately this time Tom and Pat seem to be equally in the dark: “The lyrics on ‘Crooked’ were entirely from Aesop’s brain,” they explain. “Except that we told him the name of the track, whereas ‘Pearlshot’ it was all totally freestyled by Juice so it was typically perverted and deranged.”

 

The refreshing thing about Evil Nine is that time and time again they have proved that they’re far from being one-trick ponies. Every track they produce seems to have the markings of a classic about it, no more so than in their remix work. Their mix of Santoe’s ‘Sabot’ still sounds as fresh as ever, and is still regularly dropped in clubs worldwide, while perhaps their finest hour came with the ‘Evil Nine’s Punk Rock Remix’ of Ils’ ‘Music’.

 

If people were unsure whether Evil nine had the lasting power to become greats of the breakbeat scene, this track ended all doubts. It has featured on a number of TV adverts, and divided the breakbeat scene with its heavy guitar riffs and rocking basslines. The majority loved it, and rightly so. So how do they go about sounding so fresh and innovative, without losing any of the energy? “There’s really no secret. We just try to do something that we haven’t heard before, something that’s got edge and that makes us nod our heads frantically!”

 

And the duo have just released their first mix compilation – courtesy of the y4k series. The boys reckon it represents everything that is quintessentially Evil Nine: ‘The y4k mix was an effort to capture what we do in the clubs – a rocking, edgy, exciting blend of quality music which doesn’t give a shit about genre or any other rubbish ideas.” Once more the pair have triumphed too, with a diverse tracklist that sees the old mixed with the new, with tracks form the likes of Whitey, Bloc Party and Evil Nine themselves.

 

Pat and Tom’s tracklistings are always massively diverse, as their DJ sets meander from breaks to techno to hip hop and back again. Then again, it’s not all that surprising when they say who they think is currently rocking it: “Well, there’s our boy Adam Freewizzle, Tiga, Radioslave, Switch, Laurent Garnier, DJ T, Santos, PMT…um, there are more but it’s getting a bit boring this listing thing isn’t it?! As for inspirations, we’re into so much different shit that it’s hard to narrow it down to just a few names. No one particular artist has inspired us over others – everything we listen to has contributed in some way.”