Mark Broom

For more than thirty years, British DJ and producer Mark Broom has sustained an exceptionally productive and wide-ranging output, issuing hundreds of tracks that move between functional club techno and house and more experimental strains of electro, downtempo, and IDM. Early links with Plaid led to the creation of Repeat at the start of the 1990s, while Broom also joined forces with Dave Hill on multiple ventures such as Sympletic, Rue East, and Midnight Funk Association. Together the pair launched Pure Plastic along with several subsidiary imprints and supplied extensive material to Baby Ford’s Ifach label. Broom and James Ruskin further investigate fractured techno and IDM under the Fear Ratio name and abstract hip-hop as Deadhand. As a solo artist Broom issued his first album in 1996 with the Detroit-styled techno of Angie Is a Shoplifter and has since maintained a steady stream of dancefloor singles and EPs, occasionally punctuated by mix CDs or further albums such as the 2021 dub-and-house set Fünfzig and 2022’s 100% Juice. On numerous single and EP releases, including 2024’s Hardgroove 4 Life Part Two, he has returned to a percussion-driven hardgroove approach.

Broom first encountered house music during a 1989 holiday in Tenerife. Back in England he purchased his initial turntables and began amassing vinyl while starting to produce. Regular visits to London’s FatCat Records brought him into contact with Baby Ford and with Plaid’s Ed Handley and Andy Turner, then still part of Black Dog Productions. Broom’s debut pair of records, both issued by General Production Recordings in 1992, were co-produced by Handley and Turner, and the three musicians also formed Repeat, whose first single “Game Shows” appeared the same year before the full-length Repeats came out on A13. In 1994 Broom and Dave Hill established the Pure Plastic label and worked closely together, resulting in projects including Eco Tourist, Voyectra, and Sympletic releasing on Ford’s Ifach imprint, while the left-field breakbeat outfit Midnight Funk Association made its first appearance on Mo Wax in 1995. Sympletic reached Warp with the 1996 At Long Last EP, and Broom’s well-received debut album Angie Is a Shoplifter was released on Pure Plastic the same year. Midnight Funk Association moved to Domino for the 1998 EPs Sexy Way and Byte the Bullet, followed three years later by the album Coffee Shop Rules. The same partnership also delivered two full-lengths and multiple harder-edged techno singles as Rue East.

Broom persisted with solo EPs and joint releases alongside Ben Sims, Percy X, Ford, and additional producers on imprints such as BPitch Control, Soma, and 20:20 Vision. He further took part in the new-wave-inflected 5 Mic Cluster, whose Crystal Mic appeared on Output in 2006. Beard Man was founded by Broom in 2009, its first release a split single with German producer Jonson. Broom’s second album Acid House (at least the second half of the title is accurate) came out on Saved Records in 2010. Collaboration with James Ruskin produced two EPs on the latter’s Blueprint label before the pair launched the IDM-leaning Fear Ratio, whose debut full-length Light Box arrived in 2011 and whose later output included 2015’s Refuge of a Twisted Soul on Skam. Broom and Ruskin have also recorded abstract hip-hop as Deadhand, with eccentric rapper Sensational and Warp veteran REQ featuring on the duo’s 2021 album Meanwhile, released by Seagrave.

Broom has sustained an abundant sequence of singles on labels including Cocoon, Token, and Robert Hood’s M-Plant. His third solo album, the house-and-dub exploration Fünfzig, appeared on Rekids in 2021. The Fear Ratio’s fourth album Slinky followed on Tresor in 2022, the same year Broom issued another Rekids LP, 100% Juice. He has also put out multiple volumes of Mutated Battle Breaks as well as 2022’s Circular Motions with Sims. The 2023 release Hardgroove 4 Life returned to the percussive techno sound of the 1990s and included a remix by Sims, one of the style’s originators. Additional EPs that year comprised Tribe Vibes and ZZZZ with Patrik Carrera. In 2024 further EPs arrived, among them Showtime, Elephant Bones with Gene Richards Jr, and Hardgroove 4 Life Part Two.