Botchit & Scarper's Sonia Akow and Toby Edwards make up the duo SOTO, exponents of the breakbeat sound combined with strong elements of electro, house and hip hop all melded together with an emphasis on musicality. The pair have been DJing for about 8 years and have also lent their hands to extraneous projects with Toby working on a new project 'Delempika' that major label Sony are involved with.

The duo's sound has taken them all over the world to places like Australia, Asia, the US and they've also been chosen to deliver breakbeat to drum'n'bass heads at London's legendary club night Movement. The pair are also responsible for producing the third volume (released in 2002) in Botchit's ever-expanding Urban Funk Breaks series and more recently produced 'Hootenanny' a daring piece of electro hip hop breaks which gained favour with the likes of Damian Harris (Skint), Rennie Pilgrem, Aquasky vs Masterblaster to name a few and was licenced to the deep tech side of Kid Kenobi's 'Breaks 03'.

The pair have just embarked on an tour which sees them spinning their deep, bass heavy sound around Australia and New Zealand all the while leaving the freezing cold environment of their UK home in favour of the antipodean summer. RA caught up with SOTO on a blistering hot day in Perth for a chat about the tour and the label.

- Please introduce the members of the group and what part they play.
The name SOTO is like Abba - it comes from our names Sonia and Toby, Toby's dad thought of that. Toby does more of the studio work, while Sonia is the assistant label manager of Botchit and we both DJ when playing live.

- In your opinion what separates SOTO from the rest of the Botchit artists, other than the fact that it comprises of one guy and one girl.
Actually, there's also one guy and one girl in another Botchit group, Backdraft! SOTO specialises in electro breaks. Deekline & Wizard do electro booty breaks but more on a Miami bass tip, whereas we have an electroclashy sound influenced by Man Parrish and early hip hop but with a larger bass. There's also a late 80s Gary Numan influence thrown in with slap bass guitars.

- Do you listen to a lot of 80's music?
Definitely, we both grew up in the 80s so we listen to a lot of Cure, the Smiths and Duran Duran. Toby gets into the Northern Hacienda (the club) stuff as well.

- Can you run through the current SOTO discography and what releases have you got planned for future release?
Currently we're not working on an album, but we have about 10-12 original tunes and remixes on Botchit. In regards to new music a new label Supertronix approached us to come up with first release on the label. It's an electro breaks label so we said yeah!

- How does it feel to have Hootenanny selected by Kid Kenobi for one of his breaks mixes on MOS?
It's brilliant! He came in to the Botchit office and we gave him a load of stuff and he took it away with him. He came back to us and said "I really like Hootenanny!" and it ended up on the second CD of his breaks album. It's really nice to hear someone else mix your tune and he reedited it for the mix - the intro was repeated a few times.

- Breaks in Australia is usually backroom sound especially if there is house music in another room - it's typically targeted towards trainspotters and fans of harder music - typically blokes! What would you say to newcomer breaks fans about encouraging more female listeners to get up and dance to breakbeat.
If you like music whether it be house, opera, pop and if you like dancing, go out to a breaks night and work out which DJ you like. DJs tend to play different genres - we play house and electro in our sets. We go from Si Begg style breaks to Layo & Bushwacka and we wander around that. Basically what we're saying is have an open mind! Bass is good for girls - just stand near a speaker and the bass just makes you wiggle. Breaks in the UK got labelled a blokey sound as well. Nowadays there's a lot of hooks in the music giving people something they can remember. So you can walk into a music shop and go... "oh what's this song, do doo doo dad do" and people will be able to tell you. The music is a lot more musical now and there's a large variety of it out there.

- Botchit is also divided into two categories, Botchit & Scarper and Botchit Breaks. What is different about the two labels?
Botchit & Scarper label develops artists and focuses on artist albums. There's a big artist focus on the label. Botchit breaks is more for singles. Typically dancefloor aimed and also accomodates for new artists. Botchit breaks is interested in one off tunes and tends to try things out a bit more - the releases that aren't connected to albums.

- Which Botchit artists should we be on the look out for?
Of course there's Terry & Matt from Atomic Hooligan. Their album will be released in Feburary or March next year. We've also got the Lawgivers Nick Noize and Paul R.Kidz who are making some of the most interesting music in the scene - very electro and glitchy with an old skool influence looking towards the future.

- Top 5?
1- remix for Supertronix - Just Be Bere SOTO remix
2- Lawgivers - Up - Botchit & Scarper
3- Atomic Hooligan - The Girl Is Filth - Botchit & Scarper
4- Splitloop - Unbelievable - Sinister
5- BLIM - Too Bad - Track

Tour dates
11th Dec Backbeat in Perth
17th Dec Canberra at a club called Toast
24th Dec Melb playing with Atomic Hooligan at Fractured in Melbourne
26th Dec Fuzzy Summer Breaks at Bondi Pavillion, Sydney
NYE Resoluton festival in New Zealand
7th Jan Queenstown
13th Jan Christchurch
15th Jan Broke'n'beats at Kink