mixing break beat

Okay so i totally just realized that crossing genres is hard...I've been djing for about 3 month now, just did my first party last weekend and it was awesome, had a lot of fun. I only have been djing electro house, so easy 4/4 beats. I decided to try some break beat today and just realized wow, no idea what I'm doing. It was kind of funny actually.

Tips? I just don't understand how the heck you can hear whats going on, I burned a cd with a lot of dubby break stuff....featurecast, a skillz, krafty kuts...that kind of stuff. There is always just so much going on with the drums and synths and bass...it sounds like a muffled mess in my head phones and is extremely hard to get in time. Any secrets to this?

Also a lot of this stuff starts without drum beats. How am i supposed to know what the tempo of the melody is without any drums?

just relax and listen to it, and your head will naturally start nodding (or foot tapping or hip shaking or whatever it is you do) to the beat. All of that music is 4/4; it's just a little more syncopated.

I just mean there is to much going on. example.

There are no drums until the breakdown once the breakdown hits there is bass, synths and drums.

Trying to match in incoming song (With lets say lower sounding drums) to all that's going on in the playing track is really chaotic. Am i mixing in the wrong phases or something. does anybody else ever have this problem?

dance.
Thats the beat

The best hint I have: mix on the snares, not the kicks.

^^^^ BINGO!!!!!

makes life a HELL of alot easier :D

snares .... +1

also make it easy on yourself and start with a couple of tracks from the same artist. they will usually have similar breaks

Mix snares, learn how to at least fader cut/bass cut, they're pretty basic things. A lot of breakbeat mixing is building tension between songs, so if a song has a drop in the beat or a gap, you should be able to make adjustments towards that unique drop or gap to suit the mix, if that makes sense. Also, don't be afraid of polyrhythms as long as they're aligned correctly. If you can dance to it, your audience probably can too