funky house sceptics, let me draw your attention to this

Thanks Corpsey!

Now, everyone, go to about 57 minutes in and listen from there.

BTW, what's the tune that "Dirty Funk" samples so liberally (the "ba-da-ba, ba-ba, ba-ba, ba-ba, ba-da-ba-da-ba" vocals)? It feels like a key moment in the development of modern culture and yet its identity has somehow passed me by.

Also is there a free and idiot-proof way to chop up long MP3s on a mac so that I can isolate tracks deserving of particular focus in future?

tim is there anyway to hear the songs you listed aside from mixes? i.e. the two of the first five google results for "funkystepz lovers" brings up your blog & this thread

you can do that on garage band pretty easily

just open the mix in garage band & then isolate the section where the song is & delete everything around it

Okay I will try to puzzle out Garage Band - if successful, "Lovers" will be the first thing I serve.

it's kind of tough to figure out

(this is me cutting out a gucci mane verse)

you want to open garageband & drag the song/mix from its folder & into the garage band window

after that you want to double click on the long bar where the song is so you get a window that looks like this

http://i43.tinypic.com/5xri42.png

from here you can then cut out the parts of the track/mix just by clicking anywhere at the bottom & dragging in whichever direction -- if you press play on the button there you can obv figure out where the track is in correspondence to the bar

once you get your highlighted section of the track you just press delete

to convert to mp3 go share -> export song to disc -> select "mp3 converter" from the "compress using" dropdown menu & it should send an mp3 to your desktop (mine shows up as a quicktime file but it can be uploaded to mp3 service/opened in itunes)

Thanks Jordan, here you go. Funkystepz - Lovers:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/gkglfo

"lovers" is sweet!

dj constantly talking over the top = not sweet. this is the other reason i don't listen to the radio, does my head in.

why don't ill blu and funkystepz do non-radio mp3 mixes like, idk, every other dj out there? bah.

I guess they move in different circles - I don't think any big funky producers have done a high-sound-quality productions mix, though obv it's a precondition for all yr more liminal producers. I'd like to see it. I think a big part of the process is bringing them into the right circles, building relationships with the kinds of zines and blogs that usually host those kinds of mixes.

fuck all these free mixes. radio sets are where this musics meant to be heard innit

like listening to an old heartless crew upfront fm rip to putting on crisp biscuit

you music journalists should go and do a bit of hunting imo (im sure lex has even slated other journos for being lazy) - cant have everything spoonfed to you by a fact or RA mix

"vinyl's where this music's meant to be heard!"

damn right lol

its true tho
like listening to an old roll deep set vs in at the deep end
no contest really

i haven't actively listened to any radio station in ~10 years - hate hate hate radio presenters and djs who can't seem to stop talking over the music, if it can annoy me in a 2min snippet then i'm not going to take it for 4hrs

rinse fm is hardly obscure and would no more qualify as "hunting" (smh) than a promo mp3 mix (of which there are dozens upon dozens of providers besides fact and RA)

i'd be very happy for the radio format to die out completely within the next decade tbh

but the medium is totally diff
hearing something on a set with marcus and rankin vs hearing fucking annie mac or mary anne hobbs is not nearly the same thing
this music is made to be heard in the way it is presented by marcus nasty, mak 10 et al
saying you dont like listening to pirate radio is just odd really
how can you like this music and not like pirate radio?

a lot of radio is shit and has gotten much shitter in the last 10 years or so but i would be v sad without radio 4 or even 6 music from time to time really
sometimes its nice to have stuff selected for you

i've enjoyed pirate radio in the past and obv it's tremendously ~important~ but i don't even tune into rinse for djs i already like or even friends any more - why would i, when they all churn out mp3 mixes on the reg?

even on marcus radio sets it's like, you're talking too much, stfu and let the music play

I'm suspicious of the "vinyl" / "this one pair of speakers in bristol" style arguments b/c they imply that the experience of individual pieces of music can fundamentally be determined by the sound-medium, rather than merely enhanced. I can understand the enhancement, but not fundamental transformation (my capacity to adore funky from Australia kinda proves this in reverse).

There's a difference between the above kind of argument and saying that certain styles of music designed to be played in the mix with (often spontaneous) live MCing will also sound better in that context, or that monster tunes like "House Girls Part One" actually comparatively lack something when played without an MC, let alone as a standalone track.

You can say that it's a difference of degree, but it's a pretty big degree IMO.

Moreover performances like Topsy on that Petchy set are works of art in and of themselves.

DJ Maxsin from Funkystepz is a different scenario entirely, primarily (I'm guessing, as this seems to be standard practice) he's talking over the tunes deliberately to prevent my editing exercise resulting in DJs who haven't personally been given "dubplates" from playing new tunes.

This isn't just some obscure cultural practice. "For You" has been floating around in instrumental form for over a year but is only gonna get a proper release this year. "Lovers" will emerge properly in late 2010 at the earliest. In a scene where almost all exchange of music is digital, concern about even medium-fidelity "clean" mp3s getting out in advance is quite high.

even on marcus radio sets it's like, you're talking too much, stfu and let the music play

This kinda mystifies me though.

rankin has made me love so many tunes more than i might otherwise do, ditto marcus' mixing/selection.

unless its lex just doing his gleeful contrarian thing.

nah i just have control issues w/r/t what i listen to, and find the sound of a human voice cutting unexpectedly into music really jarring

i'm talking more about radio presenters rather than mcs here, though i've never got the mak 10 fuss really

i get why he's talking over his tunes but it's still really irritating to listen to!!

?? Mak 10 is a DJ not an MC. Or do you mean something else?

i probably mean something else, i've only listened to like one or two of his sets ever

Maybe you mean Shantie, who was the MC on the Mak 10 set I constantly hyped last year.

so you dont like mcs and you dont like radio presenters either (who dont talk over tunes and 'let the music play' more or less uninterrupted). well good luck with accessing any of this music.

i dont think ive ever heard mak 10 speak on a set, ever.

That Mak 10 set is actually less notable for Shantie (who was a bit stronger on his 2008 Marcus sets I think) than it is for just the endless parade of knock-out tune after knock-out tune, many of which I still can't ID (though recently worked out Devine Collective's "Night Train" and Funkystepz's "Bubbly").

I was under the impression that this music was primarily meant to be heard in clubs, but thanks to Titchy for pointing out where I've been going wrong.

if you dont like radio sets youre bascially a freak and should kill yourself. thats my personal opinion.

Well thanks for that balanced look at the situation Luka, I'm off to hang myself.

My issue is MCing actually, the more this music sounds like Grime and Dancehall the less interest I've got in it.

I look at people like Wonder (tech-house DJ), Geeneus (tech-house DJ), and Perempay (deep house DJ) and I think they've got the right idea.

And to be clear, the more this music sounds like Grime in that it becomes a functional MC based music.

I don't mind the synths and horns from Grime, but I'm just done with MC music. No more.

this might be an opportune moment to mention that i'm really not down with rewinds in club sets and have never really gotten used to it. last thing i want when i recognise a beloved anthem is to stop and start again. LET THE MUSIC PLAY.

I don't think that funky is turning into grime exactly - though certainly it is like grime in some senses. But I think the better comparison point (which Siah hints at) is dancehall - its balance between dancing and "rapping" (and a sing-songy quality equally drawn from populist dance and R&B) feels persistent in the same way that it does in dancehall, like there's some secret emulsifying ingredient that keeps these qualities in co-existent suspension rather than passing into conflict with one another.

One way of measuring the difference is in the (again, the word seems appropriate) persistent danceability of funky. In terms of garage's transformation into grime, and more precisely the shift from productions/DJs to MCs, the writing ought to have been on the wall way back with "Pulse X", which was danceable but only incidentally and fitfully so. By contrast funky has created a vital role for MCs while never retreating from its status as dance music (although certainly it has retreated from its status as house music, albeit in an asymmetrical manner), and this translates into the approach of MCs. On the DJ Petchy 23 March set just posted on Dissensus (I'll copy the link here) there's a real sense of party time jollity and fun that existed in garage only fleetingly. Whereas in garage that moment was only a transitional side-effect, in funky this is central and crucial.

Perhaps each genre in this process of development partially learns from the "mistakes" of its forebears, in turn opening itself up to new risks-of-sudden-transformation. Garage was wise to the risk of over-abstraction by watching what happened to jungle (though this trend later reared its head in the guise of dubstep) but was caught instead by hip hop's gravitational pull (in the form of grime). I have a strong suspicion that if funky rapidly transforms into something else, it won't be grime mark II, but something else and relatively unexpected.

Of course dancehall, which feels like it's at the centre of all these sounds (jungle, garage, grime, funky), is always a benevolent force on all these styles, IMO.

Totally NOT interested in following Wonder/Geeneus/Perempay down their rabbit holes, sorry Siah.

On the radio vs club as medium debate, I'd say (and this is said with the full knowledge that i'm hardly in a position to talk authoritatively about uk funky clubbing) that the music is poised between the two mediums, that both are massively influential to the development of the genre. So many awesome tunes are designed to work with MCs (listen to e.g. Marcus Nasty and Bassboy's "Shitta" without an MC and it sounds so... empty. With an MC it sounds amazing) and that's much more a radio thing than a club thing.

Also, NB. this facebook comment from DJ Maksin of Funkystepz: " last show on rinsefm i played 2 hours straight of funkystepz tracks how much producers or production team can do that. "

oooh i need to hear that set.

i love geeneus and i even like wonders sets but i dont want to hear JUST that from funky/uk house. that would be boring. its like only listening to grime and only checking for dumpvalve and ignoring anything from davinche, bossman (ironically) or mr slash etc.

my only issue with mcing is that i do think topsy and guys like that - good as they are - possibly impose themselves too much on sets sometimes. i like them a lot but it does almost feel like post-grime-meets-old-school-hosting-mcing on funky instrumentals cos sometimes they just mc too much and dont let the tracks breathe. with grime thats great - you want an assault of mcing but less so with funky, for me. which is why i like rankins approach which is just to spit a few select verses over and over so you dont really have to listen to him so much once you know them and just listen to the track hes floating on.

*so you dont really have to listen to him so much once you know the lyrics. you can just listen to the track hes floating on.

i wouldnt say this music sounds like grime at all though - there arent many THAT mc tracks. and there are too many good ones to write them off. my main thing with funky is actually that the vocal tunes just arent up to par. id like to hear more cut up todd edwards style funky than full on songs at this point just cos a lot of the ones im hearing really dont stick in the brain.

"I was under the impression that this music was primarily meant to be heard in clubs, but thanks to Titchy for pointing out where I've been going wrong."

n/p. let us know your thoughts when you next hit up a funky night, club connoisseur.

It's funny with that new Petchy set because you have Topsy trading verses with Shantie, which demonstrates I think how open and inclusive the approach to MCing is here.

Titchy what do you think of Miss Fire?

on the whole i have to go with marcus' comments the other week that most funky female vocalists just sound like girls off the street. which isnt a bad thing of course, but they write like girls off the street. and it seems like with garage, where you had producers that knew how to write songs, the new lot dont seem to and seem to just let the singers do whatever they want (i could be totally off base of course, but if i am, that would be even more dissapointing), so they unleash these rambling torrents of lyrics without much care for a shapely melody. but anyway, i do quite like 'fallin' by miss fire, even though i think i like it more for its vibe (same for take off your clothes) and the track than for it being a great song. i feel the same way about a lot of funky vocals, even stuff like 'put your hands all up on me', its almost catchy but not quite there, but it has a nice sensualist kind of vibe about it.

typically after posting that i have fallin stuck in my head lol

xxxpost - i kinda agree with lex about rewinds. it can get fucking annoying. one is good. but often it really just ends up disrupting the flow of a set. with grime this was esp annoying, just as mcs would get momentum theyd fucking pull it up and we'd be back where we were five mins ago. with them maybe it was a way of getting a break, but with djs, i find it can often be less of a tease/anticipation building device than just a way of making the dj feel important (half the time it just seems arbitrary too, rather than a real legitimate response to a crowd).

as a funky new jack/dilettante i'm really enjoying being forced to largely forgo mp3's and song id's as a way-in to the genre. it could just be something corny about anonymity or "authenticity," but as someone who tends to get caught up on being in-touch it's a nice break from letting myself get into the bullshit and just skip taking the bus home and walk for forty five minutes.

Ahhhh what is that amazing DJ Naughty-ish tune with the "Follow me!... That funky sound! That funky funky sound!" lyric? SO AMAZING. Is it in fact D'explicit ft. Sweets - "Follow Me (DJ Naughty Remix)", or is it something else?

TIP: Rudimental ft. Shantie MC - Midnight

TOP TUNE.

Also: Lil' Silva - Better Off As Friends. Overbearing and apocalytpic in a sense you kind of always feared and yet somehow passes through the pain to discover a zone of discomforting pleasure beyond the shame threshold.