funky house sceptics, let me draw your attention to this

on a vocal tip i'm feeling El-B and Noodles ft Natasha "I Feel", kinda housey and skippy.

Ny did "Dangerous" last year - not as good as "Falling" but still high-standard IMO (difficult to top "Falling" really).

on a vocal tip i'm feeling El-B and Noodles ft Natasha "I Feel", kinda housey and skippy.

How astonishing.

(great tune though obv!)

I should note both Lady Fire and Farah - aka the best singers in funky at the mo - right their own songs.

Lex I get what you're saying in general about vocalists in the UK but your complaints about the lack of good tunes seem to be subject to the same weakness that you identify in the argument of people who complain about R&B having fallen off - it's punishing what's out there for not having come to your attention. I don't see how tunes like "Kiss", "Touch Me", "I Feel", "For You", "Lovers" etc. can be considered weak.

Urgh write their own songs.

I don't see how tunes like "Kiss", "Touch Me", "I Feel", "For You", "Lovers" etc. can be considered weak.

Like to hear a bit more about these...

Without wanting to get drawn into the handwringing, it does feel a bit like funky has not really thrown up any honest-to-god pop stars, or even potential pop stars (Donaeo aside).

I disagree with Lex in that there have been plenty of Ciaras but you're not going to get very far with them unless you've had a Beyonce or a Mary J first, and funky hasn't yet. That said, patience etc...

As have I and some of it is just total drivel. I know i have my bias towards the darker/bassier end of the spectrum and people round here like to play the '"cheese/pop" is fundamental to the nuum' card but if they do then this stuff really needs to be judged against pop, r&b and the more singer/songwriter songs it is trying to ape.

No one says this of course.

I think of anyone regularly posting in this thread Steve is the only person who maybe wants to view funky on pop terms.

Pretty sure I've always maintained that funky does not work on pop terms, that if you look to it for great pop songs you're gonna come away disappointed. I put it this way in relation to Ill Blu:

This of course means that on "Heartbreaker" Ill Blu aren't great pop qua pop arrangers, only great pop qua dance music arrangers - unlike an Artful Dodger or a Sunship or indeed a Crazy Cousinz, they're unwiling or unable to reduce and refine their armoury to the point where the song itself can take over, so even their most pop moments sound busy, overwhelming, musically egotistical in a way that undermines the potential for crossover. This is a problem if you're consumed with setting up universal "pop" barometers of judgment, but the question "does this work as a pop song" is always a loaded and misleading one - great pop songs are not instances of "perfect" pop so much as love letters between pop and something else. What's so appealing about Ill Blu is that they increasingly seem to approach their "pop" moments not by toning down their excesses (though earlier tunes like Princess's "Frontline" and their own "Rider" are more straightforward) but by ramping them up - the only way they're prepared to "cross over" is by being ever more ridiculously themselves.

What's true for Ill Blu specifically (though ironically they've got a bit better at "framing" pop vocals recently) is also true for the scene as a whole. The reason it doesn't produce a clutch of "great pop songs" or pop vocalists with fame and long careers is that ultimately that's not what it's aiming for - the majority of funky tracks are instrumentals and are designed to be played either without vocals or with an MC on top. Similarly trying to glom R&B values onto funky will only get you so far because it's not R&B - most of the tunes in the genre are instrumental! This is why all the funky vocalists hedge their bets by making actual R&B tunes (though inevitably they're not very good) - they recognise that singing over funky beats is highly unlikely to result in a fanbase for them outside of, well, funky fans, many of whom might be interested in the tune as a dancefloor anthem while being disinterested in the singer him or herself.

2-step actually had less vocalists/songwriters but songs were more likely to cross over as songs because the 2-step structure allowed the tunes to be stripped back musically/groovewise to the point that they came across like mildly sped-up R&B - which is why the single edit of Usher's "U Got It Bad" in Australia (not sure about elsewhere) could be basically a 2-step track and still work as R&B.

If you try this with funky - stripping back and simplifying the groove so that the vocalist takes prominence - you usually end up with vocal house, and as great as they are tunes like "In The Air" and "Falling" and "I Feel" are basically vocal house tunes (with all of the baggage that goes with vocal house from a performative perspective - vocal house creates divas rather than stars).

Funky still throws up this kind of thing fitfully but really more as an intermittent counterweight to the majority of the scene which is too rough/bass-driven/ravey/etc to properly accommodate people's pop/R&B dreams. Which is not to say you don't get vocals, but when you do they're more likely to be along the lines of Champion/Addictive's "Bad Girls" or Ill-Mana's "Kiss You" (or indeed Ill Blu's remixes of R&B tunes) - they sound like dancefloor-focused remixes of songs rather than songs per se. The song component isn't there to operate as a song per se but to provide a musical structure around which producers can festoon all their sonic dance-motivants.

(if they so choose - each year the proportion of my favourite tracks that are vocal tunes and the proportion that are instrumental slips a bit further in favour of the latter group)

In fact what I see increasingly is a brand of vocal tune where it's not clear whether the producer is trying to support or dominate the vocal - see for example Lil Silva's remix of T2's "Better Off As Friends" where he's basically trying to demolish the song. This is the kind of thing that d&b and dubstep producers have done for a long time obv; if there's a distinction it's mainly that on this tune Lil' Silva is still sufficiently committed to the idea of song-as-structure that he doesn't literally dissect and cut up the vocal (as would be done on a dubstep or d&b remix usually) but contents himself with trying to distract from it.

"How astonishing"

it's not really to be honest, i just think it's a reflection of how few amazing vocal tunes there currently are, or indeed vocal tunes that balance the rough with the smooth sufficiently. If UK funky had produced another 20 "Do You Mind" i'd be all over them.

What UK funky has done that grime did so badly is use the ruffer female MCs/vocalists so effectively. Shystie and Ill Blu, Ms Dynamite and Geeneus, Sticky, Zinc, Lil Silva and $tush, the Heatwave/funky bashment angle: it's an amazing cluster of quality.

i think the deficit of great funky vocals is partly down to the fact there arent that many bulletproof great r&b songs out at the moment either. at least with 2 step you could rely on several amazing reworks of existing r&b tunes, many of which i liked more than the originals, but with funky thats not really there, barring a handful (ill blu doing OLD aaliyah etc), and ive yet to hear funky producers really come up with the goods enough times when remixing other peoples songs to make me think theyve really got a handle on it. of course that doesnt really account for how we got do you mind, in the air, tell me, etc etc, which were quite a while back when r&b wasnt that much better, but maybe its just that funky has basically decided trackiness is the way forward, and songs are just there to provide a bit of respite during a dj set. who really needs vocals anyway, when the instrumentals - and the variation you get in funky instrumentals right now is just astounding - are so good and get everyone on the floor.

according to his myspace lil silva is working with ms dynamite :)

btw bad girl and kiss you are alright enough, but bad girl im more used to it as an instrumental and the vocal just feels tossed on. which it was most likely. i dont buy this 'funkys format isnt as malleable as 2 step' argument - its not like you cant strip back funkys rhythms. i get the feeling producers just dont WANT to or for the most part, cant be bothered. theyre more interested in riddims.

reading titchy's thoughts on these matters has coincidentally led to the realisation that a funky refix of mya's 'whatever bitch' is u&k.

u&k?

"i dont buy this 'funkys format isnt as malleable as 2 step' argument"

nor do i, the drum structures (2step and 4x4/soca) are equally adaptable to vocals or instrumentals through the use of differing arrangements, especially around how often you have drum variations/fills + enforce verse/chorus structures.

right. just listen to a track like natty - its still funky, but scratcha takes it somewhere totally different. obv a world away from do you mind, but it obv proves theres a whole world of possiblities there. and im not saying i want to hear funkstep vocals, just using that as an example.

on a sidenote, anyone else heard that cooly g track on the kode 9 dj kicks comp? one of the best and weirdest things ive heard from her.

Kyla's new video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fweyeyk39Ag A case in point for 'what do funky diva's do next...' discussion.

"i dont buy this 'funkys format isnt as malleable as 2 step' argument"

nor do i, the drum structures (2step and 4x4/soca) are equally adaptable to vocals or instrumentals through the use of differing arrangements, especially around how often you have drum variations/fills + enforce verse/chorus structures.

Rhis isn't what I was saying though. I'm saying that it's hard to reduce the impact of the rhythms to the point that they allow songs to work as songs qua songs without also making them sound pretty close to straight house ("In The Air" is an example here, indeed most of Perempay's vocal tunes are). I think even with "In The Morning" the oddness of the beat actually worked to inhibit its crossover potential. With tunes like "Sweet Like Chocolate" and "Moving Too Fast" the rhythms are incredibly simple an unobtrusive without sounding like anything other than 2-step. How do you make "simple and unobtrusive" funky that still sounds distinct from vocal house?

"How astonishing"

it's not really to be honest, i just think it's a reflection of how few amazing vocal tunes there currently are, or indeed vocal tunes that balance the rough with the smooth sufficiently. If UK funky had produced another 20 "Do You Mind" i'd be all over them.

Ha that's the second time you've read a sarcastic comment of mine totally straight Martin.

Using "Natty" as some kind of example in against my argument makes no sense to me, it's a great groove but obviously would be pretty much impossible to sing over.

i wasnt saying anyone should sing over natty - how incredibly weird would that be - but that the approach in breaking down funkys staple rhythmic structure is one that producers could apply to tracks with vocalists.

"I think even with "In The Morning" the oddness of the beat actually worked to inhibit its crossover potential."

Praps... though as with the "why dont funky divas blow up" discussion i think too much emphasis here is placed on the actual music and not on the music industry mechanics: A&R, marketing, PR, styling etc. Things blow up because people spend money on them and get them onto mainstream channels (as much as i wish that wasnt true). Imagine if this had just been released at UKRecordshop.com on a £6.99 CD rather than getting a full push:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCefCGaMBFM

"With tunes like "Sweet Like Chocolate" and "Moving Too Fast" the rhythms are incredibly simple an unobtrusive without sounding like anything other than 2-step. How do you make "simple and unobtrusive" funky that still sounds distinct from vocal house?"

I dunno, you gotta remember that under the offbeat-soca snares there's a regular 4/4 pulse in these tracks. Singers can just as easily lock to that. There's not a lot of swung hats in uk funky as it makes it sound odd to swing hats once the snares are offbeat already, whereas in 2step the snares n kicks were on beat but the hats were quite crazy.

But i this "distinct from vocal house" question is very pertinent and one that i've come back to time and again since about '07. Funny thing is, the "funky purists," arguably it's core audience, are increasingly heading to a housier-than-thou position. See for example how large Dennis Ferrer "Hey Hey" is.

I dunno, you gotta remember that under the offbeat-soca snares there's a regular 4/4 pulse in these tracks. Singers can just as easily lock to that.

Sure, but on a track like, say, "Do You Mind", where you've got both the 4X4 and the pulse, the rhythm ends up sounding busy in a dance music sense (nothing wrong with that of course!) - it sounds like good unusual catchy vocal house rather than pop per se.

When I say "strip back" the beat I literally mean "very few hits in the bar". Something like "Natty" for example may be "spare" in the sense of not much going on overall but the beat is very complicated.

"Hey Hey" is an unusual case though - it's not very housier-than-thou itself! The reason it's honorary funky is that amazing hailstorm on a tin roof snare cross-pattern throughout - no wonder Devine Collective make it the centrepiece of their absolutely bonkers "House Girls Part 8".

i wasnt saying anyone should sing over natty - how incredibly weird would that be - but that the approach in breaking down funkys staple rhythmic structure is one that producers could apply to tracks with vocalists.

... And they do - check Funkystepz's "For You" for example. But a tune like that is gonna have difficulty becoming a chart hit, even though I may find it very catchy.

Praps... though as with the "why dont funky divas blow up" discussion i think too much emphasis here is placed on the actual music and not on the music industry mechanics: A&R, marketing, PR, styling etc. Things blow up because people spend money on them and get them onto mainstream channels (as much as i wish that wasnt true).

Absolutely... which is only one reaoson why complaining about funky not producing pop stars seems odd to me!

reading titchy's thoughts on these matters has coincidentally led to the realisation that a funky refix of mya's 'whatever bitch' is u&k.

Love this btw.

i think whatever bitch would be seen as too crude for the funky scene.

on a similar tip, that funky remix of take it back to the 80s is pretty great.

http://www.uk-funky.com/ukfunky_previews_346.htm

The funky scene has ended up caniballising itself a bit - got the money and ran as quickly as possible. A big problem is none of the singers I work with want to be seen as "funky" singers; rather, they have a hit, then try and use that as a platform to elevate them to different stuff. If you use something as such an obvious stepping stone then where's the pride in what you do as a genre? Grime, dubstep, garage, they all had people in the scene that were lauded and worshipped as being champions, but I just don't see that in funky as much.

p.s. I'm one half of Mischief Makers (track 7 on the Reflex mix), we tried to go against the grain a bit by stripping it back and upping the soul...

thanks for posting. but what money have they taken and run with? i didnt think there was much money in funky!

i agree about the pride thing but hasnt that always been an issue in uk dance music scenes? thats interesting about the inside-scene worship but maybe its cos no one seems that consistent? people seem to be releasing a lot more tracks to djs just cos its easier to do these days (eg - tim f could prob come up with a list of about 30 ill blu tracks) but it means theyre not necessarily all going to be that special (regardless of what tim f says).

Apologies for not taking more seriously the devastating critiques of people who come onto this thread only to complain about not feeling stuff. If my crime is being one of the only people here with the enthusiasm to actually listen to all this stuff then I'm not gonna feel that guilty.

Grime, dubstep, garage, they all had people in the scene that were lauded and worshipped as being champions, but I just don't see that in funky as much.

Name a singer in 2-step that didn't do this exactly.

Funky had some good paydays for people, don't forget you saw about 4-5 singles signed, a healthy live scene, remixes for majors, compilations - people got paid very well off it and some still do. But whereas the scenes I mentioned had pioneers, aspirational characters who had a clear vision and modus operandi for the scene, funky just seems to have run itself ragged in a short amount of time.

But Tim, I definitely don't want to sound like the bearer of bad news, as there's a huge amount of great music out there. It just seems like what the DJs play and what the people want, isn't that music. Am I wrong?

I don't understand your question about the singer?

he means didnt most 2 step vocalists do the same thing? ie start off on garage, but want to 'progress' to other styles? (ie craig david, ms dynamite, etc etc).

mistydubs do you think the scene has really run itself ragged so soon? cos when i listen to recent marcus nasty or say, petchy shows, even though i think there is still a lot of so-so material, theres also a lot of great stuff being made too, even if funkys not maintained quite the same standard of anthems it came out the gate with.

Of course most vocalists start in one scene and branch out - however most singers I've encountered in funky are petrified of being labelled as a "funky" artist. There doesn't seem that pride there that existed within garage or other genres of where you come from. When I was talking about a champion in the scene, I mean DJs or a club night or an organisation - i'm not saying that they should control the scene but dubstep's a great example; the likes of Benga, Hatcha, Geeneus and FWD helped to build the scene from a night with 50 people to one of the most popular worldwide genres since D&B.

I think the initial burst of anthems has now left a bit of a vacuum - the crowd want the big tunes but don't pick up on new stuff too hot, which makes it in danger of flagging. However we are seeing something similar with bassline which retains quite a strong following up North and with funky still being the club music of choice, there could be a trend of it going back underground and becoming stronger.

Of course most vocalists start in one scene and branch out - however most singers I've encountered in funky are petrified of being labelled as a "funky" artist.

Again, I'm wondering if you can name a single 2-step singer for whom this wasn't also true.

Surprise surprise, singers don't want to be tied down to a scene which is not about singing ultimately...

^^shola ama...wasn't she always a hardcore garage girl that counted against her when garage fell out of favour ?

There are lot of upskirt shots in that Roll Deep video...

geeneus, ms dynamite, katy b, banger.

Yeah "Lights On" is great! Though I think primarily for Katy B's chorus.

Also loving that Funk Butcher tune "Pull Me Close" that Marcus has been playing - the beat is nuts, but more just in terms of its mastery than in any kind of ostentatious complexity or edginess. Though the song raises an issue for me w/r/t where the tipping point is in funky's relationship with broken beat etc - like, at what point do tunes begin to resemble something like Bugz in the Attic so much that it loses that funky vibe? "Pull Me Close" is effortlessly great, but I go back and forth on Swindle's "No More" (perhaps because the vocals sound so much like Amy Winehouse that the resemblance becomes oppressive).

BTW re Shola Ama - girl did full-blown R&B albums and everything, her fortunes were only tied to garage insofar as her R&B career never really took off.

i think it's just contextual innit. 'no more' on its own is most certainly borderline iffy but i don't recall it ever rankling in situ, and not on a marcus set at least. (has he ever in his life dropped a bollock as heinous as whatever that mosca tune was at 40mins on the funkbutcher-hosted 28th april set btw).

this sort of thing is pretty much why it's practically impossible to really have the sort of top-down funky ombudsmanship mistydubs is lobbying for - shorn of the red herring of its basic structure it's simultaneously everything and nothing almost as its own strand of music. (hence why i rep hard for the wildbunch streetsoul analogy, even if it is overdetermined somewhat.)

anyhow 'pull me close' is excellent, yeah. didn't know it was by fb so thnx!

actually 'no more' kind of has a whiff of 80s pop cheese that i think lends itself to funky a little, and away from broken beat - but what you say can apply just as easily to his 'it's ok' for instance. maybe?

re 'lights on', yeah the chorus is fab but i also feel dynamite really found the right lane on that one, less boorish and more of a tanya stephensish melodi-sneer; as a tune i might argue it's the first of its kind to marry so well the freestyle openness of the chorus with the tight ragga winding of its verses. (contrary to popular opinion i never actually had anything against the ladyraggachat funky other than its ott reception steamrollering the idea that there wasnt already plenty enough ragga already implicit in surrounding instrumental stuff - 'lights on' kind of holds your hand through that point imo.)

I am also increasingly not opposed to female Dancehall toasters on Funky tunes. I actually played a set full of them last Weds.

Still hugely, hugely leery of Funky becoming just an up tempo London centric version of Dancehall though.

I've been coming at this all from the perspective of a Broken Beat obsessive and embittered ex Grime fan. Perhaps I need to get over that.

BTW, Geeneus' newer tunes absolutely bang on a decent system, playing them out was my only way of finding that out.

i think it's just contextual innit. 'no more' on its own is most certainly borderline iffy but i don't recall it ever rankling in situ, and not on a marcus set at least. (has he ever in his life dropped a bollock as heinous as whatever that mosca tune was at 40mins on the funkbutcher-hosted 28th april set btw).

Actually I like "No More" quite a bit, it's more the other tunes on the EP that then make me retroactively start to doubt "No More" too.

That Mosca track was really bad, yeah.

re 'lights on', yeah the chorus is fab but i also feel dynamite really found the right lane on that one, less boorish and more of a tanya stephensish melodi-sneer; as a tune i might argue it's the first of its kind to marry so well the freestyle openness of the chorus with the tight ragga winding of its verses. (contrary to popular opinion i never actually had anything against the ladyraggachat funky other than its ott reception steamrollering the idea that there wasnt already plenty enough ragga already implicit in surrounding instrumental stuff - 'lights on' kind of holds your hand through that point imo.)

Agree with this. I love female dancehall funky as a general rule but I think it's probably barking up the wrong tree to try to carve it out as some kind of separate and distinct "thing" (we never did this w/r/t 2-step circa 2001 which had a not-dissimilar balance of ladyraggachat vs r&b vocals vs instrumentals vs MCs) - but then I have a kneejerk suspicion of any attempts to promote scenes-within-the-scene when it comes to UK funky.

The issue being that I think talking about funky-as-pop, funky-as-R&B, funky-as-dancehall, funky-as-grime etc inevitably obscures the fact that so much of the really amazing stuff defies that kind of characterisation, and it's halfway the point of uk funky to regularly throw up such defiance - which of the prior categories would "Touch Her In The Morning" fall into, for example?

ooh, talking of raggafunky -

http://soundcloud.com/aswad/aswad-city-lock-roska-remix-radio-edit

why have i only heard footloose play this (once)? why is the shitty breakage remix the popular one? as always i blame mistajam.

ZOMG funkystepz 'rude girl'!!!

http://www.zshare.net/audio/76263336166cdaf7/

http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f14/snouts/catshockedomggif.gif

Ha ha, love the funkystepz compulsion to make weirdo part twos to all their records, dudes have way too much time on their hands.

were i forced to take a guess at which of them are generally responsible for that trend, based on names alone i would surely go for rené & stimpy.

http://funkystepz.blogspot.com/2008/12/bassline-music-it-will-never-be-popular.html

haha did you ever see this btw? i mean it is from 2008, but still.

i spose judging by that, dj naughty, 'windrush', and countless cutesy vocal cuts it seems fair to say i seem to like my funky cocktail with an umbrella in it.

strange that sticky's only contribution so far in this heady climate has been bombastic old jumeriah.

Actually I get the impression that renay is more on their housey side (hence the anti-bassline rant)? I know pretty much nothing about their breakdown of responsibilities though... Like, there's that really fabulous deep tune that Marcus has been playing constantly recently - with the whistles and the two piano notes and the dub chords floating over the top. I can see this being the same producer as "Trinity Hill" but it would seem very strange if it's the same producer as "Rude Boy"/"Rude GIrl". Although actually on the May 5 show it suddenly has this awesome quivering synth chord in the second half (presumably yet another gratuitous but brilliant part 2) so who knows.

Speaking of umbrellas I am sure you will love whatever track 16 of Champion's "8 Round Knock-Out" mix is, but I have no idea what it is. Will have to upload it for you.

no worries, got it. the one that's a little like a ukg refix of the riff in the el-b song? i do like it but the sharp garage edges kinda pop the funky bubble i think.

oh did you mean 18 perhaps? but then that's a familiar funkystepz one you'd probably know the name of.

hey btw do you know who done track 6, aka the 'say yes' song i will never understand why isnt bigger than the turgid same-named ill blu one.

if hard house banton should ever release 'colonel' it oughta be a 12 with a locked groove cos i think i could sit through that an inhumanly long time.

funkystepz fanfic doesn't seem to be drawing the punters in - maybe it's time we seized the means of production

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4009/4615049299_7a5511d843.jpg

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO