funky house sceptics, let me draw your attention to this

You lot!!!!
What is 'Roska is suppressing a more colourful blah blah in favour money making lieu' all about?
Hang on I get you I saw Roska chartering a helicopter to take him to his latest festival show, he's hanging out with Jay Z and Timbaland now.....comparing tracks such as Redlight and Roses Gabors 'Stupid' to tunes by Miss Fire is also plain 'STUPID'. Redlight's sound is honed and slick and is the sound of an experienced music maker, Miss Fire's tracks are basically raw demos with a lot of potential - can't you hear this? Some of the songwriting on UK Funky tracks is poor? Of course it is, some of it is so raw, they are probably recording half the vocal into the laptop via the laptop mic....
As for the constant quest to to define what UK Funky is, this makes me laugh no end. UK Funky is straight up underground, UK music. For some i.e Lil Silva/Marcus Nasty it's the sound of grime kids discovering the house music of Kenny Dope, Karizma and beyond, it's a phrase coined when these people heard stuff like Bugz In The Attic's remix of Amy Winehouse, In My Bed and starting saying stuff like 'this is like some kind of funky house music'......it's real simple folks, it's certainly not a science...

so anwyay i was thinking if jess got to wield the banhammer then i'm totally due a go by now right...?

Tim F is very impressive at objectifying his own taste. We could all learn from him.

His lapdogs rtc and titchy however!! jeeez - amusing to see them scrapping to see who gets to snuggle into Tim's warm, and well argued embrace.

Also, rtc, you have the most insufferable, smug demeanour I've ever witnessed online. Wow!

The notion of titchy as my lapdog makes me feel kinda bad for him. Animal cruelty.

man how does that old judge a man by his foes thing work again. think i mightve racked up a high score today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCB7aBKuq7k

hurts to see u so bitter about the game now dude :(

i would ask why "part time lover" isn't relevant but i'm not sure i care what the funky police are finding fault with this time

As with "Katy On A Mission" it's not a funky beat (though in this case it's more of a live R&B vibe, and is closer to funky than Benga's constipated production) . I quite like "Part Time Lover" though and mainly didn't include it because I'm not as familiar with it, it's not a funky DJ set staple for the obvious reason.

Funkystepz' "Holiday Blues" (or something along those lines) with the singer from "For You" is very similar, and I feel the same way: nice song, but its conservative "live" R&B production makes it feel on a different tip.

Although in general I'm in favour of R&B-ish vocals in funky, where I probably differ from you on this issue Lex is that fundamentally I'm not interested in funky developing a repertoire of "great songs" or star vocalists. If it does these things that's fine but I don't consider it to be a particularly important goal. In fact I'm not sure that it's actually possible for funky to make this a core aim without sliding straight back into R&B proper, and as the career of Craig David demonstrates I'm not sure if this achieves much (Mis-Teeq are are an argument for the defence, but then as much as I love Mis-Teeq I would never choose them over and above the acres of dancefloor-focused 2-step I was intoxicated with at about the same time).

We already have US R&B to fill this function. At the end of the day, funky is not about pop songs, and nor was 2-step, as much as some people might want to pretend otherwise. It's about deploying ideas from pop (in the broad sense - more specifically R&B, rap, vocal house etc) in the service of great dance music - a high "sing along" quotient is a dance music weapon as much as any other rhythmic or sonic trick.

Most of the songs I love from 2-step - "My Desire", "Flowers", "Straight From The Heart", "Moving Too Fast" - are really great songs by accident; and most of what we think of as "great songs" in the genre are remixes - it goes without saying almost that the form of the remix already devalues the kinda issues that go into the consideration of R&B proper - is this singer a personality you can get behind? Are they a decent songwriter? Can they "sell" the performance?

"Fill Me In" probably was the first time 2-step actually did attempt to tackle producing a great song qua song, and encoded in its very DNA is the instability and unreproducability of the experiment - and of course Craig didn't even attempt another stab at the form on the rest of his album.

tbh it might be worth considering if the kind of personality-centric r&b lex seems to be hoping for has ever really been a systemic part of the uk's nature.

Yeah listening to a lot of Smith & Mighty this past week or so has gotten me thinking about this stuff more generally. Seems like the last twenty years or so has been characterised by a succession of movements or trends in the UK taking elements of R&B and then deploying them in a context which is much more producer-driven, where vocals and songfulness become sonic/historical fetishes as much as anything else.

yeah, precisely. in its broadest sense i tend to corral it as a kinda internal reggae logic i think - as opposed to the nuum's embarrassingly glib and myopic "dread bass"/ dub auteur cartography, funnily enough - like a general, i dunno, ever-osmotic interpretive musicality that manifests itself through juxtaposition as well as or in addition to your simpler genre paraphrasology. and wrt to vocals this can easily range from full-figured emotive roots to the "girls off the street" everyday fragility of brit lovers rock that ppl here seem to look down on but really is so crucial to everything.

dj naughty's 'love lockdown' is a fantastic example of all this i feel.

Yeah reggae logic not dub logic is a really succinct way to capture it, it gets at how the song can still have a place while understanding what that place is.

And "Love Lockdown" is precisely it, totally anony-motive vocals b/c you wouldn't want it any other way.

I love how you're all being super-pissy to one another and then some Dissensus dude has a pop and suddenly you all pull rank. Excellent work.

At risk of labouring this point for the nth million time, funky without a proper funky beat just doesn't work, it loses the one distinctive element that makes it funky. Don't even see why this is a controversial concept, it's the same as almost every other style of club-oriented dance music - house can encompass almost anything sonically but take the 4/4 kick out and suddenly it's not house any more.

At risk of labouring this point for the nth million time, funky without a proper funky beat just doesn't work, it loses the one distinctive element that makes it funky. Don't even see why this is a controversial concept, it's the same as almost every other style of club-oriented dance music - house can encompass almost anything sonically but take the 4/4 kick out and suddenly it's not house any more.

Agree with this (assuming you don't mean funky requires a 4X4 kick). I'm surprised lex says he thinks it doesn't feel right "intuitively" (scare-quoting this not to mock but to be precise); the feel of the funky beat really leaps out at me, for all the diversity in funky it's the element that provides actual unity.

xxp and yeah like you say the line from 'love lockdown' back to something like fresh 4 'wishing on a star' then draws itself i think.

"Wishing On A Star" is totally a slowed down funky tune.

Love how S&M's ideas really imprinted themselves on the uk dance culture psyche as a kind of modern lover's rock repository - not a coincidence that Urban Takeover's remix of "Wishing On A Star" and Steve Gurley's "Walk On By" are such highpoints of jungle and 2-step respectively. (nearly wrote "Urbane Takeover" - new bandname right there)

Sadly post Professor Green no-one will be able to cover "Just Be Good To Me" and get away with it. For a few years at least.

Kinda hearing a funky version of "Wishing On A Star" in my head now. It's got skipping 5 beat soca patterns, no kick (like something Ill Blu might do, but the production is sparser). Starts with three bars of just the rhythm, and then the vocal comes in on the third beat of the fourth bar. I've come up with a new bassline for it too.

Funny thing with talking about S&M in this context is that ever since about 2000 I've been sentimentally attached to the idea of early S&M though at that stage I'd heard only a handful of their material. It's always seemed like an aesthetic I could really get behind. Must be that updated Compass Point session band vibe of reggaematic pop-experimentalism, a rooted futurism that neither runs with nor against pop but sort of diagonally across it. Even then I sensed a certain aesthetic union with 2-step though i would have struggled to articulate what it was I was sensing at the time, I suspect.

still not super-connecting with a lot of this stuff, but really like Roska - i need love

<a href="http://pitchfork.com/features/grime-dubstep/7842-grime-dubstep/";>house</a>, but not UK funky.

http://pitchfork.com/features/grime-dubstep/7842-grime-dubstep/

i check in on that lot every so often (most recently the kismet rinse 12) and though i love all their scene anthems in a funky context the dubbage insistence on depth and texture etc for the sake of it still just comes off as very tedious after a while. i know this is a lame accusation generally but i really do think part of them relishes and thrives on their cultivating an in-the-know fine dining kinda thing.

in the case of stuff like 'klambu' and 'pandemonium' i'd argue they contextually confer an "intelligence" that isn't even there to begin with - it's wonky noises from wonky euros and the funky lot understand this

Yeah it's interesting how the same tunes are kinda received differently by the different (sub)scenes, as if they're hearing them through very specific filters.

The Circle "filter" is not one which I can remain captivated by for a long stretch, unless it's, like, a really good set (ironically that set Cooly G did for Rinse FM last year remains my favourite inadvertent example of this sound, though it intermittently goes more dark/percussive than Circle would).

I kinda feel like a lot of the piety towards deep/dubby house one sees in UK listeners currently - not just fans of circle but a lot of what I guess you'd call the post-dubstep crowd - is only possible because they were listening to other things circa 2006-2007 when this sorta sound was absolutely huge in Europe. I burnt myself out on Sebo K's Resident Advisor mix 3 years ago and don't have a huge amount of reserves left to put towards scrutinising UK reproductions of same.

However I kinda like the idea of circle so probably will keep checking sets in the hope that it'll all suddenly click and a unique sensibility will emerge out of the music like a magic eye image.

f what I guess you'd call the post-dubstep crowd

i think it's "global bass" now, which is dreadful but at least acknowledges that it has little to do with dubstep any more

Every time you use that phrase a funky house diva loses her wings.

don't have sebo k's RA podcast but looks good - sinner in me vlobos remix, son of raw, sun can't compare, hmm don't know most of the others - i should get that

i would like to ask the people on the thread what else is like roskas i need love

i think it's "global bass" now, which is dreadful but at least acknowledges that it has little to do with dubstep any more

Doesn't "global bass" also supposedly encompass Night Slugs and South African house? Horrible meaningless term.

what is it about all of this that makes people so tetchy

if you think it's so horrible and meaningless then YOU think up a name, ok

You think it's dreadful as well! It's the smugness of unifying musics from vastly different countries and cultures under awful umbrella terms that bothers me. They're totally different genres and that's fine - the danger is that focussing on the unifying factors (erm, bass, as far as I can tell) leaves out the things that make them distinctive and interesting.

I mean, I know there are similarities between DJ Cleo and Ikonika but pretending that they're part of one scene seems, paraphrasing slightly, insulting and pointless.

i don't think it includes SA house, it's more a way to tie the artists from different musical backgrounds (and countries) who actually work with each other (ie who are part of a scene) together - night slugs/hyperdub/numbers/kingdom/nguzunguzu etc - to make clear the break from dubstep and make it less uk-centric

I've heard it used more often in Diplo-esque ways that throw in cumbia and kuduro and who knows what else. And come on, Hyperdub "making a break with dubstep" is totally protesting too much.

TBH I think anything about "bass" - "UK Bass", "Global Bass" - puts me off for a couple of reasons:

1) The over-emphasis on bass: there was a period of maybe a handful of years in the mid-to-late 90s when people under-estimated the importance of bass in jungle - hence all those oddly tinny sounding stabs at the genre from outsiders and advertisers. Since then there's been a massive over-compensation in the other direction, but by making bass so utterly central the result is actually a restriction in what can be done with bass - it's all either blaring or mollases thick (either of which approaches, don't get me wrong, can be amazing when done well). You wouldn't get the kind of sweet/tearjerker basslines that, say, K Warren used to make falling under this rubric. Instead, the emphasis on "bass" shows up in a kind of leaden stodginess in so much of the music from "Katy On A Mission" through to the less inspired Bok Bok tunes. One of the things I really like about UK Funky is how liberated from the pressure to "meditate on the bass weight" it feels - bass is freed up to play a variety of roles from major to minor to character actor, rather than smother everything in glowering oppressiveness.

2) I don't like terms which foreground their all-embracingness. If a genre name has to involve a concept, it should be one which tries to capture a reasonably specific vibe - this is why I've always liked "balearic" incidentally, its very elusiveness and seeming specificity making the user strive to define it ever more carefully and exhaustively. Whereas "global bass" is all about an alleged diversity tied together by a homogeneity which is usually the least interesting thing about it (refer to (1) above).

"UK funky" is a pretty poor name for a genre too, but like "UK garage" it ultimately doesn't mean a lot, it's a historical hangover.

yuppie, yupstep, yuppage, ydm...

'Dubbage' is a worse term than any of these fwiw.

It makes me think of fibre.

well that's why everyone involved has shied away from giving it a name, right?

also this

You wouldn't get the kind of sweet/tearjerker basslines that, say, K Warren used to make falling under this rubric. Instead, the emphasis on "bass" shows up in a kind of leaden stodginess in so much of the music from "Katy On A Mission" through to the less inspired Bok Bok tunes

is the worst kind of "judging a whole swathe of music by the bits i don't like" - this isn't really a typical characteristic of it, and i'm not even sure "katy on a mission" would fall into that genre anyway.

xp

Lex I've heard probably 80% of this stuff and you can't deny that the bass is by and large done in this style!

jam city and deep teknologi and mosca and kingdom and nguzunguzu all make bass like benga? uhhh

can someone with a twitter acc do me a favour and get onto mike delinquent and ask him to 1/ stop fucking moaning!!!!!!! and 2/ if he's gonna release 'say yes' cos it's the best thing he's ever done and life is passing it by

actually the other guy who was in delinquent came on here to rep his soulful direction didnt he! if ur still reading do the right thing bro man

while i'm at it - weird how that geeneus/katy b/ms dynamite tune never appeared again after that one time eh

like that's the shit that shouldve been yer magnetic man imo

is that "say yes" anything to do with the ill blu/shanique cover of floetry?

no, completely diff. tim & i talked about it way upthread - i will post up a zshare

It's much better.

here u go

http://www.zshare.net/audio/790305179c04758a/

if only we wrote press releases/factmag blogs/yupstep tweets eh

that divine spacepirouette just at the end of chorus is sooooo lenky.

oh it's that one! i've heard it on some illmana mix. the singer is kyra (not to be confused with kyla), who also did that amazing vocal of lil silva's "different". yes it's terrific, it'll just take some time to supplant the earworminess of ill blu's "say yes".

so, now that there actually are a fair number of funky tracks available for purchase in some way or another, anyone have recommendations? especially since funky seems to be pretty poor at marketing itself (e.g. major notes' album = google black hole). the last thing i bought from ukfunky.com was emvee's 'great high' ep, and while i appreciate their track samples, the "[producer] with the UK Funky track [track]" formula is pretty tired - but there is lots of great looking stuff!

From ukfunky.com be sure to get:

Royal P - Between Us
Ill Blu - Time To Get Nasty
Swift Jay - Toppa 5
Undisputed - Sunglasses
Delerious - Truthful
Shystie - Pull It Wheel It (Ill Blu Remix)
Magic Touch Productions - Take Over
Seany B - Stompa
Highly Rated Ent. - Back (Funky Boy Remix)
Lil' Silva - Different
Funky Underground - Dub Boy
Big Kidd Productions - Boomting (Dub)
Moony - Donnie
Kris Baya - Heartbreaker (Ill Blu Remix)
Drew Austin - Swingers
N10-Tainment - I Pray
Naughty Raver - Tease Me (After Dark Remix)
Major Notes - Friend of Mine
Smoove Kriminal - Thumpin' (actually pretty much all the Smoove Kriminal tracks up there sound great, he seems to upload only his swirly dreamy material)