funky house sceptics, let me draw your attention to this

It helps that Cheryl has zero profile in Australia, like Girls Aloud before her (though "Three Words" gets some play on the radio, more through the presence of W.I.A. than anything else) - AFAIC "Parachute" could be some failed single from some failed R&B hopeful that luckily got a funky remix before the record company decided to shelve the release of the single.

The Roll Deep remixes being a case in point - the originals sound like bad euro dj remixes once you've heard the Ill Blu versions.

they sound like bad euro dance even if you've never heard the ill blu remixes! really, really bad, and even ill blu can't fully rid them of their cheesy stench. i can live with the "green light" remix but not the "good times" one.

i came round to both the cheryl cole remix and the drake one (that's not ill blu but same point really) eventually. had to wait for the general drake conversation to die down though, the week his album dropped i hated him too much for anything with his voice on it to be acceptable. i prefer to think of ill blu as showing up cheryl cole and drake, really; comparing them to the anonodivas who usually populate funky is an insult to your kyras, vanya taylors et al.

actually what's more impressive about the "parachute" remix isn't so much that ill blu made cole's vocal into something semi-compelling but that they found an actual SONG in that mush of nothingness.

probably worth noting that the crazy cousinz remix of the first c.cole single failed (probably cuz there really was no song there) and the geeneus remix of the second c.cole single was only ok (the original probably being about as good as she'll get)

they sound like bad euro dance even if you've never heard the ill blu remixes!

Yeah I know, I mean that they sound like knock-offs too, an afterthought rather than the original. Like all the weird Spanish radio version arrangements of pop tunes I'm hearing here in Madrid (including "According To You" and "Need You Now"?!?!).

What's remarkable about quite a few Ill Blu remixes is that they end up rearranging the tunes into more workable songs than before. It's like Queer Eye For The Straight Guy or Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares where the experts ostensibly arrive to do-over one thing but end up saving your marriage in the process.

perhaps i'm just out of practice but i've turned on marcus live now and rankin sounds totally wankered already - theyre arguing about who's going to the shop again

all-instrumentals tonight says the man

omg could this really be... a rankin verse i've never heard before? O____O

oh shit nng 'i keep' refix - sick!!

some great new dubs here and there tonight

oh naaahhhh this one are you maddddd - finding the exact leyline between xylophone tribalism and 2step delights

k gonna stop liveblogging cos providing light nor heat with all this

See the problem is thinking of it as a Cheryl Cole tune. It's not anymore. It's an Ill Blu tune, with some anonymous diva singing, and Ill Blu's entire raison d'être is totally transforming fairly poor originals.

I think when people talk about funky vocal tunes they're too quick to start talking in terms of songs and singers - is this tune an anthem, is that diva a good singer, etc - as if, once you add vocals, we're no longer in the realm of dance music per se, and we're now talking about R&B qua R&B or even pop qua pop (connected to this is the (IMO) fruitless search for a potential "name" singer who can rep for funky). But in the context of funky, the song and the singer are most of the time as much a "production trick" as anything else

so to like this tune you have to pretend she's not Cheryl Cole and not know she's in Girls Aloud? Sorry i dont buy it because even given those two points her vocals are still in for 90% of the track. I'm not doubting Ill Blu's talent but all they added to this remix was that synth and their drums, basically. The single largest musical element is her voice - if fact it carries the mix. if you had less of it they would have had to added more elements to the arrangement carry the rest of the mix.

i loved garage's relationship with r&b refixes, but they just did a lot more with the vocals - Sunship's chopped vox dub of Craig David is a persy, Todd's trademarks too - but here it's just a straight vocal and no amount of driving drums or pretending it's no longer a Cheryl Cole tune will take away from the fact that the one dominant element of this track doesnt cut it...

... Hottest By Far by contrast, ohmydayz...

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

That Cheryl Cole remix is terrific and it's all about the rising synth chords in the chorus. I really like the Green Light one as well, Ill Blu could make a whole career out of boshing up watery pop-grime and I would be happy.

It's What You Do is a straight-up single of the year contender for me, funky or otherwise.

you have to pretend she's not Cheryl Cole and not know she's in Girls Aloud

It's easy enough not to notice she's Cheryl Cole even when listening to her own records. Girls Aloud even more so. Her vocals are so anonymous.

It's not about pretending it's not Cheryl, it's about not caring either way. Martin you've given no reason not to like the tune apart from a standing objection to the name "Cheryl Cole".

new marcus is up - if you do not listen ur a dickhead

http://relay.exequo.org/rinsefm/podcast/MarcusNasty220910.mp3

also the ill blu shows have had some good bits but this is their best full set so far - highly recommended

http://relay.exequo.org/rinsefm/podcast/IllBlu210910.mp3

^^new marcus = massive

who gives a fuck about cheryl, anyway? the ill blu rmx is great on its own terms

completely ot : just remembered i've never consciously heard 'blanka'/'terminator' by jme and 'wearwolf' by bearfoot monk. i believe they were in some of nasty's early sets at deja vu, but unfortunately they are now lost amidst the dark corners of my deceased laptop.

could someone up a radio rip or one or two shows where these tracks might be? thx in advance

haha did you really "just remember" that.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=P0KYSSCP

this link to my old rip of marcus on 1xtra in june 08 still works; it's got 'blanka' and 'terminator' on it apparently (don't remember them meself).

'wearwolf' doesnt ring a bell either but i can put a random set up later yeah. see footloose played it a couple times - damn i miss that guy, what's he up to these days? google's not saying much.

funky house sceptics, let me draw your attention to this

oh and the tracklisting for that is here.

hey 'blanka' is (was) really good! totally captures the sadness of a electrified green monster entering a fighting tournament for no particular reason.

today's psuedo-hollertronic wankers really need reminding of what original 'tropical' was before they take its name in vain imo.

^^bless

(that tracklisting is great ('mr. seduction' <3))

just remembered 'as in' i was on a 2007/8 revival (liberty, twiss, bloodclaart, tell me, etc.) and thought about some stuff circa that time that i never quite got to listen properly.

"today's psuedo-hollertronic wankers really need reminding of what original 'tropical' was before they take its name in vain imo."

^^agree & 'tropical' = bbk's best release ever

Hey r|t|c, in your tracklist for the 2nd September Marcus show, is there another track squeezed in after Doc Daneeka's remix of "Fatherless"? The one that goes "bamp ba da bam di dam ba da dum ba!" and has the urgent rising synth squeals? Some vague and unreliable memory suggests to me that it might be Seiji?!?

I care way too much about this sort of thing obv.

tim, do you mean the seiji remix of havana cultura?

I don't know, does that sound like that? It's a very hectic tune, kinda the "Rass Out" of 2010.

yeah that's definitely the havana cultura remix (which you can stream/download here fyi) but i don't hear it right after the daneeka there, only seven minutes or so later on?

(also my tracklist was for the 8th sept not the 2nd - but surely that was just a typo.)

ur right, it is pretty 'rass out'-ish. my fave memory of it is from the 7th july set (i think? the week after the first all-instrumentals show anyway) when shantie manages to weave his "one: lyrical masters degree, two: lyrical gcse" etc bars perfectly in between those rising synth squeals and finishes dead on the drop. so much hype!

yeah there it is, round the half hour mark, 7th july.

unhealthy obsessions...

http://www.seiji.co.uk/remixes/26/chekere-seiji-rerub-gilles-peterson-havana-cultura

oh wait this is the link you want

Ah maybe I misread your 8 Sept tracklist - trying to load the whole thread crashed my computer when I tried to double-check before posting above.

Yeah that's the tune. Banger.

Loved Shantie on top of the Americano Refix last week, he managed to ride the drop perfectly twice in a row (at the 45 min mark). Speaking of, does Shantie's omnipresence on Marcus' show mean he's left The Last Supper? Or is he moonlighting?

i'd assumed he was moonlighting yeah.. haven't listened to enough live fm to work out if he has any particular allegiance there. i did manage to remember to tune into last supper for the first time on saturday but turns out they werent even on - dunno if that has anything to with it....

has anyone found out who did the americano refix btw? (much less find an instrumental mp3). what with all that clicking, whirring and till-ringing and absurb carnivalesque i can't help but be reminded of 'rat race'/'salt beef' era danny weed...

Thought it was actually Maxwell D that did it? The web-based attributions are vague but they never suggest anyone else has been involved.

Also LOL at the "It's A London Thing" "Refix" at the end of the 22 September Marcus show - I'll have to listen to the original to confirm but from memory I couldn't spot what was any different.

Andy on Dissensus now saying he thinks the Americano refix is by Lil Silva.

no, the silva and hardhouse banton ones are just kinda predictable choppy edits. i suppose it couldve been maxwell himself but i wasn't aware he had any track record with production.

haha yeah the nng refix wasn't brilliant either tbh - put the bosh in but forgot the wiggle - but still, nice little hit from the nuum crack pipe.

not enough love in the world for that 22nd sept marcus though - the insane monster triple tribal espresso of sets.

I only just finished listening to it today... Monster of a set.

Plus it's nice with Rankin and Shantie' balancing each other out, it seems like every time I get a little tired of "skilly in the villy" etc Rankin takes over with "she touched my body like lightning" etc. and vice versa. I think Rankin is actually kinda relieved he doesn't have to carry things.

It always slightly surprises me to realise just how predominant girls are as a topic in Rankin's rhymes actually. It shouldn't, at this point.

Is it just me or has Marcus been a lot stronger this year than last year on the whole? I think the quality control is higher, and he's no longer being so strict in the division of vocal tunes and ruff tunes.

I think the version of We No Speak Americano that your referring to could be the Myd Remix

spot on - thank you mr signal man!

a hollertronic bloghouse frenchman... why didn't i think of that...

The nicely reliable aspect of UK Funky's adoption of outside stuff (this, "Klambu", "Pon De Floor", "Hey Hey", "Badman Riddim", "We Belong To The Night", "Wad" etc. etc.), especially theoretically dodgy stuff like hollergrams from France, is that it's incredibly rare for anyone with any actual standing in the scene to get it wrong - if only because they're probably taking their cues from someone else reliable like marcus. You'd think they'd stuff it up more often than they do (I guess Marcus did play that boring Mosca tune that one time..).

Speaking of which (although it hasn't received endorsement from any funky DJs yet to my knowledge), allow me to recommend the UK Funky remix of Toddla T & Wayne Marshall's "Sky Surfing" by hollertronicists Douster, which is totally massive and pretty amazing in the beats department.

Just had to review "Green Light" for my local. Gratuitously talked about the Ill Blu remix even though I have no idea whether it'll end up on the Oz release. Was reminded yet again how perfect Ill Blu are for Roll Deep - they should just become their permanent producers. Brazen in particular sounds (regardless of what he's saying which is rarely of great import) awesome on top of Ill Blu productions.

go on, someone ask me if i love the new farah/screama. oh wait that's right you already know. (25mins, new marcus.)

other highlights: that sickkkkk marimba bubbler again at 7 mins, the new evil mix of bassboy 'drip', and the long-awaited return of fuzzy logik (fresh from a trip over the pond to steal pharrell's strings by the sound of it.)

someone else will have to report if there's anything good later on since mr not-my-cup-of-tea ramzee shows up for the 2nd hour :/

funky's relation to outside stuff is a pretty nebulous can of worms, i'm struggling to corral it all into something not book-length tedious.

wrt marcus being better than previous years - i don't know if i can see the trees for the wood any more really? i might have agreed earlier but that marcus 1xtra set from 08 i rescreened surprised me with how much it still rules.

I've never really worked out why Hey Hey in particular was so embraced by funky, given how stiff and cold and mechanistic the groove itself is. Obviously the vocal is amazing but I'm surprised it hasn't been given a funky refix. Tracks like Pon De Floor and The Whistler make much more sense.

maintain it was cos the funky crowd had all read rip it up and start again and ran out to get it purely cos vivien goldman was on vox.

(or is it the bird from the noisettes? have never worked this out.)

really though it's cos it has pwopah english singing, a little boogie shuffle to it, and some mildly strange noises. as evidenced by devine collective refix you unforgivably missed!!

and yeah i dunno about cold and mechanistic, it's hardly cooly g man

I've never really worked out why Hey Hey in particular was so embraced by funky, given how stiff and cold and mechanistic the groove itself is.

There are two separate counter rhythms (one a soft snare or something, one that hail on the tin roof sound) both following (different versions of) a caribbean 5-beat-per-bar rhythm, i.e. funky's no. 1 rhythmic maneuver. Any tune at that tempo and with those rhythms is gonna have to work hard to not fit in a funky set. "House Girls Pt. 6" focuses on the second of the counter-rhythms with good reason (Ferrer's "Transitions" would fit as well for the same reason, though somewhat less because it's lacking a vocal, and it's a bit deeper/more tasteful).

Same reason "Stupid" is a funky tune.

In that sense "Hey Hey" seems really obviously a funky tune to me. There ar many more "proper" funky tunes where what makes the tune funky is harder to articulate. Like, say, that Drew Austin remix of Drake is obv a masive funky anthem, but, apart from the fact that it's, like, shuffly, I'd be hard pressed to say exactly what it is about the arrangement that makes it so.

Maybe the "hail on tin roof sound" has just distracted me at all times.

Ironically I think that's what makes it the UK funky anthem it is. In a scene where tunes like Lil Silva's "Seasons" (not to mention all his big tunes this year), SMI's "Not Ready", Champion's "Motherboard" and Undisputed's "Terror" are all anthems, mechanistic coldness becomes not merely a recurrent feature but an active selling point.

Could go further and say that UK funky emerged as its own distinct thing at the precise moment when a virus of mechanistic coldness infected the prevailing, conventionally "funky" warm fluidity of its early, US-house honouring phase. Not necessarily in every track - "Do You Mind" is neither cold nor mechanistic - but as a threat on the horizon in the context of the mix.. at any moment the DJ could mix into an Apple tune.

wrt marcus being better than previous years - i don't know if i can see the trees for the wood any more really? i might have agreed earlier but that marcus 1xtra set from 08 i rescreened surprised me with how much it still rules.

No I'm still all about Marcus from 2008. My first love. But I think during about Feb - Nov 2009 he wasn't as reliable. I think if I lost all my 2009 Marcus sets the only one I'd really mourn is 15 January. Maybe some of the Nov/Dec sets.

okay yeah, i like the threat distinction.

http://soundcloud.com/championdj/champion-uk-funky-conga-mix

following that last tribal marcus blowout i also really like this recent champion minimix - not to greenlight a future of mnml funky or anything but i am finding it particularly absorbing just now. flirting with tedium can be rewarding i guess haha.

in fact yeah, i like to think the way it articulates itself around a frail spine of lesser-heralded dj naughty instrumentals kind of bears out my view of him as funky's master of the kitchen sink. this is probably why i shy away from going too ham about his dexplicit remix, what with its ill bluish high-pitched ladyragga insistence.

http://soundcloud.com/djnaughtymusic/dj-naughty-feat-a-l-i-like-it
http://soundcloud.com/djnaughtymusic/andriah-dance-dj-naughty-vocal-mix

naughty also has these two very nice vocal cuts up on his page now btw.

this is probably why i shy away from going too ham about his dexplicit remix, what with its ill bluish high-pitched ladyragga insistence.

The above makes sense to me as a principled position, but i'm a sucker for ill bluish high-pitched ladyragga insistence.

Yeah I guess the Follow Me remix basically splits the difference precisely between the Naughty and Ill Blu remixes of "OMG".

Lol at Greyman's remix of "Sunglasses" (first track on that Champion DJ mix) actually being a remix of "Trouble" and him probably not even realising. Very cheeky of Undisputed to release "Terror" as a purportedly new tune, when it's really along the lines of a particularly awesome refix.

Actually Undisputed strike me as a pretty interesting case w/r/t what I was talking about upthread with funky rhythms that are hard to pin down. The most thrilling parts of "Terror" are when it breaks down to just an on the beat kick/snare/kick/snare pattern with a synth chord on every beat, clattering ever so slightly on the fourth beat in every second bar but otherwise being this kind of determined trudge in which all of the syncopation you'd otherwise get is almost entirely implied, but implied so heavily, like the beat is only staying "straight" through this immense exertion of pressure on it, and you know the rolling conga loops are gonna be back. It's a very Doc Scott kind of trick.

lol tbh i am so so lost in the sea of soundalikes, vip edits and the billion billion remixes surrounding undisputed i couldnt possibly hope to comment. not sure if i remember 'trouble' at all.

and yeah don't get me wrong, the dexplicit remix does sound fantastic, i just wouldnt want all the careful rainyday vignettes to hear me saying so.

"Trouble" is the one that sounds exactly like "Sunglasses" except it staggers and the sample is "May I have your attention please... it's time for lift off" (or something like that) instead of "Put your sunglasses on."