funky house sceptics, let me draw your attention to this

that LD remix of do you mind is coming out next year after all.

not sure about that MC set with marcus nasty - some of the emceeing on there wasnt as good as i had hoped. jme sounded great but some of sharky majors emceeing was like he had been listening to nothing but 'i see girls' since hes been out of the scene.

wish kode 9 had a radio show.

That new marcus nasty set is insane! Kode 9 last night at plastic people was brilliant...love that club so much. I wish I remember a bit more though :/

I bought 'bongo jam' on emusic BTW

some mp3s which might be of interest!

perempay & dee ft. cleo sol - time to let go http://www.sendspace.com/file/v8mm8q
kcat - get off the wall (delio d'cruz rmx) http://www.sendspace.com/file/g6psob
ma1 ft. sophia - i'm right here (perempay & dee rmx) http://www.sendspace.com/file/0dq0ro

that cooly g ep is good - shame its only on cd though.

new perempay -
http://www.bm-soho.com/store/AutoKey/101417/perempay/n/dee/ft/cleo/soultime/to/let/go

not sure about that MC set with marcus nasty - some of the emceeing on there wasnt as good as i had hoped. jme sounded great but some of sharky majors emceeing was like he had been listening to nothing but 'i see girls' since hes been out of the scene.

― titchyschneiderMk2, Monday, 1 December 2008 17:41 (49 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Suggest Ban Suggest Ban Suggest Ban Suggest Ban Suggest Ban Suggest Ban Suggest Ban Suggest Ban Suggest Ban Suggest Ban Suggest Ban Suggest Ban Suggest Ban Suggest Ban Suggest Ban Suggest Ban Suggest Ban Suggest Ban

it's sharky EEEEYEAH p of 'do you really like it' fame you pillock.

i was about to say that shark major reading out a funky poem would be excellent lolz, but now i reflect pon it further he could do a nice line in that kinda quasi-mystical spoken word pulpit house one often comes across. (how good was the marcus bit in that set when he goes "yes, just give yourself to us, thats all we want. is you, for the night. your ears your mind. your body, your soul." btw <3<3<3)

whose are the "drink so much brandy I might dance with you mum?" bars? that made me lol

cooly g 2nded! only heard what's on her myspazz though.

that makes sense, cos i was thinking 'fuck! sharky major was really fallen off'. the cooly g ep snippets at blackmarket have one track that marcus has been playing a lot.

*has

really i couldn't disagree more about the mcing on that set - was loving it until jme & frisco came and buggered it up with their cluttery sodding "bars".

in general my current enthusiasm towards marcus' supposed nu-grime sets is somewhat parlous to say the least; the early november one without much mcing was tediously monochrome ("and this one's called... 'tribal congo'" YEAH NO REALLY IS IT??), but with the old garage guys on board this week, so so good all of a sudden. that bit at 75 mins where an okay hardhouse banton spodder comes on and one of them goes "THIS ONE'S SEXY!!" like, omg ur right why didn't you tell me that earlier! god i could barely hear it above the wonderful sound of some canadian junglist wanker's twatois flashcards flying out his hands halfway across the world.

quite funny also that even when the oldsters did get vaguely grimey as it were, riskgo's "ur the dolphin / i'm the shark / lost in the sea /sharks don't bark / ain't gotta ??? for no cutty sark /ur gonna die in the dark, die in the dark"
in partic, it's a- still real silly, and b- "dying in the dark" almost somehow still feels like part of the housey vernacular, like sacrificing yourself on the sweaty altar of warehouse untz untz and whatnot rather than staying at home and raising a ribena to jme's pointless "buss your head at pro evo" lines. i take back everything i said about versatile and 'funky anthem' upthread; the alternative is too dull to bear.

Rtc what you on, Hard House Banton's "Reign" is massive! It reminds me of that old Sean Paul track from 2004, "Life's Not A Test" or whatever it was.

I agree. I don't want the MCing to become more like grime, I want it to maintain that slightly amateurish freshness. I like that Rankin' only has two raps (the one about the lady oozing sex appeal and the "there's no question of a doubt..." one, the latter of which he's been doing for at least 8 years!).

to some extent as much as I really like this set it also makes me nervous: it's the first time that the possibility of "funky house" losing the house and just becoming 2002-era proto-grime has seemed more than fanciful.

See also Spyro's "Woe", a decent track but just a bit too dry and desiccated, it's like it's come back in time from a future world where all the dubstep producers invaded funky and threw away the fun.

Still!

I think it's time to do some track IDs. Some of these have been popping up for ages:

- That bass monster with the sample that goes "Ah! Gotta reload!"
- what's the name of that awesome D-Malice piano stomper (like a beefed up "Visions") with the horns and the ridiculous syncopated climax?
- the actually funky bass riffin' one at about 34 min into this set with the ostentatious bongo percussion on top
- that totally insane syncopated one at 40 minutes with the Low Deep strings
- the eerie, slightly evil one at 46 min that's been around forever.
- the Cadenza+Bounty Killa one that comes on immediately afterwords
- the massive string slammer at 50 min (this part of the set is basically fabulous. "I wanna see you go down low! I wanna see you go down low! I wanna see you go down low! Low low low low low!")
- the anthem at the one hour mark that's been around for ever with the lovely horns and the big bass explosions
- the one chord house anthem immediately afterwards, a bit Fuzzy Logickish, surely this is the peak of the set??? They big up Spyro while it's playing but I'm doubtful that it's him.

xp gah fux sake finney i was in the middle of writing this!

couple more things listening again -

@ 14, 22 & (the doneao at) 33 mins; you might as well give me track id's for these since we're all here.

@ 48 mins, can't quite decide if it's a rapid or an air france riddim but the bounty killer sample one kills it just like how 'twiss' did and people should totally make more n more n more of them, however weak the gesture is really and truly. i dimly recall an elephant man one once as well, where/what was that?

@ 83 mins, plz oh plz can they release 'sirenz' vocalled just as it is there with the "r u ready 4 the sirenz, sirenz" and the joe le taxi singsong, that would be amazing ta very much.

@ 84 that cooly g abstract wobbler coming in briefly, yeah i like it too; 'dis gyal' sounded great on footloose this week as well. as with the roska refix though, i phear the spectre of overmuch bleep n bass. (roska's 'bounce', also on that footloose show, is different gravy and redeems everything though.)

Yes the Joe Le Taxi rip is inspired.

Likewise that Cooly G track is great only if everyone spends their time acting as mediums for the Pied Piper and the Masters of Ceremony.

Oh yeah that 33/34 min one is by Donaeo isn't it. Even if they didn't big him up the percussion at the very beginning gives it away.

I can't remember if we ID'd the 14 min one upthread, it's the "minimal" track I'm talking about. On it's own I'd be worried but it sounds awesome with MCs.

'reign' is as victim to context as much as any of these tracks though really. fair play to you if you reckon you could pluck it out with adoration intact from, ooh i dunno, let's say a dark, broken, clipped, percussive, edgy, analogue kode 9 set cos i sure couldn't.

hey btw what's that unarguably sexy massiveattackey banton tune with the wispy ladymurk vox going "insane i know... could not be true... he la ta, la ta he le ta, le ta"? (it's somewhere on clip 1 on his myspace.) for, like, it as if her love is a handful of ballbearings she's let fall onto the floor, and trail away innit.

Ha I almost posted before, "I have no desire to listen to another Kode9 'funky' set." I will always check for dude for his "21st Century Skank" mix way back when but at this point it's like DJ/Rupture playing grime. of course the previous kode 9 funky set was on rupture's show...

Anyway fair point re "Reign" but I think a good half of non-vocal funky falls into this category. Also (sshh) I do like some dubstep and "Reign" would be the kind of dubstep I would like if it was a dubstep tune. It kinda sounds like Mala.

I think that Hard House Banton tune you mention is "Turn It Around" - does it go something like "may I believe you / what you're saying is true / getting insane i know / turn it around-round-round-round-round. And then the "he la ta" bit you mention is them cutting up her previous vocal I think. I love that tune! Bass is murderous but still so sexy.

Back in July or so Marcus mixed it into the track I describe above as "the eerie, slightly evil one at 46 min that's been around forever", for maximum champagne down your back cold chills.

Tim. Why is kode9 playin 'funky' like rupture playing grime?

Just the whole "dilettante of raw vital street music from around the world recontextualises genre as the momentary current incarnation of the angry spirit of cross-cultural street-level insurgency" vibe. From the get-go the music is being positioned as being a nice fresh alternative to dubstep, which is fine except that once you start seeing this music in dubstep terms the silly/cheesy/pop/fun factor quickly gets sucked out. When he was on rupture's show (and there's a reason that it was him rather than say footloose or even marcus) he was very quick to claim that this "wasn't house music", "more like soca meets grime." Hence tunes like Spyro's "Woe" which I bet Kode9 loves. His own "funky" tune was even pastier. Props to Kode9 for recognising the vitality of this music faster than most, but ultimately his broader aesthetic is one that I feel is at odds with the healthy development of this genre.

It's the kind of approach to the genre which inevitably turns it into just another serious anti-populist form of post-jungle UK beat music. I don't want funky to be about twenty angry guys in a basement staring at the floor while they meditate on the bass weight.

although it could really do with some sort of chorus (i do find that with a lot of funky vocals the melodies could do with some more space - the singing just never seems to end) katy b's as i do should be massive.

omg that's exactly what melissa and i were saying after the first beyond night (in comparison to the circle night we'd been to before that) - it was so exactly like fwd for ages, boys in hoodies standing moodily around the dancefloor, only melissa and i making any effort to dance. to be fair the dancefloor did get going eventually, when groups of girls started arriving, but the contrast to the circle night was pretty stark - there, it was pure good vibes from the get-go, a really people had made an effort to glam up and they were there to dance and be social, not to look moody. i enjoyed the music at both but circle had an innate embrace of housiness (eg playing 'my joy', 'who's afraid of detroit?' etc) which beyond didn't (consequently the DJs at the latter played 'in the air' like three times in 2 hours).

i haven't been to beyond since though this isn't a deliberate decision. the best funky-affiliated nights i've been to are things like night slugs and wifey, which mix it in with bassline, ghettotech etc (and a bit of grime).

the fwd way is prob inevitable to an extent though given how tied into the grime/dubstep infrastructure it's becoming...from what i hear kode9's fwd set yesterday was really fun and awesome though, so i'm not sure there's that much to fear. yet.

(xp)

oh yeah apparently 'tell me' had a digital release in aug, no one noticed. and the arms rmx of tawiah is on bm-soho. (has anyone heard the arms refix of 'samir's theme'? ferocious.)

I'm not sure thats really a fair comparison. I mean, doesn't being the same city, playing on the same pirate radio station, playing in the same clubs and being on the same line ups mean that there is a bit of difference between rupture and 9. Don't you mean that he doesnt seem to share your populist ideology? Aren't you the journalist 'dilettante of cheesy street music from around the world recontentextualising genre as momentary incarnation of pop spirit'?

xpost - the second beyond wasnt moody like that at all. lots of nice vibes and (hot) smiley girls and chilled out guys.

yeah i do want to go again. gutted that i missed fwd...this weekend was such a huge fail for me.

Sorry, still talking to Tim. Another thing that confuses your rupture/9 comparison, is that rupture spent a long time on his blog slagging off dubstep for similar reason you're slagging of 9. I think you're probably reading a bit much into his appearance on rupture's show and that 'soca grime' quote. But that statement was is actually pretty prophetic of the way Marcus' sets have developed in the last few months, him dropping the 'house' bit of 'funky house' and people talking about 'funky' being 'grime in disguise'. I'm not sure you can blame 9 for that.

bit like how you can't really blame tim for robin thicke stealing your r&b crown eh.

"Aren't you the journalist 'dilettante of cheesy street music from around the world recontentextualising genre as momentary incarnation of pop spirit'?"

Probably, but the difference is that nobody takes me seriously. Also, my way tends to result in better music. You can take Loefah and I can take Quentin Harris (but actually the above's not an accurate summation of my taste w/r/t funky - I've been repping for Roska and Little Silver etc. as hard as anyone in this thread). Sure Kode9 was prescient w/r/t his soca-grime comment (although this in itself was pretty obvious at the time, it's the "not house" bit I think is more interesting). But he was also prescient when he was making "death garage" back in 2000. That doesn't mean those tracks weren't pretty dire though! And they pretty clearly set the trend for a whole slather of mediocre dubstep b/w 2002 and 2006. Not that this is Kode9's fault, I doubt more than a handful of dubstep producers have ever heard his early work. But it's pretty clear that this mindset - that whole post-techstep fear of the future / technology takes control narrative - is inimical to a good deal of what makes funky great music.

Anyway I don't mean to hate, his remix of Geiom's "Reminiscin" is one of my favourite dubstep tunes of 2008, I adore about 70% of Memories of the Future, and obv. he's done heaps of great things over the years. In a lot of ways it's great he's into funky - by and large he's always had great ears I reckon.

DJ/Rupture disliking dubstep (well, until Uproot, which ironically is pretty good) actually fits my comparison! Because the context of Kode9 playing funky was him saying he feels uninspired by dubstep having become too, hard, too masculine etc.

Both these guys are very self-conscious about not simply becoming The Bug, they want to maintain a connection to street music in its genuineness and wholeness - on Gold Teeth Thief (still a great mix) Rupture obviously wasn't afraid of R&B vocals and street rap and the like, it wasn't like he was committing a wholesale plunder of street music sounds so as to recontextualise them in indie friendly contexts.

Nonetheless, despite their best intentions neither Rupture nor Kode9 can prevent their curatorial hands from turning everything they touch into something just a little more serious or worthy than it was before. It's something I'm mindful of in writing about this stuff - but again, the difference is nobody really takes me seriously.

"Nonetheless, despite their best intentions neither Rupture nor Kode9 can prevent their curatorial hands from turning everything they touch into something just a little more serious or worthy than it was before. It's something I'm mindful of in writing about this stuff - but again, the difference is nobody really takes me seriously."

Thats a bit of a cop out isn't it. Lots of people read your stuff Tim. Of course, mainly the chattering classes of the music press/blogosphere looking for a hot tip, but not just those. Your writing on ukg and funky is great. But doesn't your informed and intelligent writing have exactly the same effect i.e. makes underground pop more worthy than it was before, forcing people to take it more seriously. Is your issues here that you are a popist and accusing them of being rockists, if i'm understanding that idea correctly.

Well, thanks Jon. I guess when I say people don't take what I say seriously, I mean that my writing doesn't become part of a feedback loop that affects the music itself, except in a very diffuse sense. Whereas if Kode9 gets dubstep fans listening to the grimmer end of funky (and certainly this is as much as we can hope for, already a lot of these types draw distinctions between Apple, Roska etc. on the one hand and Crazi Cousinz etc. on the other), inevitably there'll be effects on the music in terms of the tracks that get produced, the tracks that get big, the nights that are successful etc.

Yes, my writing may have the effect of making people take this music more seriously, or at least I'd like to hope so. But I also like to think that it invites people to take seriously music that doesn't necessarily satisfy the familiar "tests" of seriousness - moodiness, "deepness", a general air of seriousness that characterises even the best dubstep (and I should stress again that i've loved heap of dubstep this year). I wouldn't consider myself to be approaching this music in a popist way because I'm not only interested in this stuff insofar as it intersects with crossover pop music ("Do You Mind", "Bongo Jam", perhaps "In The Air" if Perempae gets lucky); rather I like to think that if my writing prevents a certain "notion" of funky, the distance between the notion and the real thing (or, to put it another way, the distorting effect of my ideological imprint) is relatively minimal. That is, I want to try to connect with funky exactly as it is - populist and underground, traditional and avant, anthemic and minimal, fluffy and aggressive... That might make me rather uncritical, but it's motivated less by ideology and more by the fact that I genuinely do enjoy the full range of this stuff.

hey Tim, can you recommend a good set that captures the lighter end of funky?

Have you actually spoken to Kode about this Tim? Because I think you're over extrapolating from one, early, radio interview and his position on the music is significantly different from that you're very negatively portraying.

inevitably there'll be effects on the music in terms of the tracks that get produced, the tracks that get big, the nights that are successful etc.

fwiw i don't think there's any reaction against the 'poppier' or cheesier end of this at any of the nights i've been to - really wish i'd gone to fwd on sunday so i could report back for myself, but people i know who ~love~ the crazy cousinz end of funky also loved kode9's set, so i don't think there's much to worry about at all. i can possibly see it moving away from the housier end of things but that might be more due to an influx of djs and producers who aren't that well-versed in it, rather than anything more uh philosophical.

"omg that's exactly what melissa and i were saying after the first beyond night (in comparison to the circle night we'd been to before that) - it was so exactly like fwd for ages

isn't that exactly the purpose of Beyond though? Putting it in the West End, putting Kode on the bill, with all the clear resonances of early FWD and Speed parties. This is in comparison to Rinse's Incognito, which was last held in Gants Hill and was, by all reports, obviously, quite a different demographic...

"Have you actually spoken to Kode about this Tim? Because I think you're over extrapolating from one, early, radio interview and his position on the music is significantly different from that you're very negatively portraying."

May well be the case. If he's playing vocal tracks now I'll take it all back. Having said that, the very fact that they're trying to make a funky night with resonances of early FWD and Speed tends to make me think that the dynamic i'm imagining isn't so imaginary.

Reverend, "light" funky dj sets can be a bit misleading - in my experience when the DJs have a consciously lighter style it means they play a lot of US vocal house, rather than, say, lots of Crazi Cousinz remixes. Most of the DJs I've heard who focus on UK material play pretty much the full spectrum.

In the former style, I have a good Perempay set which I'm trying to find a link for.

See also Baby Face Jay's myspace page for downloadable sets.

who's 'they' though tim, this is Geeneus' night and was filled with DJs like MA1, the Circle boys, and gee is very keen to keep funky vocal and feminine. Kode was merely the warm up DJ, when no one was there.

now, having no-one there does have the resonance of FWD, i'll give you that, but the reason for the dancefloor space is because (i'm told) the funky lot dont come out until much later. by the mid and end the night got much busier, more vocal and housey.

alright, thanks! xp

w/r/t this stuff I'm totally hostage to what you guys tell me. My concerns are more bound up in how this stuff gets received - every dubstep fan I know over here (and there are millions of them now) who I ask about funky gives me the same spiel: "oh yeah Kode9 is into that right? I don't like vocal shit but that Apple guy is good..." Probably it's even worse over here than in the UK because those dubstep fans are comfortably insulated from the reality of funky.

in terms of funky sets, i can't wait to hear the mixed cd which comes with the geeneus album - just look at this setlist. amel larrieux! monique bingham!

Disc 2 - Bonus Mix CD

1. Thommy Davis - Mars Needs Women (Spen & Thommy Mix)
2. Crazi Cousinz - Bongo Jam
3. Underground Collective - Jesus Creates Sound
4. Donaeo - Devil In A Blue Dress
5. Suges - We Belong To The Night
6. Fingaprint - Night Time In July
7. Zinc - Fatima Track
8. Arvark - Well Well Well
9. Perempay + Dee Feat. Katie Pearl - In The Air
10. Geeneus - In To The Future
11. The Dream Sellers - Do It Better
12. Sucre Danny Tejada
13. Naughty - Quicktime Vip
14. Kentphonic - Sunday Showers
15. Geeneus - Yellowtail
16. Naughty - Fire Power
17. Roska - Feline
18. Ralf Gum & Monique Bingham - Kissing Strangers
19. Plash + Friends - Revolution = Solution
20. Mescal Kid - Majic
21. Crazi Cousinz + Kyla - Do You Mind
22. Hard House Banton - Sirens
23. Hard House Banton - Sirens (Geeneus Remix)
24. Ma1 Feat. Simone - Give It Up
25. Fingaprint - Signed + Sealed
26. Jovonn - Banger 27 Geeneus & Zinc - Emotions
27. G Fam S Frontline
28. Grand High Priest Mixdown
29. Amel Larrieux 4 Real
30. Geeneus & Katy B As I

the reason for the dancefloor space is because (i'm told) the funky lot dont come out until much later. by the mid and end the night got much busier, more vocal and housey.

yeah this makes sense, plus it's also still a fairly young night.

Yeah that Geeneus mix looks great, a nice cross-section of the scene, and I'm pleased he's got "We Belong To The Night" on there.

I only realised recently that the percussive sound that zooms through "Am I" intermittently is meant to sound like a horse galloping. It made me think of reynolds comparing funky's rhythms unfavourably to a horse's gait.

w/r/t this stuff I'm totally hostage to what you guys tell me. My concerns are more bound up in how this stuff gets received - every dubstep fan I know...

OK sure i just dont really see why you'd care what dubstep fans say?

same way dubstep heads used to care about what dnb heads said!

also though the overwhelming dominance of a certain musical ideology? or rather exclusion of another

about the first point, i wonder whether maybe funky has a much more significant base and infrastructure already that perhaps isn't as vulnerable to an influx of demands or expectations? i really hope so

"OK sure i just dont really see why you'd care what dubstep fans say?"

Because the (current) dubstep audience (which is basically the late nineties/early 00s d&b audience) is bigger than the funky audience, at least in terms of actually buying records/mp3s, and could very easily overwhelm the current funky auience simply by selectively endorsing the funky they like. I think it's already very easy to see how, with enough interest from that audience, funky could become just an endless succession of heavy instrumental tribal cuts, much like the Distance/Rusko/Caspa intersection only with the jamaican reference points replaced by african reference points. It's already happened to jungle and to dubstep...

Not to put words into his mouth but I think this is what r|t|c means when he mentions the ambivalence he feels w/r/t "Feeline (VIP Mix)" and other self-consciously heavy funky tracks.

Let's get real tim, the vast majority of dubstep fans have only a small or limited interest in funky, despite the interest from some of the more visible dubstep heads.

if funky is getting darker, it's because the bandwagon jumping from london grime producers and MCs, rather than the global dubstep scene.

BTW I was also basing my assessment of Kode9's approach to funky on the rather oppressive dystopian track titchy posted the youtube link for upthread, which seemed in accordance with the line he was pushing on Rupture's show. Are his sets not like that? (genuinely curious) What does he play?

"Let's get real tim, the vast majority of dubstep fans have only a small or limited interest in funky, despite the interest from some of the more visible dubstep heads."

Wouldn't this have been true of d&b fans and dubstep three years ago? I'm just saying history has a tendency of repeating itself in this area.

"if funky is getting darker, it's because the bandwagon jumping from london grime producers and MCs, rather than the global dubstep scene."

Yes I agree with this. I'm not trying to blame dubstep for funky getting darker, which for the most part I enjoy and approve of. There's a difference between the darkness of, say, Little Silver's "Seasons" and the darkness of the Kode9 track titchy posted upthread.

from what I've heard, i don't think that kode9 track is particularly dark, a little weird maybe.

Certainly that tack on the new release isnt dark.