funky house sceptics, let me draw your attention to this

this Footloose show is amazing, thanks Tim. these guys are demonstrating / cultivating an EMBARRASSMENT of riches. i cannot wait to get myself to a rave

OK, I listened to this crap. Can I have the last eight minutes of my life back?

-- Display Name, Monday, April 21, 2008 9:49 PM (3 months ago) Bookmark Link

lols

(gread stuff in this thread. i always imagine when i open this thread it'll just be a picture of someones ass or something. ok back to yall)

"It does mystify me that there isn't more of a groundswell of support for this stuff. There's, like, 5 regulars on this thread? Grime got much more of a response from ILX/the world at large.

Am I the only one who thinks this music is clearly as exciting as that was? (probaby even more so?)"

No, I'm with you on that. Definite shades of 2003 grime for me but coupled with something I felt I missed by not catching 2-step in the moment. The energy's just too intoxicating. Growing interest has turned into unhealthy obsession for me in the last couple of months.

I only just discovered this gold mine of a discussion though, thanks to Siah I think. Here I was hanging around Dissensus wondering why the Funky thread there was so quiet...

Yeah, this is basically 2-step redux for me, in terms of my relationship to the music. It's just so vibey. Except i got into 2-step in the second half of 99 when it was already fully-formed, pretty much. It feels like such a privilege to watch this music unfold before my ears.

MORE VIBES, MORE PRESSURE

Sound quality ain't the best but the Mak10 DejaVu FM set on Butterz has same bad boy tunes.

http://verybutterz.blogspot.com/2008/07/free-mixes-from-mak-10.html

hi thread! nothing much to say, happy to listen, happy to boggle at footloose playing 3 boss tunes as varied as

Donae’o – African Warrior
Delinquent ft Kcat – I Got You (Delio D’Cruz Mix)
Roska – Feeline VIP

straight out the gate and for it to still make total sense, happy to continue to let finney formation dat, left to the right. hurrah.

wondering what that ace carl craig 69-ey thing is in between marlon b 'funky angel' and fuzzy logic's 'work the love' about 1:84 into that show.

i should also like to add to the above (perhaps irrelevantly to some) that in listening to various other shows (ng/ma1/half of rinse these days) in lieu of marcus' singular uh, funky alembic i've been truly impressed at the health of the uk house scene in general, so much so that i could almost forgive them getting crabby about their new attention.

havent yet heard jme's 'terminator' or 'blanka', but i'm thinking why bother waking up an old grime thread for this hotness eh

http://www.zshare.net/audio/16128003c4a554e1/

crazy cousinz newie called 'don't u like the way' is some swanky excellence

Feeline review is up at RA. Come bring the hate.

Great piece Jacob! I wonder though how many people will know what "Destiny" is though...

You don't mention "Climate Change" the track in your review - what do you think of it?

I agree that "Pyramids" is kinda like a variation on a theme, like one of those Apple reworks of "Mr Bean".

Roska didn't send me 'Climate change' as part of the promo pack so I don't actually know!

Also - I preferred my original opening sentence - "this is not the house of your fathers" but editor changed that...

as we were sitting down to dinner last night in like 100 degree heat some car parked outside our house and then started playing 'some times i wake up early in the morning, to play my con-con-congo' real loud. it was awesome.

"Feeline is like dubstep with a sex drive"

Snickers quietly,

Right on Jacob.

"Roska didn't send me 'Climate change' as part of the promo pack so I don't actually know!"

:-( Where is my promo. Jacob download the Marcus Nasty "Sexy UK House Set" with Shantie on the mic (from Marcus's myspace) - it has a fabulous mix from Perempay's "Hypnotic" into "Climate Change", and Shantie's pretty great over it too.

It's kind of like a better, more impacting, more focused version of "Pyramids".

oh there is an ilm thread, i had no idea! i spent much of the weekend getting into this - initial super-faves are the perempay & dee rmx of ma1/sophia's 'i'm right here' (so...blissful and generous), perempay and clea soul's 'time to let go' (she sounds like minnie riperton!), the tawiah rmx already mentioned here, and above all dj ng's 'tell me' - so ominous and propulsive!

"happy to boggle at footloose"

Yeah I'm increasingly thinking that Footloose is such an interesting selector, he's so rangy and unpredictable, though Marcus has the advantage of MCs.

But, like, that Suges "We Belong To The Night" track, which isn't even UK funky and is (I can only assume) pretty obscure, works perfectly enmeshed with pretty fucked up tracks from Aphrodisiax and the like. His sets are full of this kind of intuitive connection.

does anyone know of any archived Footloose shows? i'd love to have some to listen to away from the computer... agree 100% with the sentiments expressed above, he is a superb dj, amazing selection and sequencing

enjoyed your blog piece Tim

But, like, that Suges "We Belong To The Night" track, which isn't even UK funky and is (I can only assume) pretty obscure, works perfectly enmeshed with pretty fucked up tracks from Aphrodisiax and the like. His sets are full of this kind of intuitive connection.

yeah. at least one can rest smug in the knowledge we won't hear any dj gregory or seamus haji, though.

That DJ Gregory remix that starts off this week's show is excellent!

I think this is the key to Footloose's use of more "conventional" US house - quality control. Perhaps because he's not invested in some notion of the UK funky house scene as an elaborate homage to the US he seems to plump only for particularly catchy/inventive US tracks.

i take it his all-american house special for the 4th july was good then?

Probably, but I didn't catch that one so I'm not sure. Looks good though - lots of Kenny Dope.

tsk, set up the trap and now i cant be bothered. i agree with your original assertion of footloose as master juxtaposer, but then the idea that he's only like, creaming off the top of boring old house - i mean would you really have noticed 'we belong to the night' as something special if it were in a less kaleido context? i wouldntve. this follows on (praps overdeterminedly) from jacob's dig, which, while probably just being a well-meaning lunge for a bit of hype, also rings somewhat unfairly: "younger, hungrier, and freed almost entirely from the Chicago tradition" - young, hungry and free enough to giddily embrace chicago tradition until its not tradition anymore, maybe?

it's gonna be v interesting listening to a new set by marcus & co after all this footsie fun, anyway.

also o what joy to hear footloose say his mix of 'thats gangsta' is doing well and has a video that'll be on mtv! hah if some batshit spazz stomper with sheek louch shouting out d-block over and over ends up caning the charts then i actually will enlist in the navy or something ready 2 die for this excellent island.

really can't decide what to rave about most so far - maybe seani b 'lift me up', another vintage nasty crew style carnival tank; fuzzy logik 'cuban linq' and funky akatriel 'on & on', more salsa madness; or maybe the malice rmx of quentin harris, which is just fucking jawdropping

Dream Sellers – House Music Lives: a banger that doesnt lie

btw benjamin i'm taping these as of last week, will upload at some point

great news about the recordings :) many thanks!

natalie brooms' insane texas-via-birmingham diva elocution - "yr more to me than a faynt-a-see / buhlee me buy-bee ima muyk you seeeee" -somehow managing to redeem this rote tj cases number

I've only just started listening to this week's show and will have to listen to the rest tonight, but:

Yes! The Malice remix of Quentin's "My Joy" is simply massive, too-too-intense but also very respectful to the original track.

"On & On" is excellent also.

" i agree with your original assertion of footloose as master juxtaposer, but then the idea that he's only like, creaming off the top of boring old house - i mean would you really have noticed 'we belong to the night' as something special if it were in a less kaleido context? i wouldntve."

Yeah this is a good point. But I think that, because Footloose appears to consider soulfulness/deepness as a category of house music rather than the other way round, his US selections shore up rather than work against the essential diversity of the UK stuff.

Like, that Suges track is soulful and deep, and as you note it's deliberately used as a counterpoint to stuff like "Unfinished Business" which is at the other end of the spectrum. But beyond that, in and of itself it has a "something else" quality to it - a rhythmic irrepressibility perhaps - that makes it seem more than just a soulful/deep track. But you're right that it's the context in which it's spun that draws that "something else" quality out.

Even the all-US-house show seems to cover a really broad range - like, he uses the "all US" tag to justify playing stuff like "Who's Afraid Of Detroit".

Whereas sometimes with someone like Supa D you get the feeling that the devotion to the US stuff operates only insofar as US can be considered to be synonymous with a certain notion of soulfulness/deepness. This issue becomes especially clear when they do play the more obviously UK tracks because it's like there are two different vibes at work. Whereas the skill of Footloose's sets is that he makes it sound like one vibe.

I guess another way to look at it is that Footloose's particular style of wide-ranging "house" produces an aesthetic that portrays all its constituent parts - becoming house as it appears under the light of redemption.

I genuinely believe this: the thinking-about-house that this genre implies (at least when not too beholden to either extreme of US house traditionalism or the kind of post-dubstep parsimony that can see value in Apple and Roska but no-one else) is pretty much the ideal aesthetic take on the form, or the best since early Chicago.

Which is I guess what you're saying rtc when you say "young, hungry and free enough to giddily embrace chicago tradition until its not tradition anymore".

true enough about different dj vibes; perhaps when i lauded the health of the house scene i meant this, more than anything. mac 10 for instance - who i wasnt aware of even being into this stuff until i heard him sitting in for marcus last week - seems like he might be the median of marcus and footloose, with sort of a slightly chunkier grime kid sensibility. (havent put on the vu set yet mind.) quite interesting considering he was reknowned as a don of intensely focused jeff millsy micromixing when a grime dj.

The Malice remix of Quentin's "My Joy" is simply massive, too-too-intense but also very respectful to the original track.

yeah - how apposite to all this that some midlands fella's impure funkymix should also be the closest thing in forever (from what i've heard) to like, the essence of "house is a feeling" transcendence.

becoming house as it appears under the light of redemption

when you were wondered earlier why all this wasn't getting the exposure & exegesis of grime/2step/jungle i tried to imagine what the average punter was thinking, and haha the furthest i got - for all the innovations there've been, subtle and overt - was "just house music, innit." and then i realised that only a rattle-headed dissensian fool could ever consider this anything but a great thing.

Karizma – 33rd Street

haha, this is my carl craigy epic. you can find it on... GILLES PETERSON IN THE HOUSE EXCLUSIVES!!

http://www.amazon.com/Gilles-Peterson-House-Exclusives/dp/B0012JFCR4

which, jokes aside, actually looks like it might be banging.

ooh tawiah's 'every step' has a zed bias remix - anyone heard it?

Yeah I think that's right. So many people are getting stuck on the name in an almost entirely fetishistic manner - like, "I will not listen to this music until it comes up with a new name for exactly what it already is."

x-post Yeah Zed played it on his allstar mix the other week, i was deliriously tired when I listened but I think it was very much a Maddslinky kind of affair.

I just picked up a promo copy of the Peterson comp, but haven't listened to it enough to take in much apart from the annoying promo disclaimers.

i keep forgetting to register my adoration for the name "hard house banton".

It would be so awesome if those guys were like big Public Demand fans or something...

Anyway this:

i tried to imagine what the average punter was thinking, and haha the furthest i got - for all the innovations there've been, subtle and overt - was "just house music, innit." and then i realised that only a rattle-headed dissensian fool could ever consider this anything but a great thing.

...is exactly the reason for the Seamus Haji/freed from tradition stuff in the review. Because when I put up the Kyla review under the genre 'funky house' all the comments were basically in that vein e.g. "funky house? I didn't realise it was still 2002."

In fact I can't actually decide if I even WANT to convince these types of the worth of UK funky.

Anyway "Bring back the routemaster" is getting a proper release shortly. Reckon it'll be a novelty hit?

yeah man, fuck a pyrrhic victory.

Anyway "Bring back the routemaster" is getting a proper release shortly. Reckon it'll be a novelty hit?

hah i imagine lying-ass boris johnson hopes not.

Tim, is there any set I could hear the Roska remix of Footloose's Just Leave on?

I'm really struggling to keep up with this scene, its been producing so much good stuff in such a short time. Really reminds me of how lost I felt when I first starting downloading grime vinyl rips off of DC++ in 2004.

I'm glad I can buy this music, took me forever to track down some of that grime on vinyl.

I've been pretty one note on this thread haven't I.

I'm off to listen to as many radio sets as my roommates can stand.

Um it's been on the last few Footloose sets on 1xtra but I don't think it's on the new one. It's surprisingly subdued, although very Roska sounding - sorta halfway between "Just Leave" and the original "Feeline".

I really want to hear the Fingerprint remix though!

The DJ Jazzcool mix of Aaliyah's "Rock The Boat" is just lovely. The beats on this insane, but they complement rather than undermine the prettiness and fragility of the original.

Remixes of old tracks are quite useful from a critical-taxonomic perspective as well because they really train yr ears to the points-of-difference in the groove and production.

What is interesting re funky vis a vis 2-step (compare/contrast this remix with, say, "Stone Cold") is how, despite the greater proximity to house, the more avant end of funky often has less of the smooth "flow" I associate with 2-step. This remix feels arrested almost, like the producer has seized on a particular moment of groove-tension and turned it into an entire track. Probably something to do with the tempo: at the slightly slower speed the beats are heavier, so any syncopation has a deeply satisfying air of portentousness to it. You can't get past it. So a (relatively) smaller amount of syncopation has a greater impact.

I'm really not making sense. Listen to the track on Footloose's show and maybe some of what I'm trying to articulate will come across.

OMG "Cuban Linq"! Fuzzy Logic just seems to burst with ideas doesn't he. His "Polyfunk" is amazing too. These tracks (and "Leader" and "Twiss" obv) are just so restless, he can't resist piling new ideas on top of one another.

Probably the producer who makes the unacknowledged Basement Jaxx heritage most explicit.

Wookie & Ny's "Fallen" - so lush! (I guess Galleon deserves the credit for that though). Too too much goodness here.

"What is interesting re funky vis a vis 2-step (compare/contrast this remix with, say, "Stone Cold") is how, despite the greater proximity to house, the more avant end of funky often has less of the smooth "flow" I associate with 2-step. This remix feels arrested almost, like the producer has seized on a particular moment of groove-tension and turned it into an entire track. Probably something to do with the tempo: at the slightly slower speed the beats are heavier, so any syncopation has a deeply satisfying air of portentousness to it. You can't get past it. So a (relatively) smaller amount of syncopation has a greater impact.

I'm really not making sense."

i think it makes perfect sense. to expand on what you mention, a great deal of 2step dealt with micro-samples for percussion... tight and clipped fragments which built incredibly slick grooves. obviously you had some exceptions but broadly this was the case. wheras funky producers seem to relish a chunkier, lengthier, more clumsy sample palette. this automatically introduces a greater degree of 'arrest' or wonk, as rhythmic emphasis within any given hit is spread further away from the rhythmic grid. maybe im not making sense any more now!

another thing i was thinking about in a more technical sense is that most of these tracks have their drum programming set 'straight' rather than with the swing settings we associate with 2step. i think that by doing this, but of course with the syncopated echoes of garage and beyond in their minds, the producers are opening up many new possibilities of grooves. in this sense grime has obvious relevance, in its angularity and stiff rhythms

i think also in both of these (and many more) senses Wookie was a visionary

Hmm do you mean Wookie's old tracks? Cos yeah I can see how stuff like "Down On Me" really sets the tone for funky's rhythms in a lot of ways.

I'm glad you understood the point I was trying to get at! Yr reference to micro-samples is spot on, 2-step grooves could be astonishingly detailed without all that details necessarily interfering with the slickness o fthe groove.

The extent to which funky house mediates between 2-step and grime is very interesting in this regard: retaining grime's angularity but reinjecting it with sensuality. (it was perhaps the attempt to render the stiffness of grime sensuous on a groove level that makes KT Pearl's "Mr DJ" another obvious ancestor to this stuff in my opinion - in a way that, say, "Leave Me Alone" or Terra Danjah's productions aren't)