Eww: It's the Ill Blu Hype Thread

anyone ever listen to redlight's show? i gave the most recent one a whirl and while i guess it's kinda what you'd expect* it actually manages to live up to its imagined fun too.

* superficially familiar but not easily categorized when you start to think about it; if i had to place it the presiding animus is that of big beat i reckon! definitely reminded me of jon carter doing an oldskool breezeblock session or something. would be interested in vahid's thoughts if he's reading obv.

also check this out, it's nuts! the berk mumbles all over the top of it unfortunately but i think he says it's by breach

http://hulkshare.com/o6h8dq26uyag

full show here

That tune is amazing!!!

Whoa! Thx for that r/t/c!

Okay his May 2011 promo mix is really ace:

http://soundcloud.com/thelivinggrahambond/highpressurelowfrequencies

YES. Thanks for this Tim, really liking this mix. To me this is kind of like the ultimate party music i.e. it's actually fun & bouncy & kind of inventive (but in a cheerful, not very self-conscious way) rather than just boshy. Plus anything with a version of Monkey See Monkey Do can't really go wrong. Warehouse Bird is a cracker too, yeah.
About to give that Redlight show a shot (Planet X is still one of my current fave tunes). I guess at this stage this is now more the 'Ill Blu/Graham Bond/Redlight/general chunky bangers hype thread'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vH8XsdMkzok

just to save incorrect googling casting a pall over my swag

do wish they hadnt tried to be a bit clever with it but thumbs up still

I guess at this stage this is now more the 'Ill Blu/Graham Bond/Redlight/general chunky bangers hype thread'.

― Mr Andy M, Friday, 29 July 2011 20:52 (3 days ago) Bookmark

yah this is how i was working it

would like to help with "graham bond" but much like with "jhene aiko" something dark in me folds its arms and straight refuses to check

hopefully my therapist will bring the remedy one day

His name is awful and annoying admittedly.

haha yeah i mean you try not to be shallow and follow through on your basic stated tenets but graham bond (remixing some awful awful AWFUL swedish discobelle goons to boot) really does bring the bloghouse wince so unforgivingly hard - likewise aiko screaming cutesy ill-starred mp3 pet cause etc

http://i.imgur.com/HASa2.gif

That's totally hypnotic.

Yeah it's kind of astonishing how painful the vocals on "The Way" are, and yet dude still brought this awesome beat, it makes you question his sense and judgment that he would waste it on something like that. I guess he wised up tho.

When I delved a bit deeper into Redlight last year I was kinda amazed how much ropey frankendance there was in there, like the sort of thing you'd have heard on any Kitsune-hyping blog c. 2007, and had trouble squaring that with 'Stupid'. I suppose Ill Blu work so well because they're grounded in funky even as their sound gets so big it bursts out of it, and yeah I know huge maximalist bangers are very 2011 but the line between that and Chase & Status or Nero or something is kinda thin.

My longer-term worry about Ill Blu is that the prospect of an actual album might make them switch up their sound a bit more. This maybe groundless but still, Bhangra Knights is thrilling in the middle of a mix of all their other stuff but it's not a rhythmic change I'd ever want them to repeat.

Yeah "Bhangra Knights" is totally stunning as a one off. Though what's kinda clever about it is that it's only the big snare on the 3 that makes it seem very dubstep - if you removed that (or, rather, replaced it with a kick) it'd sound a lot like their other material. It's like they're doing it just to show that they can fuck with you.

Given none of their 2011 tunes have been released though I wouldn't be surprised if what we've heard to date makes up a large chunk of the album.

Slightly boring question - what do you guys mean when you talk about frankendance? It's not a concept I'm familiar with. Just from the name I'm getting the impression of something like Frankenstein's monster that's cobbled together from bits and pieces of different things and therefore doesn't really have a life of its own. Am I on the right track here?
(Apologies for only posting in the same 3 funky-related threads over and over btw, I will warm up to joining in on some of the others eventually).

the monster does have a life of its own, it's just that since its agreeable and educated nature can only be discerned by kindly old blind men like vahid it has sworn vengeance on its father and accidentally strangled his beloved young son named funky

or something

it's just that since its agreeable and educated nature can only be discerned by kindly old blind men like vahid

A+

the juke/bmore/bloghouse frankenstein dance music they play at clubs

I had forgotten "blogmore"!

You guyz are just the best.

^ Cheers for the link, I think I've pretty much got the gist of it now.
rtc that Redlight show you posted a while back was quite good btw. Not every one on there was a winner obv, but a higher ratio of hits to misses than I expected (maybe I had low expectations 'cause I was worried it was all going to be ultra-overdriven tunes with straight drum loops a la Progress). #slowresponses

Ill Blu are threatening to give this away for free:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq4nseLFTCk

this is sooo good

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

Download link (facebook only) for "Aztec":

http://www.facebook.com/ILLBLU?sk=app_102402439866289

Yah, The Living Graham Bond really gets this faux-funky malarky:

http://soundcloud.com/thelivinggrahambond/noisses-the-don-ft-serocee-the

^^^ fab.

Yeah that one's real nice. Wouldn't even call it faux-funky anymore, beat-wise at least it's all the way there.
On the IB tip, yesterday I checked out the podcast of their Rinse show for the first time in a while and I'd have to say I wasn't enjoying it too much. There were some cool tunes (like Redclock by Eastwood - hope that one comes out) but also quite a few stiff, clunky ones that just felt a bit meh. Not sure how many were made by them or by other people. Aztec is still decent though.

Yeah at this stage it's only "faux" because of his ridiculous name!

LOL I hadn't considered that.
The 'Dead Graham Bond' was a jazz-funk/fusion dude from the 60s iirc? Still a bloody stupid name obv.

Just listening to Mistajam now and liking it so far. Tick Tock reminds me of tribal guarachero, but maybe that's just due to my limited frame of reference.

Very possible it sounds like tribal guarachero to me at times because tribal is borrowing from lots of other stuff going on in dance music, but the rhythms in the very beginning do seem like tribal.

Remember when I was getting on people's nerves asking for UK funky with no or minimal/chopped up vocals? Well, I feel like I'm hearing more of that now and liking it. Very much FWIW, as always, but I prefer what I hear of "dance music" from the last ten yeas (give or take) to what I've heard from the previous decade.

High Pressure Low Frequencies Promo Mix - May 2011 is nice so far.

I would dance to this am dancing to this.

oops ruined the syntax.

Funky dura.

the ill blu namedrop is so addicting that I find myself just listening to the first 5 seconds of a song before switching

I hear you guys do youth work. What exactly do you do and what motivates you to do it?

We run a course that teaches youngsters about studio skills, song arrangement, and online collection societies. We run the course in 3-month blocks. It’s a great way to give back to the communities and help give un privileged people get a chance to gain an understanding of how music works. The motivation is the youth as we believe they are the future and there is nothing better than helping them to carve their own path for the future.

DUDES I NEED YOU MORE THAN KIDS IN NEED DO.

i knoww, can't we at least get a documentary?? obv these kids are the nuum's brightest hope

DUDES I NEED YOU MORE THAN KIDS IN NEED DO.

:/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jH49UCSu420

out of habit i used to instinctively frown at sneakbo's "saarry / shordie" yank solecisms on the drop there but now i kind of think it's important to the tune in some weird way.

v disappointed the video goes no way to illustrating what he means by "clap clap for them pagan yats".

that youtube sounds great

I can sort of smell the stale soak of alcohol, the friction and smoke just from listening to it

"the wave" is so good

^^^

What was the The Wave in it's pre-Sneakbo guise? It's naggingly familiar from at least one of the mixes.

Tune reaffirms my belief that if Ill Blu don't have the common decency to release these as an album they should farm them all out to people like Wretch 32 and Roll Deep and a load of other jobbing pop-grime types and compile them.

"Alright Mate".

I really like the production on the sneakbo track - every element is perfectly balanced, impactful. wonder what scik mouthy would think.

the vocal is perfect too - just enough to give it a focus, but minimal enough not to detract from it

http://www.xlr8r.com/news/2012/03/ill-blu-preps-new-single-hyperdu

I've been wondering what Ill Blu have been up to lately, they've been relatively quiet of late (at least in comparison to say, Funkystepz or Champion). You can hear a preview of their new EP here: http://188.165.130.97/music/music-news/launch-music/ill-blu-return-to-hyperdub. Sounds good! Also good to know that they haven't gone aggro-bassy or deep-house, or simply disappeared, like too many UK Funky producers have done.