Jungle Rhythms

Great track!

i don't actually think i ever loved a funky house tune for its rhythm.

THIS IS INSANE TO ME.

Haha I'm glad I'm not the only one who listens to funky for rhythm (inter alia) - was starting to feel like a pariah weirdo.

yeah, for me a huge part of funky's appeal was the fact that it seemed to be on a constant quest to find interesting new variations of rhythms i already liked

I have a piece coming out in a french journal in a few months about funky's approach to rhythm and it's on exactly this point, the way in which funky seemed to slide between the rhythmically familiar and the unfamiliar, managing to be rhythmically comforting and confounding at the same time. This isn't a new trick in dance music but I tend to think funky's golden age took it an extreme (to the extent one can describe such a state of inbetweenness as "extreme").

rhythmically comforting and confounding at the same time.

spot on. one of those central tensions.

i don't think i ever heard funky as rhythmically confounding - insofar as i noticed the rhythms they provided a very comforting sweet spot

Lex it's fair to say that little if any of the funky you seemed to like most could be described as rhythmically confounding, in particular stuff like "In The Air" and "Falling Again" are basically straight vocal house.

I have a piece coming out in a french journal in a few months about funky's approach to rhythm

!!

it'll be in french though.

Rev, did you ever hear Dubplate Wonder's Wonderland 09 set? It's all his own productions and it is basically all about that tension, 100%.

Pretty much cosign what Rev & Tim are saying about funky.

Having another boring day where I'm trying to get myself writing, so thought I'd throw in some more thoughts on the whole is jungle danceable/how do you dance to jungle thing -
I guess there were aspects of it that I initially had problems with as a dance, but for me it wasn’t so much the full-on Amen rinse-out tunes that I had problems with – yeah it could be difficult, at times nearly impossible to follow every single beat on them but I could at least generally spasm about to them in the same way that I used to do with like Bad Brains or F-Minus or whatever. I guess in that respect it’s helpful that the Amen break has an inherent degree of energy and forward-motion in it that will come through no matter what way it’s chopped and reordered.

The kind of tunes I had more trouble with were the very strongly reggae-influenced tunes that mostly came out in 94 at the peak of jungle’s popularity. Trying to think of good examples here – Dem A Gwarn Like Dem Know Badness by Tek 9 would be one, or even Idiot Sound by New Blood. Both great tunes of course, and there were loads of others in that style that I loved and straight away wanted to dance to, i.e. I found the rhythmically compelling but wasn’t quite sure how to move my body to them.

I think part of this came from how the producers folded the breakbeats down into that skanking reggae groove – it would create an effect where the beat would seem to drop out at unexpected places, or else where the overall beat pattern of the tune would feel lop-sided or lurching until you got used to it. I think I’ve pretty much got there with dancing to these tunes – of course, like with almost all dance music I’m never sure that I’m dancing the right way to it. I’ve danced to jungle in clubs but not really for full sets and obv not with og jungle ravers so it’s hard to measure my moves against anything. But I can move to it without really thinking about it now which I think is a big part of it, like I’m not often standing around and hesitating.

As a dancer the first kind of jungle tunes that did hook me were along the lines of the M-Beat one I posted upthread, i.e. ones with a beat pattern that was immediately captivating but also concise and not too difficult to follow. Also more steady-rollin’ kind of tunes like The Burial, Helicopter Tune, Sovereign Melody etc. Those were the ones I found myself intuitively making moves to while listening.

Lol 'as a dancer' sounds so pompous, 'from a dancing pov' is maybe a better way to put it.

i'm with the lex on this thread. man, its hard for me to think of too many genres or sub-genres i never want to hear. but this would be one of them. and i try too. i just played portions of every youtube on this thread.

Hey Andy - I used to post a bit on ILC, but I mainly lurk waiting for that rare beast - a good thread about jungle.

RE: Flex. He's a bit patchy fer sure , but I'll forgive him anything because of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jm6qSLB84-0

And this sublime pulsating bass hot pants 4/4 kick combo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jrVR7MOIlg

I have a piece coming out in a french journal in a few months about funky's approach to rhythm

#rare #based

Hey Andy - I used to post a bit on ILC, but I mainly lurk waiting for that rare beast - a good thread about jungle.
Haha I feel you on this - don't post here all that much but when I first saw this thread my eyes totally lit up. Trying to get a bit more involved with things here at the moment though.
Had forgotten about Ya Buzzin Again actually, it's a good 'un yeah.
Have listened to that Steve Gurley FX In Dub Mix tune you posted 10+ times in the last few days btw, so good.

So dark that this wasn't the version of "Watching Windows" used on the album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX9sas7qoLE

wow

DJ Die remix was also great, but this version goes so fantastically with the actual song, makes it maybe the equal of "Share The Fall".

One of my favourite things about the best Roni/Reprazent beats circa New Forms is how that whole investment in sounding like a live drummer translates into this rhythms where it constantly sounds like the beat is just about to fall behind itself, is always working frantically to keep up. Rather than "fluidity", the effect is a very human wired twitchiness.

i don't actually think i ever loved a funky house tune for its rhythm.

my mind is still boggling at this assertion two years later

Haha

loool

this was a good thread

Vaguely related to peak-era Reprazent, I'm interested in that half-missed opportunity circa 1995-1997 for grooves that were on a Davis/Hancock meets Jon Hassell fourth world tip. Hidden Agenda are the obvious example here but I think they actually verge on being too fiddly when in this mode (my favourite HA track remains "Dispatch #2", which is more of a neurofunk affair).

This was inspired by listening to Form & Function again and rediscovering Peshay's remix of "Rings Around Saturn", the way he redeploys those razor-sharp isolated snares within that constantly pirouetting jazz-funk groove. "On The Nile" probably is a good example of this as well though I'd have to listen again to say just how good.

Funny how drum & bass passed by so many interesting potential avenues of exploration so quickly in its accelerating plunge towards rhythmic conformity. I've really only heard the singles from Miles From Home but they suggested that by 1999 Peshay had totally smoothed out his beats. Even "P vs P"!

Don't know if this can exactly be called jungle, but what it can be exactly called is incredible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se1PuiDSVmA

Well duh

In retrospect Trace and Nico's "Damn Son" sounds rather like a hot uk funky rhythm played too fast:

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

Remarc - RIP, DJ Hype Remix. Completely mental.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5nIqbq3S-w

Therapy? - Loose (Photek remix)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2E8ebG0faFA

^^^ more d 'n b I suppose, but still great

This Klute remix of Lamb's "Little Things" - so awesomely on that Arcon 2 tip of destroying you with science:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mjzgcX9_ZU

that was good - enjoyed that. i don't know why i find so much of jungle/d'n'b boring though. where i live it's almost the law that you have to like jungle but unless it's something outstanding, i tend to find it inert or just a bit uninteresting after a couple of tracks.

i definitely prefer the furious ragga-based stuff from the early nineties to the more jazzy, stop-start stuff from the mid-decade onwards. I find that stuff frustrating.

check the reverb on this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KABz5IfhzUs