funky house sceptics, let me draw your attention to this

very pleasing
indeed! i just wish uptown didn't have a near monopoly on this stuff. great shop but their overseas shipping is crazy expensive and rhythm division seems to have vanished from the web. promising signs from juno download - i hope roska's mp3/wav releases prove to be the tip of the iceberg on that front.

ah! 'unfinished business' has clicked with me now, belatedly. tim was right about it suffering in isolation (though the isolation was probably my own) - sitting down, merely a clammy tap-drip schematical echoplex; out & about, why it sucks in its cheeks and struts like the music in naomi campbell's head! autechre i never knew ye.

nonetheless it is still quite pleasing that their follow-up, or at least the one footloose chooses to play, is a super cheesy west ldn wine bar groover.

also

mr mathz - 'preachers daughter'...!! the tune that has everything

Yeah "Unfinished Business" is a very perspectival tune - yeah when I was listening to this set last I was thinking that the tune makes more sense as "funky" if you train yr ears to the strut of the kickdrums. rtc did you hear Aphrodisiax's "Keep It Moving", which Footloose has played in previous weeks? That's still a bit of a headfuck but subtler and sexier than "Unfinished Business".

"Preacher's Daughter" is great! Such a perverse progression: starts off kinda straightforward vocal house, then the counter-snare comes in, and then that insane "together... together..." breakdown section with the rhythmic explosions and rave riffs and big bassline. Such a WTF moment.

"Whatever The Weather" (the other Aphrodisiax track from this week) strikes me as a very typical Bugz in the Attic kinda affair, although even they might blanch at the organ solo! Which is I guess what you mean by "super cheesy west ldn wine bar groover". I'm not sure if I made it to a wine bar during my trips to London. I went to bars certainly, and one was in West London, but i don't know if it meets the definition of "wine bar" - if it's basically the bar and a corridor with stools and everyone jammed in tight drinking cocktails or shots, it's just a "bar", right?

Anyway Footloose for once goes for a non-perverse transition playing it right after two Bugz remixes.

"Every Step (Arms Remix)" I still love you.

My "Sometimes I Wake Up Early In The Morning To Play My Con-Con-Congo" Facebook Group still only has four members, all of them ILX users... :-( Where is the groundswell of support.

"Every Step (Arms Remix)" I still love you.

2nded! it also sent me back to tawiah's own ep, the way the arms remix frames her voice refracts very well on to her own sparser stuff.

i can never decide whether vocals would be the icing on top of 'unfinished business' and 'mr bean', or would be a bad idea.

Hard to imagine a vocal managing to prettify "Mr Bean", although i guess Lorraine Cato managed a similar feat on my beloved "Pulse X (Vocal Mix)". "Unfinished Business" would probably work with some kinda minimal dancehall-ish vocal. House diva possibly a bad idea.

i think both might work with someone like ny, who wouldn't prettify it so much as, um, icify it? talking of ny i really cannot get enough of her vocal on 'fallin' again' - when she starts riffing on "free" at the end is just, you know, tears unfrosting eyes

that seany b 'lift me up' track needs to appear on the internet/seany b's myspace/anywhere else

words of truth

to paraphrase the bulk of this thread, wine bar is a feeling.

(i did have the exact same reservations as you about using it, actually, but i dont think modernity has furnished us with an equivalent term for the 'whatever the weather' type places, usually populated by funky-minded down-to-earth spanish and indeed, australian type folk. and lots of english too, tbf. but never russian. does anyone know what i'm on about.)

not so big on 'every step'. to me it has a sort of rng pointlessness that only melts away when the breakdown comes and the lady's accent goes overly british (you mooo me, my eyes if they shuh, woaaan stop ur touch etc), whereupon it then just becomes broken beat. which is more palatable for some reason. maybe i just find the sample wearying.

regarding 'unfinished business', i'm sure warrior queen has an opening in her schedge - here's hopin!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

like, the notting hill arts club is not a wine bar. you know exactly what it is though. what is it?

mr mathz' other tune is more classicist and is also extremely good. bit like the 'leader/what goes around' balance - would it be fair to say him and fuzzy logik are the the few who are internalizing funky's divergences rather than just doing their own thing? on a track to track basis, at least.

Has anyone been recording the last couple weeks?

I've yet to get the 1xtra player to work for me, reading these tracklists and not being able to listen in is getting frustrating.

i would love some kind of vocal element on 'Mr Bean' - doesn't have to be much

what about the 'oh na na na' vocal version by orthodox on the b-side of the mr bean 12"? i don't think i've seen anyone mention it. i like it, but i don't know much about recent dancehall so my standards could be low.

"mr mathz' other tune is more classicist and is also extremely good. bit like the 'leader/what goes around' balance - would it be fair to say him and fuzzy logik are the the few who are internalizing funky's divergences rather than just doing their own thing? on a track to track basis, at least."

Yeah I think this is right - probably Malice too.

I don't exactly have reservations about "wine bar" as a descriptor - although I've primarily seen it used on dissensus so I always initially hear it with an implied dissensian sneer. I'm just trying to visualise precisely what it refers to in my head. I don't think it works this way in Australia really - a "wine bar" here would more likely play something with a stronger veneer of respectability than "funky house" (in the conventional sense of the term) - perhaps Buddha Bar, or if they were going more uptempo they might plump for breakbeat. If I wanted funky house i'd go to either a big commercial club (like the ones in our city's casino complex) or to a hairdressing salon. In fact "hairdresser house" (as opposed to "haircut house") is a term I've used before to describe that kind of sound.

Notting Hill Arts Club isn't "Wine Bar" it's "organic shoes".

posh organic shoes and overly sweet cocktails

wine bar makes me think more of sosho

dunno if people have seen but on his myspace Producer Mario has put up four of his best tracks for free d/l :)

"i can never decide whether vocals would be the icing on top of 'unfinished business' and 'mr bean', or would be a bad idea."

There is a vocal... Apple - Da Real Dutty Dance

The Guardian talks about you lot/funky house:

"Keen readers of music blogs and message boards that discuss the "hardcore continuum" in-depth and reference Foucault when talking about the latest song by Tempa T or some other incidental grime MC will know all about the "funky" scene currently engulfing the underground clubs and pirate radio stations of London. Those of you who have got real life friends and a social life probably won't."

Is the "Apple = Jon E Cash making house" argument run in this article and on Blissblog (presumably the former ripped it from the latter) on point? It doesn't seem quite right to me, but I can't put my finger on why.

Mind you Simon R extended it to Roska which just seems obviously wrong.

The guy that wrote that Guardian piece is also Prancehall btw.

i think Jon E Cash's name is just being used as shorthand for 8-bar. the main points of comparison i think are the abstract use of texture, heavy bass and blocky approach to rhythm / tracks, but these are hardly rare tendencies in grime!

my issue is that this kind of analysis (x is like y times z / x is like y if it tried to be z) is a ridiculously simplistic way of communicating what makes music feel a certain way, its an issue i often have with music writing... too often reductive posing as complete analysis (with value judgement attached), it cannot do justice to emotional or visceral response. its escape from this tendency is one of the reasons i love a lot of Simon Reynolds old writing so much!

to clarify, thats not an argument against writing about music, by any means, just against a very specific but prevalent tendency within it

on reflection over lunch the sentence about doing justice to emotional or visceral response doesn't really have a place there...

http://images.yuku.com/image/gif/f472518e3072d2a49c7ea620de3f7307be12ad5.gif

diseensus poster posts link to 4yr old diseensiest ilx thread ever feat. disssensus mainstays. it's a par.

^ dyslexus.

any new sets about that arent footloose/rinse fm crew btw?

i think i missed something...

lol, I never clicked the link in the Guardian article. I thought it was this thread being linked!

not sure i've been to sosho - pics look comparable to the upstairs bit of east village i guess? perhaps i meant those kinds of places too.

Ha ha some inadvertent astrology in that thread though. From yours truly:

Alternative: an R&B/garage/broken beat/house fusion a la Mis-Teeq's "Eye Candy" (the actual track) which strikes me as being simultaneously one of the most brazenly physical, most feminine, and most startlingly new-sounding things I heard of in '02. Although I never *did* find out who produced it (it was bizarrely and shamefully left off the Oz version of the album).

-- Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Saturday, January 24, 2004 7:37 AM (4 years ago) Bookmark Link

dyslexus nexus

for yr reference:

Mis-Teeq - Eye Candy.mp3

This has been my entry point, and now I'm a little obsessed:

http://djcable.blogspot.com/2008/08/dj-cables-weekly-mix-30.html

Have tried some of the Marcus Nasty mixes (at least when Sendspace co-operates) but can't cope with his MC - is he on all of them?

He cycles through different MCs Mike - Rankin', Shantie, Quincy etc. - but uses an MC on all of them except (if I recall) the 1xtra mix, which may still be available for download upthread.

Yay, still available; I Googled 1xtra marcus nasty and was rewarded with a Megaupload.

Shantie is the most um interventionist of the MCs Marcus uses. Rankin and Quincy limit themselves to commentary and the occasional short chant.

so the ukfunky.com mp3 shop is in full swing now, including 320 kbps versions of malice's 'gabryelle' refix and 'speechless' by dj mystery. i tried my luck last night and the transaction was smooth. hope they keep building up the catalogue and getting more labels on board.

http://ukfunky.com/ukfunkydotcom_004.htm

oh and, from the marcus nasty v mac10 set on rinse the other night...

why don't you take your broom, and sweep my yard, you better brush it good......

oh. my. days!! such a tune. no idea who it is. and mac10 says "this one's one away... you won't get this like this!"

such a monster set.

Paul that's probably "Work!" by Masters At Work, from 2002 I think. It's very much UK funky avant le lettre, and gets a lot of caning by funky DJs. Massive tune.

thanks tim. there's my lack of house pedigree showing.

here's the marcus/mac10 for anyone who can't get it from the rinse site: http://www.divshare.com/download/5327266-32a

so the ukfunky.com mp3 shop is in full swing now

:D

i went to my first funky rave at the weekend btw. it was really super-awesome. everyone totally glammed up and really good vibes. bit school disco-ey at the start, everyone sort of...camped out around the edges of the dancefloor warily eyeing each other up, but it soon got packed. everyone went nuts for 'who's afraid of detroit' and 'my joy' but the moment when the dj dropped 'in the air' was OMG.

where did you go lex?

the circle events one at purple e3...

cool, thanks, i keep meaning to get to one so im keen for recommendations. what is the club itself like? sorry for all the boring questions!