funky house sceptics, let me draw your attention to this

Also I don't get Cooly G at all.

It's a bit low-key and doesn't quite work as an introduction to a genre you're not immediately predisposed to like.

it was the track which got me into the genre before i knew anything about uk funky! i hate predicting crossover potential anyway, i'm useless at it.

there's been a good deal of scepticism about various funky things on this thread steve - a lot re: cooly g which i absolutely don't agree with at all, the more i listen to her productions the more i love them and she plays the most incredible dj sets. no one really likes the supa d rinse mix. i'm not big on some of the skank tunes, they're fun but at one point it was a bit like, enough already. honestly (tho), i hardly dislike any of it.

but it seems that your attitude to uk funky generally is always suspicious and nitpicky so maybe you just don't like it very much overall?

it was the track which got me into the genre before i knew anything about uk funky!

Yes well you count as one of those "immediately predisposed to like" people - I mean there was exactly zero chance of you not loving it.

"Do You Mind" is too housey to be a massive hit I think (the wrong sort of housey). Same for "Falling Again". (they're both fantastic of course)

The sparseness and syncopation of "In The Morning" makes it sound like more of a pop song.

I could name heaps of mediocre tracks but um why bother? But for the sake of the argument here's some tracks off the top of my head that I'm not a big fan of:

DJ Q - Yours (liked it at first but it got old quick)
Sticky & Paleface - Open Your Eyes
Rudimental - Want You Back
Funkystepz - Sounds In Moruga
Mak-10 - Sequencer
Restless 1 - Hard Press

Heaps more that just don't come to mind.... But it doesn't seem worth dwelling on.

Dude you know that because you don't enjoy all of this stuff you're essentially accusing everyone else of having no real quality control here? It's a slightly backhanded way of having a go at people for not sharing your taste.

yeah i know but i don't think me doing this here is any worse than any time there's a disagreement about a tune's quality, plus i don't actively turn it into a schtick unlike some ppl hehe. it's clear that my approach to this kind of thing is different to yours, lex's, tim's and others here (despite all the common ground we share in terms of taste). i hope a 'fussy eater' analogy doesn't apply here, but maybe.

but it seems that your attitude to uk funky generally is always suspicious and nitpicky so maybe you just don't like it very much overall?

if it seems 'always' suspicious and nitpicky then i'm just not hearing enough of the kind i do like which is definitely out there altho maybe it's more niche/less common. i don't believe it sounds like it should be on the edge tho - most of the stuff i pick on sounds like it has strong crossover appeal or would if the market here wasn't so fucked nowaways. it's just a matter of preference re production ethos most of the time - most of the more popular stuff doesn't work like i can imagine it working and would prefer it to but that's not a view of mine exclusive to funky at all. i didn't click the 'in the morning' embed wanting to hate it (hate maybe too strong a word, it will probably grow on me like 'do you mind' did altho i don't think of the two as having any real parity as productions right now). it should be fairly clear what i do like about this music based on the tracks i do praise. interested in 'in the morning' remixes tho.

it's just a matter of preference re production ethos most of the time

or maybe just even having a sense of preference in that area, and being interested in that primarily on that basis (this is not a slight on people who aren't at all)

But it doesn't seem worth dwelling on

not if just listing but i think with any scene, from a critical pov, surely it's worth some exploring of what you don't like - the other side of the coin (but again it's been a long time since i felt just generally supportive or really immersed in any one scene)

Yeah i should say that i spent a fair amount of time complaining about "Sequencer" because it felt like a direction I didn't want "the scene" to go in. That's probably the kind of thing that makes me want to think or talk about a track I don't like... Whereas drab/generic/boring tracks are just hard to summon up the energy to talk about. Not when there's so many amazing tracks that I haven't yet had a chance to talk about.

i like funky a lot but only really what i hear mak 10 and marcus nasty play. i dont know who else is really repping the proper 'funky' side rather than just stuff that sounds like more traditional or existing house. there still doesnt eseem as many totally fantastic tracks as some of the scenes boosters seem to think - its still quite slow it seems? - but maybe thats not such a bad thing.

dont really get cooly g either, apart from when shes djing. shes great as a dj, but barring a small handful of her own tracks, shes well overrated. her singing is stupid too. the aside of that hyperdub track was great - very grimey i thought - but the b-side was the type of thing dubstep fans would prob rave over just cos its kinda ambient and atmospheric.

ie its prob seen as 'deep' when in fact its just a bit wishy washy.

Yeah but we're not talking about which is the best, we're talking about which has the most crossover potential - the question I keep asking myself is "can I see this working in a plastic high street nightclub in Swindon at 1am?" and 'In The Morning' is right at the top of the 'yes' list for me.

I agree but, to take it a step further, it would work just as well in 1998 or 1999 as it would in 2009 (in a plastic high street nightclub in Swindon at 1am). It is a total, utter nailed-on late 90s garage track. That's what I like most about it, I'm not exactly sure what's funky about it, and if funky is just a rubric under which to bring back all sorts of garage ideas that never really died (and then add contemporary synth stabs) then that is absolutely completely unbelievably fine with me.

if it had actually been produced with the equivalent level of amibition or sense of depth as the best late 90s garage then i would wholeheartedly agree

"Buss It" >> "In The Air"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPTXuV9uDME

what ukg track does in the morning sound like? its more like a broken beat track

It always makes me think of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJOYx2JTxFg

Also this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQXf_tvqx8o&feature=fvsr

I love that one.

xpost "In the Morning" is less maximally "jazzy" than the broken beat I know (but confess it's not a style I know that well). Picked garage because of the bassline and the way the kickdrum pushes into the second bar but it could just as easily be another style it sounds like.

For some lol reason I also associate it with this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5a22_75rWE

which for some reason appears on a mix I have... of late 90s garage.

This probably wouldn't even make my top 5 Ill Blu productions of the year (let's see: Time To Get Nasty, Pull It, Blu Magic, Heartbreaker, Rock The Boat... nope), but i think it's a very good example of the kind of sound that funky will "crossover" with, if it does at all:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2CX_gXNdVk

Shouldn't undersell it, it's a really good track.

steve the pretence that you're actually fostering some sort of worthwhile discussion here is disgusting. when have you ever done "some exploring of what you don't like", or examined your own comfy crippled contextual position, and how that might colour your listening? of course everyone has their pet preferences - but as long as you're refusing to engage with funky beyond clicking on a sodding embed then it's insulting for you to prattle on about how 'in the morning's "production ethos" or whatever is unambitious, or how the genre nomenclature is clumsy even, when you've zero interest in seeing how it all logically or illogically fits together. fuck off!

not interested in hearing how the magic of poptimism allows you prejudice over all you survey either. lord help me i will summon all the furies of pipecock up in this bitch if i have to.

http://images1.fanpop.com/images/image_uploads/Maleficent-Wallpaper-sleeping-beauty-976719_1024_768.jpg

http://images1.fanpop.com/images/image_uploads/Maleficent-Wallpaper-sleeping-beauty-976719_1024_768.jpg

why can't the prince ever wear dope outfits like that? story of my life.

Maleficent by far the best character in that film BTW, yr in good company.

when have you ever done "some exploring of what you don't like", or examined your own comfy crippled contextual position, and how that might colour your listening?

all the time ffs

as long as you're refusing to engage with funky beyond clicking on a sodding embed then it's insulting for you to prattle on about how 'in the morning's "production ethos" or whatever is unambitious, or how the genre nomenclature is clumsy even, when you've zero interest in seeing how it all logically or illogically fits together. fuck off!

this sounds like mouldy old 'you can't say shit about a track unless you live and breathe the scene it's come out of' bullshit. we're free to make of tracks what we do as we encounter them and as far as insults go, i guess it's now mutual. i don't think 'zero interest' is correct, i'm not JUST here to rain on the parade now and then.

good of you to claim the pipecock position (o shit that doesn't read too good) rather than just flinging at me tho

but i do promise to post about some tunes i do like soon (if only being for my own benefit more than anyone else's)

look, if this was about you not liking 'in the morning' on a general one track radio pop chart basis then i wouldn't have got my cloak out the drycleaners - for better or worse that's fair game, and while i think it's still a great tune with its own palpable merits anyway, i do actually agree with you in the sense that it surely is freighted with more meaning and implicit possibility and such for some than for others.

but that's not all you were saying though- and imo it's improper to bring ambition into it (to impress whom, in what context? the international retard standard of wonky noises, europop, and timbaland knockoffs? stevem music? 'in the morning' and fuzzy logik in general IS pretty daring in scope wrt funky as it goes!) and again, something like the nomenclature (the understatement/familiarity/ nationalism that's naff for you is psychologically massively important to the scene - it thrives on not being a new thing just as much as it does, among other things.)(a lesser point really, just my pet wheeze at the mo.)

the rest of the slander is based on more general zzz ilx sediment over the years and probably reuqires group counselling that the world is best not bored by. but i will say it's all kinda sadly ironic cos if ever there was a music with carefee boundaries you could theoretically prosper in it's most likely funky.

btw for all the top crump card compilers out there some jams immediately springing to mind that i like more than 'in the morning' (and are in the same popularity ballpark) are perempay n dee's TIME TO LET GO (i go bit mad when the drop bounds in every time)(and also have the strongest soulful house weakness round these parts i wager), teedra rerub, and even somehow attica pessante's 'make it funky for me' which is less impressive in every way to 'in the morning' but just lovably corny like an old friend.

track i hate... roska, 'whats in your handbag'. that was appalling.

haha "top crump". off to sell that patent to the daily sport now.

yeah that roska tune was shit. but hes not been that impressive since his first 12 IMO. that untold remix he did at least had a bit more groove than untolds version but i prefer when his stuff leaps out at you a bit more.

i came to realise over time that roska's coldest ever tune imo is the never-rated 'do you believe in love'.

that recent 'laavvvly day' geezer tune/remix of his that tim keeps giving the side-eye to i think is okay. well no, objectively it is clearly balls but in context it's doing its thing, honest.

ambition (and/or imagination) is pivotal to my criticism here tho and it's done on a reasonably (but probably rockist) musical basis. this should not be confused with 'where's the innovation' kpunk style moaning (obv it is still moaning tho yes). mainly i brought up ambition because it really sounds to me like they wrote a tune with ringtones in mind more than . it's actually a v similar argument to the one i made about the la roux production (but they're worse because they're actually trying to do something 'arty' and more sophisticated, but failing imo).

argh unfinished sentence there but hopefully you get the point even if you don't agree with it

The problem with the "it's just a ringtone" argument is that it overlooks the big bleeding singer right dead centre in the middle of the track.

Really want an 'Inflation' ringtone now.

steve this is the exact same argument you came with re: taylor swift.

sometimes you have to meet the song halfway to discover its merits, not just wait for it to tick predetermined boxes. and then you'd discover that 'in the morning' is very much an ambitious and imaginative song, (tho) that's not all there is to it. in funky sets it's this massive ray of sunshine which is usually substantially lighter and looser than what surrounds it, often it'll be one of the peaks that a dj builds a set around. and on pop radio, it literally sounds like nothing else - as much as it's reminiscent of 2-step, even that's more in spirit than in the nuts & bolts of the sound. um and it's also quite ambitious to make a tune like that which still sounds as familiar, as if it's always existed, as 'in the morning'.

that doesn't refute the argument at all tho given it's based pretty much entirely on the track's music (having a singer on top is largely irrelevant here altho it's not like it's big or powerful vocal performance anyway?) xpost

um what it is ALL ABOUT egypt's vocal

lex you're praising the track based on it's context and position among other things whereas i'm attacking it as a standalone thing. i get how the former can be important but i don't think this (nor the sense of it being 'timeless') demonstrates ambition on the author's part. it's not like it's been made specifically as a dj tool.

'In The Morning' is intended to provide the answer to world peace, the cure for cancer and will make the problem of erectile dysfunction a thing of the past for men everywhere.

LET YOUR LOVE COME IN
LET YOUR LOVE COME IN

lex you're praising the track based on it's context and position among other things whereas i'm attacking it as a standalone thing

as rtc has already pointed out, the qualities you're citing require some sort of context to make sense - ambition and imagination - by what/whose scale are you measuring this?

xpost i thought this song was about morning glory

IN THE MORNING, YOU KNOW IT'S GONNA BE ALRIGHT

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

steve this is the exact same argument you came with re:taylor swift.life

I actually think I might like some of this stuff but have never made any effort to listen to it. A car was pulled up outside my flat recently playing some v us garagey tracks which I felt had the hallmarks of this sound as opposed to being old house records or whatever, kinda made me think I should actually make an effort. there's so much music though it's hard to find the time.

by what/whose scale are you measuring this?

MY OWN, LIKE ALL CRITICS OF ALL ART EVER HAVE DONE!

the thing about in the morning is that it sounds very unlike any other funky tracks out there so its really like an i luv u type thing where it doesnt need to be judged by the context of the rest of The Scene but if you did want to look at it from that POV then it actually becomes even better as it sounds nothing like anything else in it (if you prize that sort of thing above everything else that is) - so if that doesnt - ambition, then i dunno what would really.

i meant, 'if that doesnt = ambition'