Eww: It's the Ill Blu Hype Thread

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.

I haven't listened to this yet but look at all the new cuts in the tracklist!!

http://www.xlr8r.com/podcast/2012/04/ill-blu

01 Ill Blu "Clapper" (Hyperdub)
02 Ill Blu "Dragon Pop" (Hyperdub)
03 Ill Blu "Heisenberg"
04 Ill Blu "Legs"
05 Ill Blu "Turnpike"
06 Ill Blu "Bassage"
07 Princess Nyah "Soldier feat. Wiley (Filthy Fiction Remix)" (Royletease)
08 Funkystepz "Class A"
09 Ill Blu "Alrite Wave"
10 Jook10 "Bass" (Soulserious)
11 Ill Blu "PumpA"
12 Lighter "Burn"
13 Ill Blu "We Don't Stop"
14 86 Baby "Word Of Mouth"
15 Ill Blu "Me x U" (Plastik Cups)

LOL at "Heisenberg" - have they been watching Breaking Bad or is this literally a Heisenberg reference.

#clapper

new material is thoroughly impressive. i had given up hope somewhat!

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.

― Astrochimp32, Sunday, 1 April 2012 03:21 (1 week ago) Bookmark

true, but the other side of this is struggling a little with seeing quite where they fit in exactly. slightly paradoxically funkystepz are even more sui generis but still manage to work nicely as uk treble wildcards to some extent (although actually you can kinda hear this issue being thought through by 'alrite wave' (following on from 'class a'))

Double LOL at "We Don't Stop" basically being a remix of The Living Graham Bond Dub of "The Way" - it's like Ill Blu are atoning for not having thought of the original tune in the first place.

Otherwise this is... surprisingly electro-housey! I know they were already trending in that direction but it's like the key vibe here.

xp i guess it's more like right now they are this sort of amorphous creature of power looking to mould itself into and around something - hyperdub's carte blanche is exactly the least prosperous situation, creatively speaking

"electro-housey" per se also currently seems to me a little bit of an empty holding pattern given they havent got the organ house sensibility of say billy kenny and his lot

Yeah I hope this is - as I think you're saying - more indicative of them being in a transitional space than where they want to end up. Not because it's bad but because it's always more exciting to speculate on what happens next.

Is there other Billy Kenny I should check? His "Spaceship" remix was one of my very favourite things from last year.

not that i've found in terms of the same glorious one hit of everything all at once, i need to check harder though tbh

kind of don't want to disturb the air of nu-ukg unassumingness with that lot really, the 'spaceship' vibe is all there diffused longform in kenny's sets but it takes the ineffable genius of a dj q to pluck something out and let it sing solo

http://soundcloud.com/billykenny_music