rolling back to the future garage/post-dubstep/alt-funkstep/intelli-2step etc thread

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sgn

Well-known member
Well, it's only been 25 years.

But yeah, I meant currently or even within the last decade. I guess Matthew Dear is alright, but that probably has more to do with his production and the way he uses it to work around his limitations as a vocalist.
 
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benw

Well-known member
Darryl Pandy? Did Love Can't Turn Around?? think thats his name...

i quite like jimmy edgar's vocal tracks too... some of the songs off his new album were great mixes of ultra - treated prince- esque vocals meets drexciyan production.
 
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sgn

Well-known member
Sectionfive said:
Not enough songs in dance music tbh
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True, but the ratio of awful to good in the admittedly limited sample size is heavily in favour of awful. Some of it (this is in reference to singers of both genders - it's not like there are tons of amazing female singers in the scene either) has to do with the way these tracks are made, where a producer finishes a track and only then does a vocalist get involved, rather than them working on it together. Even the best singers have their limitations, and this process eliminates the opportunity to work around these limitations. You can often hear the disconnect between the vocals and the music as a result, and this can make a half decent singer sound terrible. Then you have producer-singers who aren't very good at singing but do it anyway because it makes them automatically stand out. Also, I imagine being a "techno singer" isn't very high on the list of most aspiring singers' (the ones that are actually good) dreams.

Plus, let's be honest, most electronic producers are pretty shit at writing songs.

Anyway, this opinion may be the result of having many perfectly good tracks ruined by bad singing (and, usually, worse lyrics), but I think a large percentage of dance beats just aren't meant to be crooned over by singers (esp. male) regardless of how good their voice is. Like I consider James Blake to be a decent enough singer, but the thought of him falsettoing over a proper 4/4 club track terrifies me.

@Blackdown - Oh yeah, forgot about him. Another good one, of more recent fame, I forgot about:

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Edit - @SecondLine - That's great. I'm surprised I've never heard that.
 
Sectionfive

Sectionfive

bandwagon house
Suppose there was chance of a small comeback around electroclash though it tailed off into either the deadpan European or rockish Erol fair. There could have been room in the Prins Thomas stuff too but it mostly intros or the vocal edited out. Promsumer actually has one or two alright bits but probably closer to acceptable rather then great songs. Right up until garage it was like every sound had vocalists who could go on beats, doesn't really exist now in club music with the exception* of the eglo orbit.

There's definitely room for it more now then there has been for a while imo.

Burial 2006

B: With the vocals, because I have no equipment and no studio or anything, I like putting tunes with vocals on because they give it a hook. I haven’t got kit good enough to make the music instrumentally stand up to itself.

M: But with the r&b vocals, a lot of dubstep is very masculine and you often sample women…

B: It makes it a bit more sexy. I like that. I think people are afraid of that sexy garage slinkyness. Those rhythms. I love in FWD>> sometimes you’ll just hear one of those tunes. I’m not saying girls only respond to sexy Twice As Nice music, that’s bullshit, but there’s vibes to be had there. But there’s plenty of people who if they were given any room, would make dubstep sound like slowed down drum & bass. And those people are terrified of those sexy vibes I’m talking about. They don’t want this music to have come from garage.

M: It’s almost like a fear of inner city black culture.

B: But it’s also white culture, anything from the suburban rave culture that went into drum & bass. People’s sampling video games, films. They’re scared of all that history. They just want it to be tech…. Drum & bass was a mix of all those things, so was garage and so is this.

B: I was brought up listening to drum & bass. The thing that was scary for me was when I started liking club tunes that were a bit sexier. I was tempted over to that, totally.
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Think that goes for much of dance music but it's beginning to swing back now I think


*songs are terrible in funky mostly imho
 
e/y

e/y

Well-known member
sgn said:
Edit - @Secondline - That's great. I'm surprised I've never heard that.
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really like this, too.

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/pzjJtXozW2w?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>


wrt to male singers in dance music:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Gj17bGvUQmM?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/4wmyQl7yvSc?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Aguayo?
 
S

sgn

Well-known member
@ey - Yeah, I've heard I Won't Lay Back. Like it a lot as well.

Aguayo is sort of like Matthew Dear in that he isn't a very good singer, but he's perfect for what he does. The talk-sing (or just talk) thing generally seems to work better for male vocalists in contemporary dance music - Jimmy Edgar, Instramental's "Let's Talk", Aguayo, Moodymann etc. The Mosca track is a good example, where for around one and a half minutes or so it's fine, but then Owens starts "singing" and there's a battle between how much I enjoy the music and how much I can tolerate the singing.

Anyway, to bring this back on-topic, the new Brackles album on Rinse is pretty good and has a vocal track I quite enjoy:

<object style="height: 390px; width: 640px"><param name="movie" value=""><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="640" height="360"></object>
 
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rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
brackles album seems a textbook example of dance producer trying to do 'songs' but getting it wrong/doing it poorly. shame cos hes a really good producer. same problem on the new roska album.
 
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