Slothrop

Tight but Polite
maybe a little pique, but i do think funky has been smothered and swamped by it to some degree.
I'm still not seeing this. It's only really been muscled out of the Dalston / Dissensus / FACT / FWD space, and even there a lot of it's been getting publicized and picked up on.

About the only real example of funky getting smothered in its core constituency is that it isn't getting as much time on Rinse as maybe it would otherwise. That's a single fairly venerable ex-pirate radio station, and it's not like it's entirely off the airwaves even there. If that's enough to hobble it then it probably wasn't going very far anyway...
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
@bobby: Well I did say earlier on that i didn't think funky was as significant as jungle. It is clearly not as radical in sound either. I also mentioned that the internet glut is also a crucial factor earlier. Like a lot of people I have scaled down my expectations of what is possible, somewhat regretfully, but I have came to accept that funky could never reach those levels, and learned to just enjoy it as it is, honest! (its still the best we've got if you ask me) I think you're overstating my 'bitterness'.

As for aping Reynolds and Finney, all I can really say in response is: show me a critic who's come up with anything anywhere near as insightful as those two have about dance music from London.
 

bobby

New member
As for aping Reynolds and Finney, all I can really say in response is: show me a critic who's come up with anything anywhere near as insightful as those two have about dance music from London.

I agree with this. I just think that attacking 'post-dubstep' for 'blocking' funky is frankly bizarre and upside down.

Apart from the internet, and funky's own inadequacies (not meant as an insult, just in comparison to jungle and garage's power), the other thing you have to remember is that that as a hcc power, it is totally overshadowed by wobble, which lets face it, and like it or not, is the true inheritor of hardcore sonics and attitude. If thats not a good reason to suspend trust in the hcc, i dont know what is. Reynolds has had more positive things to say about wobble that he has about funky, which is bizarre, but again telling.
 

Tentative Andy

I'm in the Meal Deal
As much as I like funky, I can accept that it's not quite in the same league as earlier London styles (the 90s stuff especially, perhaps). But also I'm not sure it's worth getting bogged down in yet another debate over why funky hasn't 'made it', because what luka was originally talking about seems to be a much wider thing. Not living in London I can't get that good a hold on it, but the factors he mentioned in the first post all seem relevant. I think generally there's been a shift in how music is consumed that fits less well with the infrastructure that made London music so strong in the past.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
I suppose the big question is could any hardcore sound emerge from London nowadays that would have anything like the effect Jungle or garage had? Maybe an unanswerable question, but I'm inclined to think 'no' in this climate.
I'm inclined to think 'sort of'... as in, something could happen, but I don't think it's going to be another 'nuum mutation' taking off as ubiquitously as jungle or garage or hardcore itself did.
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
I'm still not seeing this. It's only really been muscled out of the Dalston / Dissensus / FACT / FWD space, and even there a lot of it's been getting publicized and picked up on.

About the only real example of funky getting smothered in its core constituency is that it isn't getting as much time on Rinse as maybe it would otherwise. That's a single fairly venerable ex-pirate radio station, and it's not like it's entirely off the airwaves even there. If that's enough to hobble it then it probably wasn't going very far anyway...

Fair enough. There are plenty of funky raves going on in London thats for sure. You only have to listen to radio and hear the list of raves the djs are playing at get advertised to know that.

Someone more articulate and clever than me needs to pick up and expand the point made by someone earlier in the thread about gentrification, I'm sure that this is a key point and that post-dubstep fits in there somewhere as part of the problem.

If funky and post-dubstep are essentially two seperate audiences that don't really encroach on each others space as you seem to be implying (not so sure myself, but who knows?), does this mean that the 'hardcore' audience has in fact shrunk, or become unmotivated (as someone seemed to suggest earlier)?

Its so difficult to get a good perspective on this whole issue as I don't live in London, and suspect that even if I did it would still be hard to know whats really going on here.
 

continuum

smugpolice
Apart from the internet, and funky's own inadequacies (not meant as an insult, just in comparison to jungle and garage's power), the other thing you have to remember is that that as a hcc power, it is totally overshadowed by wobble, which lets face it, and like it or not, is the true inheritor of hardcore sonics and attitude. If thats not a good reason to suspend trust in the hcc, i dont know what is. Reynolds has had more positive things to say about wobble that he has about funky, which is bizarre, but again telling.

bobby is on the money, wobble is the one right now
 

pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
'fraid i started writing this post last night before i went to sleep, i see some of this has been said now.

Just going to throw this out there

Funky: not that good.

Dubstep: also pretty dire 90% of the time.

prethought: look at what happened to house and techno with micro and minimal: ableton + laptops + quickly making tracks to go and play out that weekend to a crowd largely mashed on k. suddenly it didn't really matter if the music was that good anymore.

feels like more than ever the music is way less important than other more superficial stuff, like just being seen, getting the facebook photos up, wearing the right clothes etc. most people are going out to be with their mates, hook up with people and have fun being young etc. fair enough, it just makes me feel a bit sad to think that theyre not quite getting the full experience (cue the 'who am i to say what that means' argument) that we had. i should probably add that at 27 i was probably getting the arse end of the really good stuff by the time i went clubbing, but hey! just feels like the magic is missing, yknow?

anyway, imo, halfstep was a mistake. it feels weird. my body needs something more to move with (anyone else feel this?) the whole worshipping bass thing too, i mean, yeah, bass is cool n stuff, but people got all dumb about it "BAAAASSSS!!!" :rolleyes: like as long as the bass pressure was there that was all that was required. i know theres bits of cool dubstep out there. but generally its just too moody/stoned to get me excited in the way jungle did.

el-b made a point in his wire interview about how when garage got too dark, all the girls stopped dancing and the scene deteriorated rapidly. he said something along the lines of wanting to make his tunes sexy so everyone was up for it. dubstep afaik has pretty much stayed dark the whole time.

i know funky is a bit of a sacred cow here, but believe me when i say i went in with an open mind, hoping for something magic when i first started checking it out. try as i might there's just something missing. i can understand what's being attempted, but somehow it just doesn't feel right. it's like the boxes are being ticked; uplifting vibes, bouncy rhythms, cheekiness etc. all signifiers of what made the old stuff good. but i dunno if it's just my own general pessimism about the state of music right now or what, but in their half heartedness (to me anyway), all those things seem to do is remind me that we're no longer there anymore.

when it became clear that dnb was finally ready to be laid to rest because the ideas just wern't there anymore, shit like andy c's bodyrock and pendulum's vault felt like a fucking death rattle. it was really cool to hear dubstep, especially in the mid 00s when it wasn't quite sure of what it was. lot's of ideas being thrown in there. suggestions of genuinely interesting new avenues to go down. i remember seeing chevron supporting venetian snares at 93 feet east and some other guy who i can't remember at a warp halloween party in elektrowerks playing some crazy shit and thinking thank fuck something new is coming up. really needed it at the time. shame really because it had so much potential. couple of years later and i went to this which was really good fun but it wasn't until bracket's jungle set that i really started getting hype. oh how i danced. :( the dubstep was good, like, n-type played some heavy stuff. but it just didn't move me like the jungle... nowhere near in fact.

the way i see it, a few of the main reasons dubstep, and particularly wobble took off so much was 1. there was a hole left to be filled by dnb. 2. people desperately wanted an underground scene to be part of. 3. the youngsters just coming up to clubbing age who don't know any better thought it was good and got off on the fact that they were part of this emerging new thing with loads of street cred.

fact is, it was never that good.
 

Tentative Andy

I'm in the Meal Deal
does this mean that the 'hardcore' audience has in fact shrunk, or become unmotivated (as someone seemed to suggest earlier)?

Maybe not so much shrunk as split between quite a few different things? I think the point here is that even though it might seem so at times, no genre ever really dies or goes away for good. E.g. I think part of why MC-driven funky hasn't taken off to the extent that some people hoped/expected (besides resistance from the houseier parts of the scene, as discussed before) is that a lot of the potential audience for it is already into grime or road rap.
Stabbing more into the dark here, I think to some extent 'street music' and 'club music' may have come unstuck from each other, so that people into MC-based music aren't so interested in clubbing/dancing bases scenes and vice versa. I think ray was getting at this upthread, and it probably goes back to the police crackdown on grime in the clubs to some extent.
(Lol, looks like I have ended up talking about funky even though I said I wouldn't :eek: ).
 

muser

Well-known member
The only way I can see "post-dubstep" really encroaching on funky is purely from branding/ peoples understanding of what funky is. The vast majoirty the post-dubstep stuff is getting labeled as "uk funky" or "funky/garage" in record stores / blogs and I think because of this alot of people have a pretty skewed idea of the music. The fact is though most of those people probably wouldn't know about it at all if it wasn't for the "post-dubstep" thing so I can't really see how its having any real effect detrimental or otherwise, as far as I can see its a one-way relationship without any feedback.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Maybe not so much shrunk as split between quite a few different things? I think the point here is that even though it might seem so at times, no genre ever really dies or goes away for good.
Yeah, I think this is an important point.

It's a weakness of post-Reynolds[1] nuumology that genres vanish from sight as soon as they stop being interesting to the nuumologist in question. Which means that you see the continuum as a progression of developments, mutations and innovations, but miss out on the opposite perspective, from which it's as much about splits, divisions and specialization. As much as a virus infecting and twisting new sounds, it's one trail out of an initial explosion, losing its original energy as it goes.

So at the same time, funky has specialized away some of the stuff that gave garage a broad appeal - smoothed off a few of the ruffer bits, lost a few of the cheesier bits, focused on some of the more East London specific sounds - while bits of its potential audience have already picked up some other strand of UK dance music or what's left of a previous nuum genre - bassline, donk, imported rnb, grime, road rap, electro, dnb, actual funky house, and yeah, post-dubstep - and made it their own. And yeah, some of that plays nicely with funky, but noone just hears it and goes "yes, this is the music we've been waiting for."

Conversely, Reynolds is surprisingly into wobble (and gabber and happy hardcore, come to that) because it carries some strand of the original hardcore DNA that's been bred out of funky.

[1] HA!
 

4linehaiku

Repetitive
... couple of years later and i went to this which was really good fun but it wasn't until bracket's jungle set that i really started getting hype. oh how i danced. :( ...

Haha I was at that night, it was well good. The jungle was definitely the highlight, contained one of my finest crowd reloads of all time, The Licence (Krome & Time Remix). Some good memories.

Ok, back to the pessimism.
 

Aww Nein

Wild Palms
Dissensus is getting a few too many threads that are all about how things are worst then they used to be... i mean hasnt most of this stuff been discussed in the post-dubstep one? its cool to a point, or if your gonna write some interesting theory on it (eg Retromania, pertaining to the internets affect on the continuum etc etc...) but i kinda prefer dissensus threads that are getting excited about a new genres (juke / bubbling etc) or unearthing lost treasures, rather than all this malaise about how things are just vaguely worst...
 

juanroberto

Reprezenting the Latinos
Oh yeah, and something else:

The bitterness that you detect on here from people supporting funky from "dreaded contamination and appropriation" comes across as the bitterness of those who thought they had latched onto, for the first time in their lives, thanks to the aid of internet radio stations and forums, what they thought was going to be the next big thing, only to find out, that actually it has not been that significant.

Why are you all lamenting funky's failure grow - what it needs to more appropriation.


looooooooool who is this 'bobby' who conveniently pops in on this thread to attack the people who tend to attack all of this 'post dubstep' stuff? my money is on JOE MUGGS
 

juanroberto

Reprezenting the Latinos
I agree with this. I just think that attacking 'post-dubstep' for 'blocking' funky is frankly bizarre and upside down.

Apart from the internet, and funky's own inadequacies (not meant as an insult, just in comparison to jungle and garage's power), the other thing you have to remember is that that as a hcc power, it is totally overshadowed by wobble, which lets face it, and like it or not, is the true inheritor of hardcore sonics and attitude. If thats not a good reason to suspend trust in the hcc, i dont know what is. Reynolds has had more positive things to say about wobble that he has about funky, which is bizarre, but again telling.

Joe thinking he is clever there by praising Reynolds....
 
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