Re Ill Bu they definitely lost their personality when they started trying to make more straight-up house tunes. I'd welcome their return if they could unleash it again without just making funky tunes, but even then I can't help feeling the time has passed.
Funky/London/UK House
Re Ill Bu they definitely lost their personality when they started trying to make more straight-up house tunes. I'd welcome their return if they could unleash it again without just making funky tunes, but even then I can't help feeling the time has passed.
CrowleyHead
Well-known member
Of course Boiler Room have jumped onto that and they had Champion, Marcus & Wigman do a nostalgia night. I missed it b/c of internet issues but it looked fun in the bits I got to witness.
They also did another debate, and I find it interesting the differing schisms at play in the ideologies. Like, everyone is so EAGER to blame younger MC track culture and make allusions that Funky was like garage. Whether or not its something I agree with or not, its interesting to see a grime icon like Marcus regurgitate the logic of his elders from garage.
Another thing is he eagerly brings up your Brackles and Bok Boks... As if the possible CRITICAL/Hipster audience for funky wasn't possibly marred by that audience making their versions of UK house for a specific audience and never really touching the 'core' genre. Hyperdub too as well to certain degrees.
Also the afrobeats/funky transition thing is already happening. Donaeo made the jump a while back and I follow Lil Silva on instagram and he's releasing afrobeats singles every other day.
They also did another debate, and I find it interesting the differing schisms at play in the ideologies. Like, everyone is so EAGER to blame younger MC track culture and make allusions that Funky was like garage. Whether or not its something I agree with or not, its interesting to see a grime icon like Marcus regurgitate the logic of his elders from garage.
Another thing is he eagerly brings up your Brackles and Bok Boks... As if the possible CRITICAL/Hipster audience for funky wasn't possibly marred by that audience making their versions of UK house for a specific audience and never really touching the 'core' genre. Hyperdub too as well to certain degrees.
Also the afrobeats/funky transition thing is already happening. Donaeo made the jump a while back and I follow Lil Silva on instagram and he's releasing afrobeats singles every other day.
CrowleyHead
Well-known member
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The aforementioned round table. Marcus shit-talking half of the planet is truly amazing and worth a view for itself.
The aforementioned round table. Marcus shit-talking half of the planet is truly amazing and worth a view for itself.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
are you thinking of Mista Silva, the MC?
CrowleyHead
Well-known member
Fuck it might be. He followed me first and I presumed it was because I follow every grime MC on the planet.
Brief Aside: Shout out to Napper's gratuitous enthusiasm as a personal trainer. I've never seen a grown man so eager to instruct people the best food for their diet.
rubberdingyrapids
Well-known member
what does marcus even play these days? i heard his show several months back and was surprised how hype it was. stuff that wasnt deep tech, not funky exactly, but with that old grime/funky energy. i think i liked it more than most of the other stuff people seem to be excited about lately.
I thought Marcus had become the tech step DJ of UK house. Everything went all PVC-style overproduced basslines and boring darkness. I'm basing that on a few tune reposts on SC rather than any deep knowledge, not that actually knowing anything about something should stop a person from forming a strong opinion about it.
Corpsey
bandz ahoy
Last time I listened to Marcus he was playing that sort of tear-out jackin'/bassline stuff that Cause N Affect, Hybrid Theory etc. make. It was wicked, actually, in places. I don't think his taste has ever really been below par no matter how much we may yearn for that 2010 era Marcus/Mak Rinse set vibe.
"coming back" is the biggest myth ever.
I was at the Tate Britain "production masterclass" with MJ Cole recently and all these youngers were like "blah blah to the tech talk MJ, WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE GARAGE REVIVAL? IS IT ALL COMING BACK?? ITS BACK NOW, ISNT IT? ISNT IT?!"
And MJ was like "um... garage revival?!"
Thing is, having seen several cycles of this UK music thing, scenes don't ever "come back". Like Corpsey said, they can get marooned and run old school nights, or they can jump on the next wave, like all the million refixes of ukg classics that happen each time there's a new house/garage variant, but in terms of a specific sound becoming an energetic cultural phenomenon again, it just never happens.
Felt sad for the youngers in the audience, who thought it was about to happen. Felt sad for MJ who spent a few minutes explaining how hard he was told by "industry" people to run away from UKG in the early 2000s when it became a "dirty word".
CrowleyHead
Well-known member
I don't know if Funky's comparable to garage because garage was killed by its children. Beyond Afrobeats maybe, could you argue that anything else was a result of Funky's wake?
This UK funky 'revival' seems to be the single handed effort of Donaeo. Almost a comically pertinent case of 'too soon'. The massive might have moved on, but a lot of those original funky producers were still making funky in 2011. Funky died too quickly and who knows later down the line if those rhythms don't have more life in them still as an influence at least.
But fuck a funky revival in 2015. Fuck retromania lapping at our feet before things have even had a chance to die properly. So boring.
But fuck a funky revival in 2015. Fuck retromania lapping at our feet before things have even had a chance to die properly. So boring.
CrowleyHead
Well-known member
Apparently you didn't read the book because in order for it to be Retromania, this would've had to have been a rediscovery, not nostalgia. Or do you suspect there's some movement of new young hipsters buying Apple 12"s on the low like there is with grime?
Also, I'm dead at the disdain for how they conduct a round table. "Wow, look at how they can't hold a conversation." Come ON! Somehow fractiousness and Marcus being Marcus suddenly makes this substandard? Its easily a lot more enlightening than if we got all the DMZ crowd to sit around and blather about how great it was "Back in the day". I'd want to shoot myself if I heard that lot rasp about "Oh, when you made Anti-War Dub, that was so wonderful...""Ah, thank you, thank you...""*polite chuckles*"
i don't doubt that this is already going on. i've read the book and i think this if the revival finds an audience it'll be experienced as a rediscovery. they won't be nostalgic for anything that they ever actually experienced. it'll go the way of 'old school garage' on a smaller scale if donaeo is lucky.
CrowleyHead
Well-known member
YES BECAUSE THE PHRASE "BACK IN MY DAY..." HAS NEVER EXISTED. THIS FORUM ISN'T POPULATED WITH A BUNCH OF DUDES WHO HAVE OFTEN SAID "Well, *this genre* was quite good, and now its all gone to shit quite honest... Sure do miss those days though."
i'll mostly be preaching to the converted here, but.....
a lot of artists who weren't part of the funky scene cashed in on the underground hype of funky as it bubbled thru the hardcore continuum enthusiasts in the fickle form of uk bass. people were making tunes inspired by funky that sounded (almost) like they could have come from the actual scene (breach - fatherless, mosca - square one). i think PR and labels partly marketed this as being part of the london funky scene and therefore having this 'street authenticity'. that's what record shops, boomkat and the like also did, giving some of these uk bass guys their first big releases and dj sets before they quickly moved onto something totally different.
if u listened only to the big releases and read the online articles, rather than ever experiencing the scene, u wud either think that these tunes really were uk funky or u wudn't care and uk funky wud be a convenient name. but wasn't this shit categorisation and PR responsible for smaller actual uk funky releases getting buried to a wider audience? how many times 5 years ago would u find NOT A SINGLE uk funky tune other than something by roska or cooly g amongst loads of records in eg phonica or rough trade? maybe some people listened to the uk bass that was actually there and decided they didn't like uk funky, stopping them from looking deeper.
if funky tunes from the actual london scene had been written about online or put in these shops (online or offline) they could have potentially gained the artists involved a much wider or even international audience. u could say it was a problem with funky's sparse label infrastructure, like people usually do. but articles would also put u off even searching out the OGs from the scene. they tended to encourage the view that people from funky (cooly g, scratcha dva, roska - kinda fringe artists anyway in terms of DJing on the circuit?) had already moved on, leaving the silly dances, aggro and mcs behind (all pretty much loosely guided stereotypes?). this article on xlr8r perfectly sums up what i remember commentary on funky (when there was any) being like
what im saying is their scene didn't only fall apart, on a larger scale it kinda got jacked.
blackdown u might groan at this, but the legacy of funky is that it created the conditions for deep tech to thrive (like trilliam said elsewhere). it opened people to house, producer/DJs and audience. when i started listening to funky i remember being amazed by how people cud make a 4/4 kick actually sound interesting. guys like Tazer and Carnao who've made the biggest deep tech tracks so far got into production and djing (as far as i can tell) thru funky. like i said before myself, a lot of the bass syncopation also reminds me of that 5-snare driving rhythm of funky.
i don't get it
u said urself
who are surely too young to be nostalgic for funky. unless they're nostalgic for hearing it on the radio when they were 13/14? can't really say that's experiencing a genre can u