Moombah-ton/core/soul/shit

surprised there is no thread on here (unless search fail on my part which wouldn't be the first time heh) about this post-bastardization post-mashup bastard post-"genre".

looking back of course it makes sense: outside of some party-hiphop tracks and rare left field disco cuts, US and Euro club-land was largely missing this sexy groovy slow burning tempo range (100-110 -- which i've posted about a few years back - and wasn't there someone else here was talking about 100 bpm bass music?). yet in almost every other party hot spot around the globe this tempo has always been used extensively: Cumbias/Salsa/Boogaloo/Dancehall/Reggaeton, Persian/Egyptian/Middle Eastern, Gypsy/Balkan/Russian, and of course countless African rhythms... so it seems to me that it was only a matter of time before something came to fill this void between hiphop and house -- cute story of its actual origin (Dave Nada and his little cousin's friends) is pretty much beside the point.

it is mostly a borrowed rhythm on which new producers are building with their geeky production tricks (what else is new LOL). and of course in the current bloggified, diploized, nu-rave midrange "posh-boys-make-turgid-beats" annoying party-club music environment we live in most of it is utterly forgettable, but maybe there are some gems with real inspiration and actual musical value beginning to emerge, and a handful of producers worth watching.

entire moombah sets can feel a bit vacuous unless it's one of the handful of above mentioned dj-producers - but still i would rather moombahton rather than impotent lifeless minimal-electro-tech-house ANY day of the week. i myself have padded my sets with a few tracks here and there, if only for purely transitional purposes.

how do you people feel about it then? i know the sound is around the UK and there is at least one moombahton focused event emerging in London...

trza said:

I used to track down every release by Sabo, but these Moombahton things are mostly just meh:

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just met him last week, didn't know his work before, but there are some really nice edits. for instance this one of Township Funk is really useful.

hint said:

Who's making original material? i.e. not just sticking loops from already great tracks over a Moombah drum template?

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i am not into it enough to be qualified for any definitive statements, but i suspect not (yet) many at all. but there is undoubtedly more originality and creativity happening within this "movement" (if it is such a thing at all) now than during the period of its inception (what? 1, 2, or at the most 3 years ago?): it was not much more than pitched down European Afro-House.

my point is that things are moving, developing, as we type. and this "style" may just develope into its own in the near future.

With the exception of that Dutch dude who lives in Peru, there seems to not be very many interesting developments, most of it still being dumb one-note party soundtracks...

now these global bass hipsters are adding aggressive sounds and sub bass to Zouk/Ttarraxinha, and calling it, coined by the fake kuduro outfit Buraka 2 months ago - Zouk Bass Might be difficult to tell apart for the uninitiated, because it's at the same tempo and uses similar beat patterns as Dembow, But i like it better than Moombahton because it's inherently more percussive.

these sub "genres" might or might not become important in themselves, but they are significant in the sense of African beat patterns re-entering the west, which has been so far completely dominated by the Afro-American dupple rhythm.