Benny Bunter

Well-known member
But the "are funky's core audience even aware of night slugs / kode 9 / Jam City" thing cuts both ways here...

no, most of em probably aren't aware or not really interested. This is why they are still making good music! But alot of their potential audience has definitely been sapped away by them all the same.

edit: lol, this simultaneous posting is making my head spin!
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Which potential audience? Are we talking Dalston hipsters, a few adventurously minded guardian readers, or something else?
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Which potential audience? Are we talking Dalston hipsters, a few adventurously minded guardian readers, or something else?

I'm probaby getting a bit muddled here, but maybe Rinse FM playing post-dubstep stuff is one example of funky getting pushed out by this stuff.
 

Phaedo

Well-known member
Don't get me wrong, loads and loads of great funky tunes but the scene to me seems to lack some kind of personality and character that Jungle or Grime or whatever else had. I mean how many actual classic Funky tunes have their been?
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Don't get me wrong, loads and loads of great funky tunes but the scene to me seems to lack some kind of personality and character that Jungle or Grime or whatever else had. I mean how many actual classic Funky tunes have their been?

well i think theres been lots obviously, but i'm not about to get into a big debate defending it right now, though I will say that funky has the spirit and that its the best we've got in terms of London dance music (such a lame defence i know!). I do accept that its not been as mindblowing as jungle must have been back then though. Not sure what could live up to that tbh.
 

outraygeous

Well-known member
The funky movement would be the closest real London sound going on for people who want to go out.

They may be interested in the whole road rap thing but if you dont fancy going oceanas and you want to see some girls, your going to a funky dance.

Thats the impression I get.
 

gumdrops

Well-known member
funkys just one of many niches now. and cos it hasnt taken over, it doesnt have the sense of importance garage or grime had. its just... there. rinse playing the more bankable (relatively speaking) and safer external stuff obv plays quite a big part too, but if funky really felt like it could own the city, there would prob be more pirates behind it. theres also the thing that times have just changed, music has changed, there seems less remunerative motivation for ppl to do more funky club nights and start radio stations in the same way funky doesnt seem to inspire its producers to release very much. people want to still make the music but can they be fucked with all the other stuff? doesnt look like it. road rap/uk rap is maybe a bit of a better way to generate money (albeit on a modest level), cos there are mainstream roads leading out of there now, even if its only for a select few.
 
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williamj

Member
I don't think the internet has to kill the development of new scenes like some have suggested. I'm moving to China soon and so I've been trying to find out what I can about the music scene there, but the obvious difficulty is the language barrier (my Chinese is nowhere near good enough) and there doesn't seem to be anyone covering the kind of music that might be of interest to Dissensus in English and the stuff that does is often quite expat driven (i.e. not really 'Chinese').

Which city are you moving to? I can only really speak for shanghai, lived there for a bit and still have friends there. The underground is quite small relative to the size of the city, but its there. there's a club called Shelter that Cha Cha (from the kode9 album) is a resident of, and they recently brought Addison Groove over. You're right in assuming that its mostly expat driven, but I think the scene there is increasingly including more homegrown acts. however its far from being anything unique to the city. From what I remember, the rock music underground seems to be a lot more developed than dance music.

PS sorry for the off topic post
 

petergunn

plywood violin
also i was a bit influenced by reading el-ps twitter. he was moaning about the absence of native new yorkers. so i guess it is an issue there as weell as london ray. he was quite funny actually. gumdrops i think you are being dlibereately mischeivious. he is obv moaning about middle england invading the inner city and trying to act like they know whats going on. im all for snobbery of that kind. it makes me laugh.


this is pretty dumb...

i actually used to live right down the street from El-P in 2001-02 in Carroll Gardens... never saw him, but read him talk about a local pizzeria, Nino's, in an interview, talking about how they served "hate slices"... it was just an average crusty old brooklyn pizza joint... certainly friendlier than most, so it must be refreshing, in 10 years, to go from complaining about native new yorkers to complaining about transplants...

naturally this all depends where you spend your time... i am sure at expensive restaurants and trendy clubs there will be a lot of transplants... at my job, almost everyone i work with is born and raised in nyc...
as Danny L sez:

Hello?

Me? Gary? Plenty of people still out where I'm from. It's just they don't have much overlap with the clubby/arty/Hackneyish/whateva stuff we end up going to. It's more about class/cultural divides - same going on with race, really.

re: hipsters... while they colonize certain areas entirely (shoreditch, williamsburg) they are plenty of places and neighborhoods you can go where you won't see a single one... in my neighborhood in queens, i see about one hipster every 2 weeks and i'm not even kidding... i go visit friends in staten island or south brooklyn and it's the same thing...

i never thought NYC was dead? musically you mean? I dunno...
 

luka

Well-known member
muscially yes of course. i was talking (typing) to someone who lived there and they said, well yeah, electroclash and illbient.... which pretty much sums it up dosnt it. i said ive never been there. vryone says the clubs there are shit just full of attntion sekeers in fancy dress but what would i know. whether el-p was being dum or not... well i dont know but he was being funny. i liked his line about whn he started getting tattoos he thought they made him look tough, now thy just make him look like he makes artisanal puddings. it was all quite self-effacing and witty in my opinion.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
funkys just one of many niches now. and cos it hasnt taken over, it doesnt have the sense of importance garage or grime had. its just... there. rinse playing the more bankable (relatively speaking) and safer external stuff obv plays quite a big part too, but if funky really felt like it could own the city, there would prob be more pirates behind it. theres also the thing that times have just changed, music has changed, there seems less remunerative motivation for ppl to do more funky club nights and start radio stations in the same way funky doesnt seem to inspire its producers to release very much
Basically if a populist hardcore street scene is really being seriously hampered by a few dozen hipsters with funny beards then you kind of have to wonder how much populist energy it's actually got.

Blaming the post dubstep crowd for preventing it from going huge by somehow draining its lifeforce just seems like pique tbh.
 

gumdrops

Well-known member
yeah, fwiw i dont think ive ever heard a funky or grime or bassline producer say 'fucking bok bok and ramadanman! theyre stealing our money/sound/audiences/ideas!' (tho thats also just cos where jungle or garage producers might have been more opinionated, most artists/producers dont wanna get involved in that kind of music politics anymore)

but far as i know there are still plenty, or a fair number of funky clubs up and down the country, its just that if youre looking at things through a factmagified/RA/annie mac perspective, you might not know.
 
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petergunn

plywood violin
muscially yes of course. i was talking (typing) to someone who lived there and they said, well yeah, electroclash and illbient.... which pretty much sums it up dosnt it. i said ive never been there. vryone says the clubs there are shit just full of attntion sekeers in fancy dress but what would i know. whether el-p was being dum or not... well i dont know but he was being funny. i liked his line about whn he started getting tattoos he thought they made him look tough, now thy just make him look like he makes artisanal puddings. it was all quite self-effacing and witty in my opinion.

electroclash? lol...

who were you talking to and have they been frozen since 2003 in some sort of military experiment?

i was at a club last week and heard new Fabolous, Dipset, and D-Block stuff mixed in w/ old dancehall and i was happy... not a hipster in sight and the only attention seekers in fancy dress were thick girls...

in terms of manhattan, the clubs are the same as they have been for the last 10 years... the era of places like The Tunnel has been long gone, but there is good music all over... i guess i am lucky where i have friends who DJ niche nights like old soul records or leftfield disco, so if i wanna go out and hear good music it's not a problem... if i do go to fancypants spots, it's not really about the music, you will most likely hear wack top 40 or electro/house at most big spots, but that's the nature of the beast, no?
 

alex

Do not read this.
yeah, fwiw i dont think ive ever heard a funky or grime or bassline producer say 'fucking bok bok and ramadanman! theyre stealing our money/sound/audiences/ideas!' (tho thats also just cos where jungle or garage producers might have been more opinionated, most artists/producers dont wanna get involved in that kind of music politics anymore)

you sound like one of the journalists mentioned a few pages back, completely ill researched post... why the fuck would they be thinking that when night slugs booked crazy couzins, geeneus, terror danjah, etc etc etc for a good year & a half before they started the label? Can't speak for Rama & co, but that is some bullshit.

The garage/grime beef thing (if that is what you are referencing) was down to the fact (I think fwiw) that the garage producers were ‘unhappy with the way it was getting darker, more MC driven, less sexy’ when really they knew deep down they were losing the youthful energy, cause they were tapping into a more exciting movement.

This is not even nearly the same situation, as it’s not a backclash from the sexy/swung beats (replace that with the galloping snare drum of funky) it’s more an incorporation of that into your own idea’s.

*quick kneejerk post cause i'm at work
 

gumdrops

Well-known member
what are you talking about? i was agreeing with what slothrop said about if funky really did have a proper stronghold in its own quarters, then it wouldnt matter what a few hipsters/trendies/whoever did and ive yet to hear any of these 'street' producers slagging off the 'trendy' producers in the way you might have expected some several years before. i dont know why you brought in the dark garage/grime thing (which im well aware of, thanks) or the sexy/swung/stiff beats thing, what i meant was before where you often had jungle producers saying 'external' forces whether it be the ever-evil media or major labels or rock artists (or whatthefuckever) were to blame for _____ (insert your favoured flavour of demise), newer producers are less likely to say anything like that, cos they dont really want to rock the boat (even if their argument is specious or nonsensical). thats just musicians in general these days, i would say, not just those from these dance scenes. fwiw i think night slugs bringing in silva or terror is a cool thing to do.
 
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luka

Well-known member
sorry peter maybe i wasnt being vry clear. i meant what has ny come up with rcntly? what sound does it have to call its own? that is to say over the last 15 years or so. i mean loso, dipst whatevr is ok and verything and id be happy in a club listneing to that and dancehall too, thats great but the dipset glory years are a fading memory and fabulos nevr had any glory years.
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
lots of crossed wires in this thread! Alex you must have just misread gumdrops post there, you weren't making any sense in relation to what he said.

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.
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
Blaming the post dubstep crowd for preventing it from going huge by somehow draining its lifeforce just seems like pique tbh.

maybe a little pique, but i do think funky has been smothered and swamped by it to some degree. The post dubstep lot are all very quick to jump on emerging styles (easier to pick up on em now too because of the internet etc) and they did so very quickly with funky. With garage and jungle the the hardcore audience had pretty much already moved onto something else by the time outsiders latched onto it but funky hasn't had that chance.

I'm guessing a lot of people found funky most interesting in its early days when it was seen as a pendulum swing reaction to grime, but that distinct position didn't last very long at all once everybody decided to start making house. Those early days of a substantial swing from grime to funky may well be the last time we see such a sea-change, as everything has levelled off and cancelled each other out.
 
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bobby

New member
maybe a little pique, but i do think funky has been smothered and swamped by it to some degree. The post dubstep lot are all very quick to jump on emerging styles (easier to pick up on em now too because of the internet etc) and they did so very quickly with funky. With garage and jungle the the hardcore audience had pretty much already moved onto something else by the time outsiders latched onto it but funky hasn't had that chance.

I'm guessing a lot of people found funky most interesting in its early days when it was seen as a pendulum swing reaction to grime, but that distinct position didn't last very long at all once everybody decided to start making house. Those early days of a substantial swing from grime to funky may well be the last time we see such a sea-change, as everything has levelled off and cancelled each other out.

First post, so here goes.
I'm going to throw in mr. reynolds, as even now, he is still the most accurate barometer of the london music's you are talking about, if not in detail, then in general zeitgeist. The other reason I raise him, is because gumdrops, benny b etc. are basically sub-reynoldsian, post-finney bots rehearsing, reiterating and applying their model of authenticity to funky etc.

We all know that Reynolds never liked dubstep, but I remember it surprised me that he was never really that into funky at all. He never really expressed much enthusiasm for it - I think this is quite telling really, as its the first development of the proper hcc that he didn't emotionally invest in. Why I think this is telling is that, it seems to me at least, this notion that 'post-dubstep' or whatever is somehow, even in small part to blame for funky not building up momentum is pretty bizarre. What about the idea that perhaps funky has just not been as important a sonic development as jungle and garage and grime were. Coupled to the overexposure of the internet, perhaps it just isnt as musically significant as those earlier musics. It also seems to me that some of its most vocal proponents in trying to support it and help it grow have been dj's and promoters coming out of dubstep - well they've done more than a bunch of forum trainspotters dictating to each other what is and isn't proper funky - and this is the answer to gumdrops question above - the reason hardcore street scenes are not complaining, is because they have actually being assisted by the people umbrella'd under the post dubstep thing.

Or then again maybe the internet has taught these sacred members of these hardcore street scenes to see a more attractive alternative to that glamorous romford-watford-wolverhampton circuit :p
 

bobby

New member
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.
 
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