UK Funky expressed the tension and difficulty of capturing difference in music criticism more sharply than other genres in part because of this refusal to grow up and become identical with a particular distinct concept of itself, and in part because its stylistic structure is essentially analogical, each instance giving voice to the recurrent, insistent question “why not?” If that, why not this? Analogical, because there is no ultimate platonic standard against which all singular instances can be compared, and instead only the relationship between each instance. Rather than distinguish between core and non-core (or basic and superstructural) components, the music exists in an entirely constellational space where each element can be rearranged or substituted to achieve comparable effect. If tribal percussion can inject the desired element of syncopation into a 4X4 house groove, why not soca-derived snare patterns, or staggering synth chords, or pounding piano vamps, or brittle grime oscillations, or the nimble agility of the MC? Each and any of these substances can slip into a pattern that is traced, like a spirograph sketch, around an absent center that only appears to exist because of the pattern that gives shape to it.
