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"Between Us" is astonishing, yes, another top ten of the year for me. That and the OB remix of Addictive's "Domino Effect" and the mysterious remix of J-Will's "Deja Vu" are really strong endorsements of a quite distinct direction for funky, sorta millennial R&B meets polychromatic early house...

Re early dubstep/funky crossover, I guess the crossover point is with stuff like Lil Silva's "Tribal Land", Pearson Sound's "Wad" etc. Yeah there's def. a strong similarity between that and Hatcha's tribal stuff in particular. I can see the mixture of the two sounds working very well...

LOL Faustus, 12 months ago Siegbran on ILX was saying "I dunno why you guyz are so excited about UK Funky, this sounds just like Vato Gonzales..." Top tune.

That "badboy riddim" track is astonishing, it's like prime-era Metope meets horn madness. I feel like I did know the two tracks after the Yellowtail remix (especially the spare, tick-tocky bass-driven one) but I can't remember what they are now. Also cheers faustus for posting that Dubplate...

I'm writing up a list of my 50 favourite funky tunes of the year. I don't think there's been a slowdown. Marcus distorts the picture because he's gotten a lot more self-conscious about appearing "balanced" over the past six months or so. I like "Wonderful Day" a lot but the vocals are a bit of...

Here's a link to a 04.11.08 set: http://www.sendspace.com/file/xs5ux3 I don't have any of the others from that period though.

I think the "Reign"/D Double E freestyle starts off a bit dubiously but when it gets to the section where D Double says "I'm gonna put my hand through the letterbox" etc. and the second layer of beats comes in it becomes very very amazing. I think because of the sense of forward propulsion in...

So Solid Crew material feels relevant again though - the grime-funky crossover is very close in vibe to early So Solid stuff like "Oh No", "21 Seconds", "Envy (They Don't Know Remix)" etc, including the faint veneer of silliness. (all those tunes are straight fire btw) Most revivalist trends...

Very good column Martin! I'm really looking forward to the Silkie album.

I agree with this if the "then" in the last sentence refers to circa early 2001. Also I'm not aware of any zinc breakbeat garage tracks I liked apart from "138 Trek" (which is a massive anthem obv). Though his stuff was better than the DJ Hype material. Over the course of that time period...

I dunno, of all the big DJs at the time EZ was probably the most diverse, and in a lot of ways his increasing diversity did him no favours - see the massive massive massive drop-off in quality from from the UK Garage Flava comp and the first three Pure Garage comps to the fourth Pure Garage...

Interestingly T-Power also did a pretty amazing vocal track in that vein in I think late 2000. I think it was called "Runnin". At the time I expected a lot of former junglists to jump on that kind of sound.

Alright two tracks - "Hear My People" and the remix of "Round The Corner". But Drum & Bossa was not an exciting album. But I think their relationship with garage was very tangential anyway, even more so than say Zinc or the Stanton Warriors (whose "Right Here" was probably a better version of...

I do remember seeing Zed Bias play live in 2002 and thinking that some of his more broken beat stuff sounded amazing in that context (and again something of a precursor for funky), but the records themselves rarely moved me the same way. Sadly that night he spent a lot of time playing tedious...

It was an oversimplification but still correct in spirit from my perspective. I trace my increasing disenchantment with (proto)dubstep to early 2002, right after the pinnacle of my affair being Kode9's 21st Century Skank mix, as Darqwan and the like progressively hardened up their sound and it...

That looks great, will check it!

Yeah, Scotty D is actually the example the keeps popping into my head as someone I feel deserves to be made a fuss of - more "musical" than Lil' Silva, and yet also more ravey somehow, similarly wringing the absolute best out of a grime sensibility, yet with exquisite production values. He's...

I meant "easier to hype" in the sense of "I could imagine them becoming very hyped" - sorry that probably wasn't clear though... And I don't think they're distancing themselves from the scene but I think the Night Slugs playlists and their sound generally just have a very sense of multi-genre...

Actually I agree with you that Mis-Teeq are "not really useful as a model for a scenes development", and wonder why on earth you've raised them here except so as to discredit me somehow. At any rate Mis-Teeq have nothing to do with funky and I wouldn't say funky needs a crossover girl group. I...

Well maybe I am coming across as slightly curmudgeonly (though thanks ufo) - if so it's not because I don't want Cooly G to do well, and it's not because I think badly of the people supporting her. I guess because so much music crit hype machinery is centered around the auteur and the...