Eww: It's the Ill Blu Hype Thread

found the xlr8r mix rather dull i'm afraid

but that shystie tune is FUCKING INCREDIBLE OMG THIS IS WHAT I WANT FOREVER

and yeah "the wave" def strikes me as a fruitful path not taken, sadly

Why, because its on Hyperdub.

No, because it's a lot drier than most of their other tunes, and feels deliberately so. Mixing straight into "Dragon Pop" really underscores the point. Ill Blu going dry for a label release once may have been coincidence, but twice?

If they'd released the Meltdown EP on Hyperdub I wouldn't have been able to make the same comment. And Funkystepz's Hyperdub releases have been great (esp. the first). Believe it or not this is not actually about me and my prejudices.

FWIW I feel like Clapper is less of a distance from what I would expect from IB than Dragon Pop was (although listening back to it here Dragon Pop actually sounds better than I remember it being). Anyway listening to the mix another time Legs and Turnpike actually sound the closest to standing out as choons to me, Legs has a nice bounce to it. Still feel overall it's a wee bit average though.

Yeah, I like "Clapper" more than "Dragon Pop" (though the latter became better when they re-used it on that Suncycle/Mavado tune).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxCw31W_fj4

This is like an amazing "Flaunt It".

bloody addictive

Is no one else jumping on this? So good!

Mixmag are giving away a track called 'Turnpike':
http://www.mixmag.net/music/mp3-blog/free-mp3-ill-blu

I'm loving that Sneakbo track, that's the kind of Ill Blu production I like, fun, ott, ravey, and full of those electro/dutch house-influenced synths. Ill Blu really should be doing more vocal collaborations. I do like "Turnpike" as well, much more than when I heard it on the XLR8R mix.

I see the appeal of the tracks in the XLR8R mix now, I guess I just don't like so many of those aggro-bassy tracks in one mix without something by Sneakbo, for example, lightening it up with his talk of pagan yats, riding jet skis, and daggering women with african backs.

if by that you're suggesting sneakbo provides a counterpoint or contrast to the production then i disagree i think; he is the finer, literal point of what ill blu are already about and they have an really very unusually natural synergy

the appeal of 'zim zimma' is more in the thuggish ill blu/sneakbo mindmeld's unwitting creation of something like a muscle mary anthem

I suspect that where people struggle with recent Ill Blu is that they associate it with other boshy mersh electro-house and etc. (this is not so much of a negative for me but) - if nothing else Sneakbo offers a more attractive frame.

"Zim Zimma" really is so so so good though, that strangely lethargic synth riff like a wrecking ball accidentally knocking over a building is just brilliant.

i feel more that people are just looking at it from the wrong and boring way round cos they have the "answer" already

like the story isn't oh the guys who did 'meltdown' make mersh electro-house, it's what is up with this weirdly tuff mersh electro-house that doesnt quite fit anywhere easily

do you fancy the promo of this btw

hypothetically speaking of course

Yes I agree - but I think you need to be at least neutral on the idea of "weirdly tuff mersh electro-house" in the abstract to approach it that way.

Um... hypothetically already found it.

cos they have the "answer" already

can I say this is particularly OTM

bloody addictive
YES

http://soundcloud.com/cahill/cahill-dj-q-play-1-xtra

YASSSS

Woah.

http://images.techtree.com/ttimages/story/81817_overlord_tower_minions_final.JPG

I'm really digging these new IB tracks, and I don't think Sneakbo makes 'Zim Zimma' at all- the production on that one is massive on it's own, as an instrumental it would have fit in with the rest of the Mista Jam set of theirs just fine.

Been a bit ambivalent about the lurch towards techno seriousness that Ill Blu seem to have taken on their own stuff most recently (e.g. their new single), so it's nice to discover that "419" on this radio set is a marvelous piece of bubbly vocal house:

http://soundcloud.com/madtechrecords/ill-blu-guest-mix-bbc-radio-1

so ill blu have signed to island and have reworked a five year old uk funky track for the first single
http://soundcloud.com/illblu/blu-magic-ft-max-marshall

apparently the new stuff is influenced by “the musicality of Artful Dodger and Wookie, the bass weight of Shy FX, the sampler’s ear of people like DJ Premier, the soul of Teedra Moses and the future shock production of legendary US R&B producers like Rodney Jerkins and The Neptunes”

sounds promising...my fave recentish ill blu thing is still this though
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQN_2TuK44Y

Loving these MixFresh Series DJ mixes - ploughing a really hyper furrow between DJ Q and deep tech, centred around their own current sound, oddly redolent of Tiefschwarz circa 2004:

https://soundcloud.com/illblu/illblumixfreshseries2

ha this is weirdly engrossing

i mean i kinda feel somewhat as if i'm listening more intently here than this really deserves, through the prism of past glories... but then all these relatively familiar tracks of the moment in this context make a convincing case that the world really has swung their particular, sparsely muscular way

like everyone plays shiba san 'okay' now but only ill blu were the ones deading the funky vibe with it in 2011 before it ever existed

and the tiefschwarz type thing finally works now too next to spinnin's tiptoe from edm to house n bass with tchami (whose remix of garrix 'wizard' eye-catchingly features here - everyone else will play every other tchami cut) and oliver heldens (one of the new ill blu productions here is p much a 'gecko' refix)

https://soundcloud.com/maxmarshallmusic/your-love-is-like-ill-blu-1

well ok maybe a dash overstated but still, theory goes

tchami (whose remix of garrix 'wizard' eye-catchingly features here

This one is great, yes.

Basically this mix is best when it goes all rifftacular.

new single sounds excellent

http://thump.vice.com/en_uk/words/uk-funky-duo-ill-blu-are-back-and-its-not-uk-funky

;_; at the disavowal of the uk funky scene tho

Yeah the interviewer was on some bullshit there too.

She seems a bit hung up on UK Funky being "over." It's quite an uninspiring premise for an interview. I'd rather just hear about their new material tbh.

"In the summers of 2008 and 2009, UK funky was the sound. At Numbers parties in Glasgow, I could barely finish a drink without hearing Jackmaster drop the in-your-face silliness of Piddy Py - 'Giggle Riddim..."

interviewer is clueless, that was a bassline tune, nothing like uk funky

Well if you're basing your understanding of what was going on in UK funky on what Jackmaster was dropping at parties in Glasgow...

But you know, seriously, this is the kind of take that would make sense to a lot of people.

It's almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy:

"I almost view UK funky as a club tool or a series of motifs, rather than a genre or style in itself. Sort of like what Night Slugs now do with Club Constructions - that's why Lil Silva managed to grow with their camp."

People who never really viewed uk funky as a style in its own right are always gonna see it that way.

But I should stop distracting from the greatness of Ill Blu!