i would listen to all these xlr8r best of the year tracks

it's just fucking funny at this point to see people going on about some made-up either/or battle between "smart" and "real" uk funky when no one who goes to these nights or any of the producers actually give a toss, and it's pretty much an entirely false, non-existent binary anyway

― lex pretend, Thursday, December 24, 2009 12:06 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

its not really 'false, nonexistent' if you read xlr8r, apparently

I had no clue Kode 9 had anything to do with funky, smart or otherwise. I do know that I jotted down the name of the Black Sun EP from the xlr8r lists and that I cannot stand most of the stuff I hear on the funky thread after trying VERY hard (and being labeled a racist in the process). Does Kode 9 get played at the nights Lex is talking about?

Anyhoo, Trippin' definitely did it best for me which is surprising since I'm much more of a Bumpin'/Jackin' type. I top fived that Health album. MBV next chapter kinda stuff.

I eagerly await Maluca's album (assuming it doesn't already exist). And I loved that "Kuff" remix from Bersa Discos #6. Good show.

I am seemingly the only person who maintains that, as far as euphoric dubstep influenced housey sounds go, Vacuum Boogie >>>>>>>>>> Hyph Mngo.

i really like Hyph Mngo, but i agree with you on this.

maybe, like, 3 less >'s

Have you heard the Donae'o album? There's quite a range of stuff on there, from tasteful/expansive/jazzy/ house to straight up bangers to gigantic walls of African drum samples.

Does Kode 9 get played at the nights Lex is talking about?

Yeah probably, there's a lot of both dubstep/post-dubstep and funky at the Night Slugs end of things. At the more flashy/bubbly end of things I'm not so sure.

that strikes me as totally wrong. how is donaeo not open to influences from 'all over the place'??

xp

I'm kind of with the Lex on this anyway, it feels like there's a critical binary being drawn up, sometimes consciously sometimes not, that doesn't really exist in real life. And funky and dubstep don't really seem that far apart when you consider a) where they both come from and b) that grime places itself somewhere in the middle now.

how do the singles not seem to have a variety of influences?

why is "variety of influences" even being used as a benchmark here?

there is more than an element, here, of: you know how lots of british critics write really cluelessly about hip-hop? well.

its not really 'false, nonexistent' if you read xlr8r, apparently

i don't read xlr8r and this thread isn't making me want to, though i love pretty much all the artists mentioned here (donae'o AND l-vis 1990! yes both!).

fwiw a lot of these producers are generally disdainful of "dubstep" and enraptured by "uk funky".

A lot of which producers?

these

XLR8R always seems like the american version of FACT. Minus the podcasts, I guess.

Or rather minus the endless podcasts (seems like there is a new one every day on FACT's site whereas a XLR8R has like one a week, I think.)

Actually it was XLR8R itself that set up that dichotomy.

Bok Bok & L-Vis 1990 have made some awesome tracks btw. I'm generally approving of all of these producers.

Anyway let's not talk about this as it seems to upset everyone when I acknowledge the trend.

The magazine's article on "funkstep".

some of those tracks are obviously not 2009 releases. what an out of touch website.

xlr8r is the NME of dance music

shit getting heated

xlr8r gettin called out by its real name

it seems like a really cool job, whatever people's opinions of the mag itself might be. i'm pretty sure in the 90s when i was really into electronic music and living in the middle of nowhere, this was one of those magazines that helped me stay abreast of new stuff.

oh i had no idea anyone here wrote for xlr8r. even if they set up the binary in the first place, why run with something so obviously wrong-headed? labelling cooly g, bok bok et al as just "smart" funky, as if people don't play those tunes in clubs and as if they don't go down as well as - and in the same sets as - donae'o, ill blu, stush and kyla - does them as much of a disservice as anyone trying to sideline "real" funky. these are completely artificial distinctions which don't do anyone any favours.

and tbh the reason i don't really care how xlr8r are framing these tracks is because the fact that bok bok & l-vis, ikonika, guido et al are reaching an international audience in the first place is tremendously exciting to me - all i'll say is that in missing out subeena, they completely missed a trick. that girl is amazing:

i) http://www.last.fm/music/Subeena/_/Boksd (full track)

ii) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hn7vFdhhd-g

I just re-read the XLR8R piece. The writer quotes a bunch of artists who refer to the scene splits, call it "funkstep," etc. Since it's the artists who call it that, it seems disingenuous to say that the magazine itself is making those distinctions.

is this the cooly g/roska/geeneus piece we're still talking about? first i actually heard of it was cooly g and geeneus disowning the word "funkstep" on twitter

It is, yes. Roska and Scratcha used it, Geeneus dismisses it as a joke. It just seems odd that on this thread the term seems to be discussed as something the mag made up on its own.

/remove bookmark

oh i don't blame the mag for making it up - there's a big vacancy in the market for some adequate term to describe this particular interlocking scene of music which takes in dubstep/funky/grime/house/techno - and tbh "funkstep" isn't that offensive - certainly not compared to w*nky. i understand that some of the producers are trying to make "tropical" happen at the moment. i take issue with the false smart/real binary and the idea that producers who make one are somehow in opposition to producers who make another.

Ah, that makes sense. And yes, I was genuinely curious, so I appreciate it. I think "funkstep" is an easy enough stand-in for the binary you (correctly) criticize; I was reading things a little too literally, obv.

"XLR8R always seems like the american version of FACT"

and fact is kinda like the nme of 'uk bass music' or whatever it should be called (in the same way xlr8rs like the US nme as has been noted).

funkstep isnt the best term. but the writer prob didnt have enough funky understanding to know that even if the artists were calling it that, they were just hyping their own thing to get a little mileage out of the fact theres a lot of stuff that falls between all the many diff scenes at the moment. was an interesting article all the same tho, tbh.

yeah it's all in such flux that it's hard to know how to pigeonhole any given thing, which is probably a good indication of the music's health. there's no such thing as getting it wrong, really, but i object to divisiveness wherever it occurs, cuz that's the least helpful thing.

ah yeah and titchy otm w/r/t individual artists' motivations! kinda like nas saying hip-hop is dead or whatever

am hoping a better name, one thats less cumbersome/mouthfully/pompous than uk bass music, will come along soon.

xpost, yeah its sort of like someone doing a piece on joker and getting over excited that theres a brand new sound from bristol called purple wow and forgetting theres a load of other producers operating in a similar-ish space at the moment too (tho to be fair, joker basically IS his own little world).

i must admit i'd be a bit uncomfortable if a colleague was posting stuff like this about me:

"also a note: k3n didn't find/ put together the actual samples used. this intern did, and he doesn't really know much about electronic music, quite honestly, which might explain some of the weird choices."

seems more appropriate for a staff meeting/supervision than a message board. it seems harsh on the intern and doesn't reflect well on the magazine.

Both XLR8R and FACT strike me as sites that are as much about the definition of a lifestyle/aesthetic than anything else - you only need to look at the design and advertising for that to hit home. I'd *maybe* throw in Resident Advisor, which has pretty much ignored funky altogether, as well.

Either way, in the former two cases it strikes me that Cooly G/Jam City/Roska/Lil Silva, even Donae'o, are a lot closer to that aesthetic than, say, Alesha Dixon remixes, or big fat dudes going "jump in the middle and skaaaank". I think all the above titles want to sell dance music as something that's both effortlessly cool and precisely sculpted and the endearing shonkiness, goofiness and willingness to throw things against a wall and see what sticks that marks out a lot of funky just doesn't fit into that.

i dunno though, the further you get to "proper" funky nights - by which i mean eg circle events, the real classy-dress-code stuff - the further away you get from the too-many-man skanking vibe (and let's be real the skanks pretty much suck if you hear more then one per night).

i mean i hope we're not saying that the wave of shitty sub-KIG skanks constitutes "real" funky are we?

I'm not just talking about the skanks, and like I said, I'm not saying it's a real binary that actually exists on the dancefloor. I think even a lot of the supposedly glossy diva stuff has that slightly shonky vibe to it as well, it feels a bit cobbled-together-in-someone's-bedroom even when it's trying to be sleek and sexy, and I like that. Exhibit A being every Crazy Cousinz remix ever.

What I'm trying to say is I'm not sure if Fact in particular can far enough away from the "every sound worked on and agonised over for weeks" mindset to fully embrace the whole range of this stuff.

Think the thing that threw me about Royal P's 'Between Us' was how deep and druggy and *expensive* it sounded.

Or rather minus the endless podcasts (seems like there is a new one every day on FACT's site whereas a XLR8R has like one a week, I think.)

it's one every monday, one every friday on FACT. the reason being that we do non-dance music podcasts too (cold cave, weatherall's rock one, etc), so whatever yr preference you'll hopefully get at least one mix a week that suits you.

What I'm trying to say is I'm not sure if Fact in particular can far enough away from the "every sound worked on and agonised over for weeks" mindset to fully embrace the whole range of this stuff.

that's a bit off i think. there are ppl who write for FACT who've had a pop at that end of funky, but personally i think both sides of it - and as said upthread, it's not much of an opposition; you'll find plenty of crowds losing it to migraine skank one minute and black sun the next - are great at times. i love blackberry hype as much as i do narst. and as far as FACT goes, we had 'frontline', 'in the morning', 'pull it' and crazy cousinz 't-shirt' remix in our top 100 tracks of the year, and no scratcha or roska. which we also got criticized for. lol.

plus we champion plenty of knocked-out scuzzy indie rock tracks and gutter dance music, so i don't think this 'agonised' aesthetic is something that crops up as often as you think.

(i have removed myself from this thread, but tom, XLR8R also has non-dance music podcasts. just a note).

im sure they do. i wasn't saying that to try & distinguish us from xlr8r, we like xlr8r, it's just our reasoning for doing 2 a week. that and we probably try to do one bigger name a week with one name that we think should be bigger.

cool, just clarification. and i love the fact podcasts, btw.

thanks man. always nice to hear

is there a URL for the podcasts I don't know about? I noticed FACT has started hosting the downloads on their own server again, so just wondered if it had been fixed and just not advertised....

I'd still really like to listen to these on my wi-fi internet radio thing if possible (or, if I used iTunes for this, to "subscribe" to them etc, either way, just want the convenience of a proper Podcast, otherwise they tend to go unheard unfortunately).

yeah, we've had massive problems w/ the subscribe/iTunes thing, i don't know why really, it's not me that's been organizing it it's the I.T. dudes. but i know, it's got stupid - we've been building a new site the last couple of months so it's been put on the backburner a bit. but come january it should get fixed.

til then we re-uploaded a pick of 20 fact mixes from the year gone by: http://www.factmagazine.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4199&Itemid=99

cool thanks for the update Tom.