Funky purple wow
March 10, 2010 3:03 AM   Subscribe

This post is about two recent(ish) strands of British dance music.

The first is basically a garagey, housey style called UK funky or simply funky (not to be confused with funky house, ridiculous genre proliferation fans!). Although gradually gaining recognition as a distinct style, it remains fairly amorphous - no one's really articulated what makes funky funky, although some have tried. The general consensus, though, is that it's an offshoot of UK garage from the early 2000s, with pattering percussion rhythms imported from soca and elsewhere.

Funky is still largely a London-based sound, but the other style mentioned is more dispersed around the UK. There's even less consensus on a name for this genre, with attempts ranging from the dull (post-dubstep) to amusingly tongue-in-cheek (purple wow sound!). Bristol, with Joker, Gemmy & Guido, and Glasgow, with Rustie (one of whose videos is linked above the fold) and Hudson Mohawke are important outposts. There's also some suggestion of a link with US folk like Flying Lotus and Samiyam (note that this link uses yet another terrible name - wonky).

Some decent resources for keeping up to date with this music:
Rinse FM was a London pirate station, now aboveground and a good source for British dance music of all stripes.
FACT is a magazine with lots of coverage of purple/wonky/etc. - so much, in fact, that yet another nother name for it is fact music.
Hyperdub are a label that started out dubsteppin but have gotten weirder and weirder as time goes on - the site's a bit minimalistic but they do have a mailing list.
Tim Finney and Martin Clark are good writers and fans of funky.
A good chunk of the links in this post have been cadged from a couple threads which are continually being updated by the good folks at ILX.

MLYT:
Geeneus remixes Benga + Coki
Nursery rhyme style
Lady Chann + Warrior One
More Rustie
Ikonika
Hyetal + Shortstuff

(If you're unfamiliar with the term 'nuum as used in a couple of the above links, this is a reasonably short description.)
posted by Dim Siawns (19 comments total) 35 users marked this as a favorite
 
Nice post, Dim Siawns. Hadn't heard of either of these scenes. Right now I'm really digging the "Black Biscuit / Skanking the Hardest" track on the Tim Finney link. Think I'm going to need to get me some more UK Funky...

Thanks!
posted by Hartham's Hugging Robots at 3:33 AM on March 10, 2010


no one's really articulated what makes funky funky

Hey, if you gotta articulate it...
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:12 AM on March 10, 2010 [2 favorites]


Great post. The second genre (I like wonky, FWIW!) reminds me of the music you used to get on all those intro or loading screens on pirated Atari ST and Amiga games, with undulating marquee text full of shout-outs to hackers, only a bit more... well, wonky.
posted by RokkitNite at 4:26 AM on March 10, 2010


Great post thanks Dim Siawns.
posted by Captain Najork at 4:59 AM on March 10, 2010


Not my kind of music, but definitely my kind of post: well researched and informative. Nice work Dim Siawns.
posted by three blind mice at 5:00 AM on March 10, 2010


After 482 subsequent listens, I can scientifically conclude that that Black Biscuits track is a bad tune, as they say. (Well, as middle class, middle age white guys like me say).

Where can I find more of that rough-edged, grime-y end of UK Funky? Most of the other stuff (not including the "post-dubstep" business) found in your links is a bit, well... lightweight. Any recommendations?
posted by Hartham's Hugging Robots at 5:27 AM on March 10, 2010


Look, I've told you kids to get off my dance floor a hundred times this year.
posted by clvrmnky at 5:49 AM on March 10, 2010


Not my kind of music, but definitely my kind of post: well researched and informative. Nice work Dim Siawns.

Agreed! I certainly don't even begin to understand the genre games people play, but this does help an old fart like me have at least a little glimpse into what the hell you kids are yammering on about.

Now get off my lawn and go make more good posts!
posted by Pollomacho at 5:50 AM on March 10, 2010


Dance music genres taxonomy seem so complicated and the differentiation between them so slight from the point of view of an outsider.
posted by octothorpe at 5:59 AM on March 10, 2010


Dinna ken if it's exactly what you're looking for, HHR, but maybe try this Dexplicit + Stush track. Have you gone to the first UK funky link in the post above? There's a couple radio shows you can download/stream from them; you might be able to find something like what you're looking for from there.
posted by Dim Siawns at 6:02 AM on March 10, 2010


Great post! Thanks!
posted by vacapinta at 6:32 AM on March 10, 2010


Something new...ish in British music?

So... when are they going to put a donk on it?!
posted by markkraft at 6:51 AM on March 10, 2010 [2 favorites]


That second link sounds like something you might hear playing in a dance club in a SF movie.
posted by papercake at 6:56 AM on March 10, 2010


Untold is another really talented guy making what I have trouble referring to with any more specificity than "weird UK bass music." One of my favorite bits from an interview with him from a while back is the following thing he put on twitter:

Chirpy Heathrow passport officer: 'That was a short holiday.'
Me: 'I was DJing.'
Him: 'What sort of stuff do you play?'
Me: 'I don't know anymore.'"
posted by sparkletone at 8:47 AM on March 10, 2010 [1 favorite]


I wish this post hadn't come up just before SXSW because I want to explore all the links and I know I won't get to them in the near term. Favorite and catch later, I guess. (Unless someone wants to tell me who will be at SXSW, in which case I'll gladly add them to my schedule.)
posted by immlass at 9:18 AM on March 10, 2010


I haven't listened to any of the links due to being at work, but I am assuming the 'funky' stuff is what people have been telling me is non-dreary dubstep, judging by the names linked. I have found a lot of similarities between that sound and African house music from the past ten years, just as a matter of interest. The light melodies, naive sample re-triggering, the syncopation and off beats, and the repetition. What's old is new, again.
Sorry, no links as no time.
posted by asok at 2:33 AM on March 11, 2010


> but I am assuming the 'funky' stuff is what people have been telling me is non-dreary dubstep, judging by the names linked

No, not at all, UK funky is basically the latest iteration of the UK garage lineage, taking that vocal sound that all the UK garage variants have in common and adding a bit of a soca/broken beat feel. But if you hear UK garage and are put off a little by the cheesiness of it, don't be, because from what I've heard of UK funky it's a lot classier - think more Gilles Peterson than Solid So Crew.
posted by iivix at 3:05 PM on March 11, 2010


Also, there's something rather odd about dubstep, in that everything associated with it has been given this sheen of newness and general ungeeky coolness in the way that something with a very similar sound wouldn't if it had come out of the IDM/electronica world. Take the wonky sound for example, if Matmos made something like that you'd get the Wire into it and you'd see it at Sonar, but get a dubstep producer making something weird and glitchy and it gets onto the pirate stations. Not that I'm complaining - squeee'd up wonky dubstep type electronica is great stuff, it's just not quite as groundbreaking as some people seem to think.
posted by iivix at 3:10 PM on March 11, 2010


squeee'd up wonky dubstep type electronica is great stuff, it's just not quite as groundbreaking as some people seem to think.

One thing to keep in mind is that the scene as a whole is very young. The average age of the disco or house guys that I'm aware of is noticeably older than the notable dubstep guys who are (generally speaking) all younger. Benga's, like, 22 or 23, Skream's not much older. There are exceptions (eg: Kode9, who is older)... But my understanding is that they're just that.

So.

You're 20, and you're getting a name as a dubstep guy, and you've never done anything but go to grime shows, make grime beats, and then flip to dubstep as that starts to bubble up. That's your background, and as you start to push out from dubstep to other things... You don't recognize the ties to certain kinds of house music, or to other things.

I'm not saying all dubstep dudes are ignorant snots who need to get some education. In as much as it exists, the myopia indicated above can be pretty interesting in practice. Not knowing what's been done before sometimes leads to expected retreads, but also sometimes leads to really weird, interesting mutant forms of music.

But that lack of knowledge also might lead one to believe that things are more groundbreaking than they might think otherwise. One person I know has glibly opined that Funky is just the sound of the aforementioned 22 year olds reinventing certain kind(s) of house music.
posted by sparkletone at 2:05 PM on March 15, 2010


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