Also, if you haven't checked out the mix I did with DJ Brett Randle earlier this year, make sure to check out Summer Luau Luv here, and in an abbreviated, safe-for-work format here.
I've been coming up with a list of albums for Pitchfork's 'best albums of the 00s' feature running this fall, and its got me going back to all these old blog entries (now secure from wider circulation) from when I was 20 & 21, trying to recall all the music that was moving me at the beginning of the decade.
Mostly, though, I've just been rediscovering tracks; good post-popist anti-rockist that I am, the strongest memories I have tend to be more about individual songs I heard: the first time "Still Tippin" was pumping from a car in my neighborhood, dancing to "Move Your Body" or Jacques LuCont's remix of Gwen's "What You Waiting For," etc. The Ewan Pearson remix of Seelenluft's "Manila," was a part of a group of tracks that I played at most of the parties we threw at the house I was living in my junior year of college. "Hey Ya" had just hit, & I was basically trying to appeal to as wide a crowd of interesting people as I could, so we'd keep the trendy kids with Joy Division's "Digital" & keep the hip-hop heads with "What Happened to that Boy" & keep everybody with Liquid Liquid's "Optimo" & Earth Wind & Fire's "Let's Groove." Heady times -- something I'll probably write about a bit more in depth towards the end of the year.
The international phenomenon of house music owes its existence to the basement clubs of 1980's Chicago, but many Chicagoans are unaware of their city's underground legacy. "Home Sweet House" reveals a thriving Chicago house scene hidden in plain sight. From a footworking battle on the South Side to a night out at a legendary North Side club, the film takes viewers to the city's most hallowed house hotspots. Interviews with DJs, promoters, producers, dancers, and record store clerks--all set to a soundtrack of authentic underground Chicago tracks--answer the ultimate question that surrounds this legendary subculture: Why Chicago?
One of the great things about following UK funky for the past year or so has been the amazing number of tracks that poured out of such a seemingly small scene. By the time my overpriced import vinyl copy of the "Do You Mind (Crazy Cousinz Remix)" had arrived last summer -- the first & still best introduction I had to the genre -- i already had about fifteen new favorite tracks. The video above, for Egypt's beautiful "In the Morning," just dropped a day or two ago.
One of the best ways to keep up with it has been through mixes, which really gives the best idea of how this genre 'works.' Much like the world of cosmic/balearic/nu-disco, a single track might suggest the genre is one thing, while in fact it's a lot more helpful to hear the genre as a constellation of impulses, musical concepts that revolve around certain trends & aesthetic approaches. At one level, funky is simply house music with more syncopated rhythms of soca & dancehall, tied to a specific geographic locale. But it's also a petri dish of how popular music develops & flexes between trends as a whole, playing with the internal tensions of a genre that appeals to a comprehensively diverse array of people.
Tim Finney follows the genre better than most people I've read, and always seems to do a really great job of explaining how certain tracks function in relation to others & the genre as a whole. He's just revived his blog to start running through a bunch of funky tracks that grabbed him this year. I particularly like this quote where he explains the appeal of funky as a genre:
People talk about funky like it’s a swing back to femininity from grime and/or dubstep. This is true only to the extent that funky harks back to garage’s particular arc of development at times. Even then, that’s only half the story: funky sounds crude or robotic as easily it does fluid, sexy and, well, funky. As with dancehall, funky’s flexible beat structure and hormone-balanced aren’t tied to any particular strategy of affect, but (especially in good DJ sets) create a sense of such questions being suspended.
One of my favorite mixes so far has been DJ One Drop's Kingston Flavour, which is a predominantly UK Funky mix, but explores the various commonalities between the genre & dancehall; this is no accident, as many of the UK's black immigrants (a core group of funky listeners, as is my understanding) are of Jamaican origin. Mostly, it's a really great document (and in good sound quality) of a fun, relatively new dance genre.
The only song that really falls on its face in the mix is Boy Better Know's absurd "Too Many Men." It's a song about the dance floor being too full of dudes, and I'm not really sure who that would really appeal to on the dancefloor. It doesn't even work at the level of "It's Raining Men," because 'too many' is already implied by the title. I doubt playing this song is gonna get girls running to the floor. Until this is ironically co-opted by a gay UK funky subculture I can't really say I have a use for that track.
Its failure, however, does work as a nice microcosm of what NOT to do in UK Funky, where the most interesting music is about tensions and balance between gendered aesthetics, a lack of resolution, the idea of possibility.
Fly is Vol. 2 of the 'digital release' from my new project Toeachizown. The 1st 3 joints on this volume consist of my continued steps into the 'electric-space-funk' style I'm humbled 2 share with U from my mind, yet this time out, with a more 'danceable' vibe 2 it. U know, for the clubs...worldwide! The first 3 tracks “Flying V Ride” (which is a reference 2 the fabled UFO that many have reported seeing in their lifetime), “Candy Dancin’” & “Burn Straight Thru U” co-exist as a 'suite' called “The Move Suite”. Yes, 3 songs that are joined together as 1. This is why the 'drum machine pattern' is the same on these 3 particular songs. “Candy Dancin’” also features a wicked synth solo & vocoder contribution by the 1 and only Mark de Clive-Lowe.
The remaining 3 joints of this volume on this 'digital release': “10 West”, “I Wanna Know” (a vocal) & “Rollin’” represent exactly what the title of this volume is: Fly. They're joints that U can roll 2. Let your hair down 2. Vibe with a lady 2 (or vice-versa), + stay 'fly' 2. I know there's still some fly ladies & gentlemen out there. This Vol. 2 from my Toeachizown project is...4 U.
- D-F
"imo if you aren't playing the hell out of dam-funk your summer sucks balls and you should be deported to the north pole."
