If you look at post-UK garage music, in London and the South East particularly, there’s a certain fluidity that wasn’t there before.
Young producers who want to make it big wherever the opportunity seems to lie are forgetting about grime and bassline and turning their attentions to Funky, the latest twist in the sprawling legacy of post-2step UK dance. Well-known artists have ventured onto the funky frontline from their respective niches – Marcus Nasty, once leader of one of grime’s biggest crews (NASTY), is one of the scene’s biggest DJs; Paleface, owner of prominent bassline label Northern Line, has produced two of funky’s most popular tracks to date in ‘Bongo Jam’ and ‘Do You Mind’ with his crew Crazy Cousinz; even Leeds’s T2, the man behind ‘Heartbroken’, bassline’s biggest hit to date, has shown signs of becoming a funky convert. Also intriguing is Hyperdub label boss Kode 9’s entry into the scene – initally with last year’s productions under the short-lived alias of Frankie Solar, and most recently – and notably – with the evolution of those productions into recent Kode 9 singles ‘Bad’ and ‘Black Sun’.
Going on record for DJ Rupture’s WFMU radio show last year, he revealed that funky’s gradual evolution at 130 beats per minute interested him more than dubstep – the admittedly quick-to-revere scene that treats him like royalty. He also coined the recurrent observation that funky sounded more like “soca meets grime” than funky house. Since then he’s made a typically unusual but significant impression on the fringes of the genre, with DJ sets at Rinse FM’s Beyond and FWD>> nights and releases such as ‘Black Sun’ and Cooly G’s forthcoming EP on his Hyperdub label.
In fairness, Steve Goodman has always been one step ahead of dubstep’s curve, and never as musically aligned to the scene’s standards as some would have you believe: the A-side to Hyperdub’s very first release, ‘Sine of the Dub’, introduced vocals into an essentially instrumental scene and featured no drum track to speak of. He admits via email that he’s “pretty tired of people taking the whole micro-segmentation of the UK scene so seriously.”
“Part of me,” he explains, “thinks that all this stuff, funky, bassline, two-step, grime, dubstep, is all part of the inter-connected, post-garage world of underground music in the UK. You don’t have to like everything within one niche or another. I can’t remember how I got into funky – probably listening to some sets in the little room at FWD/Rinse at The End early in 2008. I just noticed instantly how much better the dancing and vibe was when the UK house came on, as opposed to what was happening in the big room at that time.
“The funky house scene, as far as I’m aware, was probably where the more soulful side of UKG went – I think some people used to call it urban house – when its moodier or more aggressive side went into grime and dubstep. No doubt it wasn’t as interesting – it wasn’t for me, anyway – as it’s only recently that some grime producers have started experimenting with it [house]. It’s just a bit rawer and less tasteful, hopefully, although I think retaining the female vocal element is important.”
Here Goodman touches on the commonly circulated genesis myth of funky, which provides interest to armchair observers of the UK underground for several reasons. For one thing, there’s a hint of the masculine-feminine ‘pendulum’ shifts sometimes mooted as a natural characteristic of British dance music – although maybe the image of a disgruntled, dissenting parallel scene retreating into ‘soulful’ house, later to find common ground with grime, demands a less linear analogy. It’s also tempting to see UK garage as the rightful precedent to funky, both styles born out of a set of similar energies and influences. Clearly there are differences: the seed for funky isn’t New York garage, but more dubiously, US house’s placeless, post-authentic progeny. And the by-products of jungle and rave that were available to nourish UK garage now don’t flow as abundantly; indeed, some veteran critics no doubt find it less exciting that funky has grime (and dubstep) to draw on.
All the same, at this stage it’s pessimistic to assume this comparison is doomed to fail. As Goodman has pointed out, fast-moving pirate radio is still a good thermometer of activity – and as such it is reading pretty highly, if not actually blowing its top. There’s a mood of obvious optimism written all over the broadcasts of stations like Rinse.
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