When we first launched our Five Records feature this year (previous guests include UK techno legend Surgeon and Battles’ Tyondai Braxton), Dam-Funk was one of the people we just had to get.
Well, it took a while, but we finally pinned the West Coast synth-funk wiz down when he played a series of UK shows last month. A former session musician for Ice Cube and Warren G, Dam’s recent Toeachizown album for Stones Throw is one of the year’s best, and his DJ sets take in the best funk, electro and soul from the last thirty years with a serious amount of personality radiating from behind the decks. We knew his selection for Five Records would be exemplary.
Joe Muggs sat down with Dam in his Brick Lane Hotel last month to dig through the crates: Nite Jewel, Mr. Fingers and more feature.
01: ALFREDA JAMES & BILLY RAY
‘BACK TO LOVE’
(RAPPERS RAPP DISCO. CO., 1984)
Dam-Funk: “OK my first record out of my bag is this cut, which is out of LA and it’s a remake of that great Chic Organization production Evelyn “Champagne” King’s ‘Back To Love’. This is one of the rarest records on the Rappers Rapp Disco Co. label which was also known for Rich Cason And The Galactic Orchestra, and it is just so nice – it moves a crowd, but it’s nice to play around the home too or in the car while you’re just rolling. It’s laid back, definitely laid back, but when I put this on in the club it generates some serious heat.”
And where would you place this, in terms of genre?
“Electro-funk I guess, but a more melodic kind of electro. It’s funk more than anything, in fact maybe “electric funk” is a better description than electro. Yeah, say it’s “electric funk”.”
Is that what you would call your sound too? It certainly harks back to this period of LA music…
“Sure, some of it but I keep what I do varied. The basis of it all is funk, the blueprint is funk, but always I do something else – some new wave influences, some soft rock, some jazz chords, different changes, just keep it moving in some new way.”
02: NITE JEWEL
‘WHAT DID HE SAY’
(from GOOD EVENING, NO PAIN IN POP, 2009)
“Now this is a lady called Nite Jewel, who has created a great record called Good Evening, and my favourite joint on it is this track ‘What Did He Say’. She’s from LA too, I believe her name is Ramona and she’s connected with the Ariel Pink camp, the lo-fi record scene, and this track is maybe my favourite song of the last two years. It’s beautifully executed, it’s slow but very powerful, very enticing and she creates an atmosphere that’s all her own.”
She looks back to that same period of early ’80s soul, funk and pop as you, and also to that Latin freestyle sound – but she takes a very different approach to recording, degrading the sound with rough tape recording and so on. Your stuff sounds so much more glossy…
“Oh my stuff is recorded lo-fi too, but I get it to sound kinda more expensive just because I’ve been doing this thing for so long. There are tricks you can do, especially in the mastering, when I take my tracks to master they can remove a lot of the tape hiss. But her stuff is just so raw and that’s its strength: she’s confident in what she is doing which is a truly powerful thing.”
03: SAVANNA
‘NEVER LET YOU GO’
(R&B RECORDS, 1982)
“This is a group from the UK, not really known that well, but they made amazing tracks. I am so awed by you guys here sometimes in your ability to take a sound and do your own thing. This is certainly in the UK jazz funk style, but also influenced by acts like Slave and Change. Savanna never made an album: they made two 12” singles, of which this is the second, but this is certainly something to be proud of. They were loosely affiliated to Incognito and Freeez, I believe.”
Are you familiar with the whole history of the social scene that surrounded those acts, the soul weekenders and so forth?
“Sure, yeah – I found out a lot from soul24-7.com and also from solarradio.com, talking to people through those, about the talcum powder on the floor, the different clothes and styles, the difference between north and south in the UK, and it gave a whole new angle on the appreciation of the music. You guys have a deep appreciation of it!”
And of course, a lot of people from the UK soul and electro scenes in the 80s went on to be key players in the acid house explosion in 1987-88, and so in the worldwide dance scene since then…
“Uh-huh right, yeah, these things always come around.”
04: MR. FINGERS
‘YOU’RE SOMEONE SPECIAL’
(JACK TRAX, 1989)
“Well, coincidentally, talking of that era, and records appreciated in the UK – this is my fourth choice, by Larry Heard from 1989. 1988 or 1989 anyway, it doesn’t say on the label and the internet isn’t clear on it. This is actually a b-side, the a-side is a track called ‘Love and Justice’, with about three versions, but this b-side is 8 minutes 32 seconds long and is just one of the most beautiful house music records I have ever heard.”
It’s certainly incredibly melodic and intricately structured, in fact really it’s a soul record.
“Yeah, that’s it – it’s complex, there are a lot of changes, you can hear he’s played it and it’s not just a repeating sample; what Larry Heard did with this is to take it into a more soulful and urban territory, away from being just a jacking track. Even if the label is called Jack Trax!”
It’s a UK label, right?
“Yes, it’s funny how at that time stuff was getting licensed or even just released in the UK, that feedback went back and forth. But this is just such a warm, positive record, there’s a lot of love in it, and it still sounds wonderful in the club now.”
05: HARRY RAY
‘LOVE IS A GAME’
(SUGAR HILL, 1982)
“This is a great 12” by a cat named Harry Ray, who was originally in a band named Moments. It features as a duet one Angie Stone, who of course became big in her own right as an R&B vocalist in the late 1990s and this decade, and you can hear she’s quite a presence here. Now, she was in The Sequence who made Sugar Hill’s second ever release in 1979, and so maybe there was some bartering going on with that combination, I don’t know.”
Well Sugar Hill were quite tough in their dealings with artists, to say the least. But this kind of sound is not what the label is really known for at all…
“No, of course, and the rap records became famous deservedly – but so many of them had the disco, boogie influence and this record is really a phenomenal boogie, modern soul kind of sound. Definitely on the soul side, a really powerful track, and played to a crowd today it still does great things on the dancefloor!”
Joe Muggs
More from News
