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nah not in terms of raves - more the artists - buggz etc.

neighbourhood fridays and saturdays baby...party party

ben watt does bare stuff too - dont know if thats funky house tho - he used to do them all day parties on a sunday at the arts club

I guess, given the right sum of money and enough alcohol, I could force an obergine up my japseye. Forcing myself to like funky house, tho...

Yeah, Broken has had a lot of bad luck, really don't get why it's not massive. It's Jazz for people who hate Jazz, Drum & Bass/Dubstep/Garage who hate D&B etc, R&B for people who hate R&B... Should be doing so much better than it is.

Broken & Dubstep are consistently ignored in the Dance press, it's not even funny, especially since a lot of their journalists are based in London. Did the same with Garage for years yet if they had actually turned on their radios they would have been bombarded by it.

I'm going to have an article looking at Broken on the site either this Monday or the week after.

some broken beat is sick

im feelin domu & seiji.. but im hearing more BB these days that to me, just aint BB..

would be good to hear some new broken from Dego

owengriffiths wrote:Broken & Dubstep are consistently ignored in the Dance press, it's not even funny, especially since a lot of their journalists are based in London.

new mixmag cover is 'BEST OF BRITISH : WHY UK DANCE MUSIC IS BACK ON TOP. WITH OPTIMO, KLAXONS, DUBSTEP AND A RAVING NATION'

Well there's the new 4Hero album 'Play with the changes'. Not too sue about solo stuff as I'm not on the ball enough at the moment. There's always Porno Futbol (on Neroli) by psuedo Nutmeg. A year old (more if you include dubplate circulation) but a brilliant track

tronman wrote: new mixmag cover is 'BEST OF BRITISH : WHY UK DANCE MUSIC IS BACK ON TOP. WITH OPTIMO, KLAXONS, DUBSTEP AND A RAVING NATION'

Have they secured an exclusive interview with Dubstep? Nice one!

owengriffiths wrote:Quote: but why not full vocals rather than just dubby ones

I reckon with full on verse chorus verse chorus it's very hard to get right in Dance music. Things need to be more repetitive, with certain phrases looped, etc. It has to be a more minimal approach to vocals than the one used by mainstream R&B.

In fact that was what a lot of Garage tracks did, give a dance music sensibility to those types of vocals. I mean, imagine what the Aliyah vocal from Stone Cold sounds like compared to the Groove Chronicles track

things dont 'need' to be any one way, nor 'must' they be one thing or another in dance music

i agree that full vocals are more challenging, and i love looped, chopped or dubbed out vocals, a lot. but that doesnt lead to the conclusion that full vocals should be ignored. and enough garage had full vocals. Little Man, I Refuse, Life Is What You Make It... some of the most inspiring and beautiful garage/dance music i know

theres no rationality in saying Approach A works very well, so Approach B should be ignored, especially when Approach B has been proven to yield incredible results previously

Talking about Femme Fatale, she's playing a Dubstep set this May in Lille. Intriguing. I never knew she left the scene let alone started playing 'minimal/tech house/techno.'.

Those Geeneus funky house tunes are good. Its house music with grimey sounding bass and sub imo.

I find all these seperate nights with one genre of music being played can be a little boring sometimes. Would be better if u could go to a night and hear grime, dubstep, house and whatever else all mixed up and sequenced properly over the whole night.

Personally I think the techno/minimal sounding dubstep such as that played by Peverlist/Pinch etc is the most innovative music at the moment. Especially that new Shackleton Skull Disco 006 track.

Suppose you're right Elgato about there not 'needing' to be one way of doing things. But one of my personal problems with Garage post Artful Dodger (or more accurately post chart success) was the over-reliance on bad wannabe US R&B type vocals, not verse chorus as such.

Yeah Little Man was great, and the flipside mix proved it didn't rely on the wookie bass to keep it going, and the I Refuse vocals were good and all.

Fuck Femme Fatale really does like her stuff Techy, check out her 2nd MP3 on the special player on her myspace: http://www.myspace.com/femme_dj

Her Grimey sets were pretty well, Grimey, so it shouldn't come as that much of a surprise that the stuff she does now is dark as fuck.

tronman wrote:some broken beat is sick

im feelin domu & seiji.. but im hearing more BB these days that to me, just aint BB..

would be good to hear some new broken from Dego

yea man, I've heard maybe one or two heavy bruk tracks that come anywhere near to the chunky sound of 2-3 years back, the rest of it is too laden with soulful vocals, or just a bit too wet for me. I'm in the process of doing a decent mix of the broken i'm into, will post a link when it's done.

owengriffiths wrote:Suppose you're right Elgato about there not 'needing' to be one way of doing things. But one of my personal problems with Garage post Artful Dodger (or more accurately post chart success) was the over-reliance on bad wannabe US R&B type vocals, not verse chorus as such.

Yeah Little Man was great, and the flipside mix proved it didn't rely on the wookie bass to keep it going, and the I Refuse vocals were good and all.

Think this is a bit odd - R&B was always a pretty big component, and as underground dance music goes it always had more of a pop edge than many styles.

Funky House is complete crap.

I know it's the latest trend an all that in the urban scene but that still doesn't make it any less shite

There's some good house (like any genre), but funky house isnt it! I hope this is a short lived trend and it can bugger off back to the provincial meat market clubs from whence it came.

Funky House - Music To Make You Sniff.

The whole R&B question, I've never been able to fully get my head around it. It's been a sort of pet hate of mine

I really don't like mainstream R&B, think there's a lack of quality of songwriting, not in terms of lyrics, but in terms of melodies and that. But I like poeple like Jdavey & Jill Scott, even though I find it hard to work out what's the difference between R&B and Neo Soul. I hear the difference but cant describe it beyond the term "neo soul is R&B done proper".

Dance music has always used R&B vocallists, in fact you could say that many of the singers involved in Dance tracks could go to R&B with a reasonabally painless transition. But often these people come up with nicer songs, more soulful even. Seemed to me that come 2001 too many of the vocallists in Garage were mimicking US R&B

Actually lets phrase this better.

US R&B was an important component in UK Garage: True

I wished that it was less so

Too much of this stuff is hard to describe in words (I can barely picture it in my head)!

owengriffiths wrote:The whole R&B question, I've never been able to fully get my head around it. It's been a sort of pet hate of mine

I really don't like mainstream R&B, think there's a lack of quality of songwriting, not in terms of lyrics, but in terms of melodies and that. But I like poeple like Jdavey & Jill Scott, even though I find it hard to work out what's the difference between R&B and Neo Soul. I hear the difference but cant describe it beyond the term "neo soul is R&B done proper".

Dance music has always used R&B vocallists, in fact you could say that many of the singers involved in Dance tracks could go to R&B with a reasonabally painless transition. But often these people come up with nicer songs, more soulful even. Seemed to me that come 2001 too many of the vocallists in Garage were mimicking US R&B

As Bedward pointed out, the soulfulness of a tune's down to the listener rather than the performer. Jazzbo touches do not soul make.

Sounds more like snobbery to me in a way. Not saying that I'm a great RnB fan but I've heard some good crossovers so I don't think you should dismiss it all.

Each to their own though

Shonky wrote: I mean I like dubstep'n'all but a few less moody tunes and a bit more slink goes a long way. Enough of the grumpy bloke music already

I like (groovy) grumpy bloke music, and I'm not ashamed damn it. From my admittedly limited experience of funky house, it's overtly, self-consciously 'soulful', mechanical, purely functional music, and I have no interest in it whatsoever. It's like people have closely examined all the elements that make other genres funky and lazily slapped them together under a 4/4 beat.

The UKG stuff I like doesn't tend to be slick, soulful stuff either. It's possible for a track to get people dancing without being totally wet. Shelflife/Ghost/Menta made incredibly funky music that wasn't all female vocals and saxophones. I have a real problem with dubstep producers just whacking female vocals over beats they'd've made anyway, it just feels like a really obvious, boring reaction to the dark-half-step-moody-bloke accusations..

PS: on the broken beat tip, as well as Domu, Seiji and all the ex-reinforced people, check Titonton Duvante and Somatik