Hugo Massien interview
6 years ago
Friday, 26 June 2009
Funky Junky
This tune's too much! Prefer it to 'Do You Mind' I reckonz.
Wishy washy or Bishy Boshy, funky is saying things right now...
Mates' Plates Vol 562
Out July 6th on Brackles and Shortstuff's new label Blunted Robots, two tunes that have been killing it on Brackles' Rinse shows along with being played by DJs like Geiom, Oneman, Bok Bok, Untold etc. Martin Kemp's woozy wonky percussively bubbling 'No Charisma' is my percy ingle on the plate (see HERE for previous semi-slobberings). Everybody with ears and decks should buy this 12. Audio on Blunted Robots Myspace HERE.
I think I've talked about Wigflex before on here, dunno if I plugged their last EP though but I should have. The new one is equally as good, full of bleeps, clicks and chirrups but not slacking on the party-starting front either - sort of combining headspace with elbow space, the kind of tunes you could have a right knees up in a club while off so mangled on ketamine that you think your knees aren't their anymore to put up... Go HERE for more info.
Also I don't think Geiom really needs a plug from me but his new funky influenced stuff is running ('Hard Downs' especially) - go to his Myspace for clips. He's also recently done a mix for Fact magazine (''providing Corpsey with lazy blog content since 2008''), which you can find HERE (article HERE).
Anyone into their UK Funky at the moment should check DSF member Hackman's funky tunes on his Myspace. Percussively solid and rattling with big Roska-esque b-lines and a lot of nice soulful/psychadelic-funk vibes riding the drums, fucking superb stuff. One to watch.
Right, well if I don't get any blow jobs or eight-balls out of that I'll be steaming.
Rants N Bullshit
Speaking of the Jacksons...
this tune, a certified (erring towards certifiable) banger, features on THIS mix which is associated with the So Bones blog/night.
Natasha (feat Clipse) So Sick
Richgirl Honeycomb
Britney Spears I Got A Plan
Chris Brown Flamethrower
Janet Jackson So Much Betta
Ryan Leslie Addicted (feat Cassie & Fabolous)
Common Universal Mind Control
Electrik Red W.F.Y
Rich Boy Drop
Nicole Scherzinger (feat T.I.) Whatever You Like
Usher (feat Ludacris) Dat Girl Right There
Ciara Work (feat Missy Elliott)
Mims Move If You Wanna
The mix/blog/night all concentrate on contemporary RnB, which it turns out is full of robo-vocalists singing about shagging over populist avant-garde techno-crunk, as opposed to Boyz 2 Men harmonising (about shagging) over the soundtrack to the Red Shoe Diaries. Of course, everybody knows that producers like Timbo and the Neptunes have been outclassing a lot of dance producers in the innovation + perspiration stakes for a long time now, and I'm pretty sure that both of them are involved in one way or another in some of these tunes - for example Danja, who produced the Britney tune, is a Timbaland understudy who helped the master create tunes such as this
There's also a huge influence from chopped-and-screwed stuff - vocals are slowed down or pitched up fairly consistently, as well as being looped and reversed and (of course) autotuned/vocodered to fuckery. In fact, it strikes you listening to this mix that vocalists in this sort of RnB have become almost synthesised - as in, say, a Todd Edwards tune, vocal lines are as chopped up and manipulated as any other sample/synth might be, employed for textural or rhythmic purposes primarily. Of course this is what vocals always HAVE been employed for on some level, but this sort of music really brings that aspect to the fore.
The vocals on a lot of these tunes leave me a bit cold - I don't find them that memorable or emotionally engaging (in the case of the latter perhaps that's the point?). It fits with the ruthlessly functional (though mind-bendingly experimental and liberated) production, the massively expensive digitally enhanced videos etc... the dehumanised (anti)personalities of the singers/dancers. Actually, even leaving aside the Janet Jackson tune, the spectre (erk) of M.J. seems to hang over all of this music - M.J. the weird, almost mechanically precise dancer, with all those strange vocal tics and yelps and screeches. I know fuck all about RNB/soul music in general but perhaps Jackson's move from Motown soul to bizarro post-human POP was influential in dragging a large sector of the RNB world along with him?
Still, at least alongside all this Jacko had an unmistakable personality and passion/soulful quality, and extremely good songwriters crafting unforgettable melodies/choruses etc. His voice was so good, and the songwriters too, that he could convincingly sound like a horny sex-bomb when actually you wouldn't be all that surprised if the autopsy revealed him to have a Penis Pan between his legs (the willy that never grew/got up heh-heh-heh). Justin Timberlake doesn't of course have anything like the talent that Jacko did but a tune like 'Rock Your Body' absolutely slayed because the Neptunes production was matched by an extremely strong song (which was presumably written for Jacko himself and rejected?)
Anyway, the real stars of this show are behind the boards. Download the mix, it will blow your pants off (on a decent system - check the 808s on 'So Sick' and go from there). Incidentally, the sample source for 'So Much Better' is this
How very Kanye.
On a side note, my favourite commercial RNB vocalist (aside from Kels, obviously DUHH) is probably Ne-Yo, although that is only based on a few tunes like this one
which was produced by a Norweigan production duo called Stargate who used to make shite like 'One Love' by Blue and 'S Club Party'. On Dissensus the other day, somebody posted up this tune
I'm now not entirely sure if Stargate nicked a riddim and changed it for Ne-Yo, or vica versa. Perhaps I should ask. Big tune though.
and go to So Bones for the real knowledge innit
this tune, a certified (erring towards certifiable) banger, features on THIS mix which is associated with the So Bones blog/night.
Natasha (feat Clipse) So Sick
Richgirl Honeycomb
Britney Spears I Got A Plan
Chris Brown Flamethrower
Janet Jackson So Much Betta
Ryan Leslie Addicted (feat Cassie & Fabolous)
Common Universal Mind Control
Electrik Red W.F.Y
Rich Boy Drop
Nicole Scherzinger (feat T.I.) Whatever You Like
Usher (feat Ludacris) Dat Girl Right There
Ciara Work (feat Missy Elliott)
Mims Move If You Wanna
The mix/blog/night all concentrate on contemporary RnB, which it turns out is full of robo-vocalists singing about shagging over populist avant-garde techno-crunk, as opposed to Boyz 2 Men harmonising (about shagging) over the soundtrack to the Red Shoe Diaries. Of course, everybody knows that producers like Timbo and the Neptunes have been outclassing a lot of dance producers in the innovation + perspiration stakes for a long time now, and I'm pretty sure that both of them are involved in one way or another in some of these tunes - for example Danja, who produced the Britney tune, is a Timbaland understudy who helped the master create tunes such as this
There's also a huge influence from chopped-and-screwed stuff - vocals are slowed down or pitched up fairly consistently, as well as being looped and reversed and (of course) autotuned/vocodered to fuckery. In fact, it strikes you listening to this mix that vocalists in this sort of RnB have become almost synthesised - as in, say, a Todd Edwards tune, vocal lines are as chopped up and manipulated as any other sample/synth might be, employed for textural or rhythmic purposes primarily. Of course this is what vocals always HAVE been employed for on some level, but this sort of music really brings that aspect to the fore.
The vocals on a lot of these tunes leave me a bit cold - I don't find them that memorable or emotionally engaging (in the case of the latter perhaps that's the point?). It fits with the ruthlessly functional (though mind-bendingly experimental and liberated) production, the massively expensive digitally enhanced videos etc... the dehumanised (anti)personalities of the singers/dancers. Actually, even leaving aside the Janet Jackson tune, the spectre (erk) of M.J. seems to hang over all of this music - M.J. the weird, almost mechanically precise dancer, with all those strange vocal tics and yelps and screeches. I know fuck all about RNB/soul music in general but perhaps Jackson's move from Motown soul to bizarro post-human POP was influential in dragging a large sector of the RNB world along with him?
Still, at least alongside all this Jacko had an unmistakable personality and passion/soulful quality, and extremely good songwriters crafting unforgettable melodies/choruses etc. His voice was so good, and the songwriters too, that he could convincingly sound like a horny sex-bomb when actually you wouldn't be all that surprised if the autopsy revealed him to have a Penis Pan between his legs (the willy that never grew/got up heh-heh-heh). Justin Timberlake doesn't of course have anything like the talent that Jacko did but a tune like 'Rock Your Body' absolutely slayed because the Neptunes production was matched by an extremely strong song (which was presumably written for Jacko himself and rejected?)
Anyway, the real stars of this show are behind the boards. Download the mix, it will blow your pants off (on a decent system - check the 808s on 'So Sick' and go from there). Incidentally, the sample source for 'So Much Better' is this
How very Kanye.
On a side note, my favourite commercial RNB vocalist (aside from Kels, obviously DUHH) is probably Ne-Yo, although that is only based on a few tunes like this one
which was produced by a Norweigan production duo called Stargate who used to make shite like 'One Love' by Blue and 'S Club Party'. On Dissensus the other day, somebody posted up this tune
I'm now not entirely sure if Stargate nicked a riddim and changed it for Ne-Yo, or vica versa. Perhaps I should ask. Big tune though.
and go to So Bones for the real knowledge innit
Thursday, 25 June 2009
Wednesday, 24 June 2009
GOODIES
Hello Hello Hi. It's been a while so I thought I'd post up a trio of mixes that have been giving me brain erections over the last few weeks. Every time I listen to them in the office where I'm ''working'' I have to cross my ears over my skull just to hide the bulge. Failing that I just concentrate very hard on data entry and my brain begins to shrink to a manageable size - say, that of a tennis ball.
The mix I've been listening to the longest is Ben UFO's Fabric Promo Mix (right click and save). It's intesting that the kind of 'dubstep' Ben's playing nowadays is so percussively led that there isn't a very obvious point where he moves from stuff like Omar S and Karizma to Peverelist and Mala. It's all mixed up, and it BANGS the whole way through (not the way a porn-star bangs, more like the way Seal probably bangs if he's pissed). Worth a special mention are the tunes by James Blake and Joy Orbison - both fucking bootiful and full of happyweird vibes.
Greena - Maracay (Forthcoming Applepips)
Omar S - Busaru Beats (Sound Signature)
Aphrodisiax - Unfinished Business (Jus House)
Karizma - 33rd Street Anthem (Defected)
Unknown - Unknown (Unreleased)
Altered Natives - Rass Out (Fresh Minute)
Pearson Sound - Wad (Unreleased)
L-Vis 1990 - Hey! (Unreleased)
Brackles and Shortstuff - Sutorito Faita (Forthcoming Planet Mu)
Deep Cover Inc. - Deepin' Side [NYC dub mix] (FX)
Ramadanman - No Swing (Unreleased)
STP - The Fall [T++ remix] (Subsolo)
Peverelist - Teachings (Unreleased)
Shortstuff and Mickey Pearce - Tripped Up (Unreleased)
Untold - I Can't Stop This Feeling [Pangaea remix] (Unreleased)
Bump and Flex - Promises [Hardstep dub] (Urban Heat)
Untold vs. Tempz - Nextaconda (Unreleased)
Youngstar - Bongcat Riddem (White)
James Blake - Air and Lack Thereof (Unreleased)
Untold - Flexible (Unreleased) Ikonika - Unknown (Unreleased)
Mala - Hunter (DMZ)
Joy Orbison - Hyph Mngo (Unreleased
Next up is a mix by Alex Bok Bok for Lucky Me (right click save) which is, barring the most tasteful (but good) thing I've ever heard from Doneao, approx. an hour of veiny sausage meat riddims.
01 - REFUGE - U Best Believe
02 - DONAEO - Love To Happen
03 - MOSCA - Square One
04 - DRE SKULL - I Want You (BOK BOK remix dub)
05 - ALISON HINDS ft MACHEL MONTANO
06 - DJ CLEO - East Rand Funk
07 - R1 RYDERS - Rubberband
08 - DORIAN CONCEPT - Trilingual Dance Sexperience
09 - SHORTSTUFF & MICKEY PEARCE - Tripped Up
10 - ZOMBY - With Lasers
11 - ELECTRIK RED - Drink In My Cup
12 - JOKER & GINZ - Purple City
13 - TERROR DANJAH - Sidechain
14 - BOK BOK - Crew dub
15 - DJ ASSAULT - Vandalism
16 - MR DE - Time Space Scrilla
17 - BASUTBUDET - Take Them Out To Eat (BOK BOK's sundown edit)
The tunes on this mix are nuts, I don't even know what genre a lot of them belong to - but it's in the area of funky/garage/dubstep/grime/soca/rave... Remember this post? All the mixes in this post wot I'm doing here mix up different genres, but there are also quite a few tunes in each mix which are spanning genres on their own - margin tunes which are forming a new and turbulent centre in this kind of mix.
Last but by no-fucking-means least is Untold's mix for Fact Magazine (Link HERE). In Blackdown's recent interview with him, Untold talks about how he is interested in combining cliches from various genres to see what will happen to them - 'mongrel' beats. You'll see what he means as soon as you hear this mix. His tunes feature recognisable synth/bass sounds from Grime/8-Bar, jungle, hardcore etc. placed together in rough harmony - and whether or not the combination always works, you can't deny the energy and excitement that such a scattergun approach provokes (to both the listener/dancer and the budding producer/DJ).
These tunes are mixed down perfectly well, and will no doubt devastate a dancefloor, but they don't sound at all slick or tasteful: you can see the joins. In this respect, they do justice to the references they make to early 90's hardcore music in using certain sounds in exhibiting a similar sort of 'chuck it in if it works' quality. I don't want to go overboard on the chin strokery analysis which the use of 'nuum' samples invites, because really the achievment of this music is to make you twitch around in your chair like a human hamburger leaving death row.
The tunes on this mix are nuts, I don't even know what genre a lot of them belong to - but it's in the area of funky/garage/dubstep/grime/soca/rave... Remember this post? All the mixes in this post wot I'm doing here mix up different genres, but there are also quite a few tunes in each mix which are spanning genres on their own - margin tunes which are forming a new and turbulent centre in this kind of mix.
Last but by no-fucking-means least is Untold's mix for Fact Magazine (Link HERE). In Blackdown's recent interview with him, Untold talks about how he is interested in combining cliches from various genres to see what will happen to them - 'mongrel' beats. You'll see what he means as soon as you hear this mix. His tunes feature recognisable synth/bass sounds from Grime/8-Bar, jungle, hardcore etc. placed together in rough harmony - and whether or not the combination always works, you can't deny the energy and excitement that such a scattergun approach provokes (to both the listener/dancer and the budding producer/DJ).
These tunes are mixed down perfectly well, and will no doubt devastate a dancefloor, but they don't sound at all slick or tasteful: you can see the joins. In this respect, they do justice to the references they make to early 90's hardcore music in using certain sounds in exhibiting a similar sort of 'chuck it in if it works' quality. I don't want to go overboard on the chin strokery analysis which the use of 'nuum' samples invites, because really the achievment of this music is to make you twitch around in your chair like a human hamburger leaving death row.
Stereotyp - Uepa (feat.Joyce Muniz) - Man Recordings
Untold - Just for You (Roska remix) - forthcoming Hotflush
Hot City - No More - forthcoming Infrasonics
Untold - Never went away - unreleased
Untold - I can't stop this feeling (Pangaea remix) - forthcoming Hemlock
Untold - No one likes a smartarse - unreleased
Untold - Gonna work out fine - unreleased
Untold - You didn't win the holiday - unreleased
Untold - Stop what you're doing - unreleased
DJ C - Jump Up and Bounce (ft. Ms. Thing) (LV remix) - unreleased
Littlefoot - Sell my soul - unreleased
Mount Kimbie - Esasub - unreleased
TRG - Siberian poker - unreleased
Ramadanman - Bleeper - unreleased
Ramadanman - No swing - unreleased
Joe - Perculate - unreleased
Untold - Flexible - unreleased
Shortstuff & Mickey Pearce - Tripped up - unreleased
LV - Crossfire - unreleased
Generally speaking, this is raw and 'shallow' music. There's not much depth (there's no room for it - it's surface orientated, sounds jostling for position... it's too ADD also - warping, pitch-eluding synths, rhythm evading drums and almost childish: ecstactic, restless, joyful... emotions as unambiguous as in rave music...)... but who cares? It's rave music. Dance music. It's fun music, not po-faced: but not a joke either. Being taken away from genre, from specific places, is a double edged sword - certain things are lost but the focus becomes more about the sounds: how they're used, how they can be clashed and mashed together etc. And the lack of deference to generic rules results in things you haven't heard a hundred times before (if you're me, at least).
I've clearly got too much thought on my brain.
That Roska RMX is raw, and his remix of Neighbourhood (see HERE) sounds even better.
Sunday, 7 June 2009
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