There's a Pan-Atlantic nomenclature meltdown when it comes to funky house - in my mind, I thought funky house (about as awful a genre name as one could imagine) house based around disco samples (at its most basic - Torontonian
Nick Holder's
Dance Dance Dance, built on a
Chic song of the same name & not much else) -
French Touch without the filter sweeps, while in the UK it's an off-shoot of garage music and the flipside to the dark & brooding dude kingdom of dubstep. Last year's break-out hit (uh, okay) being the above song, a
Crazy Cousinz remix of
Kyla's
Do You Mind? This isn't the most intellectually astute stuff around, I know: note the words "funky" & "crazy", and pluralizing a noun by adding a z. Ouch. But it's a good enough pop song for me, with a Soca-beat, piano stabs & cute vocals. Recommended if you nodded along to
Enur's
Calabria 2007 but are programming music for your teenage cousin.
*I added Calabria 2007 just 'cause it was so great.The stellar blog
Beat Electric put out a mega-post last week of
American house tracks from the 80s, y'know,
Adonis and
Marshall Jefferson & what not, and rather than having an epiphany that, yes, this is the music I must love, I'm more dismayed that the classic house sounds like a music store clerk giving me a demo of every single feature a drum-machine has in 1987. There are notable exceptions, but
D Train was more of an R&B group than a house group. Ah well, many props to everyone at
Beat Electric for taking the time to put it up, & I think I'll just have to keep on digging.
Wildlife are from Brooklyn, and judging from their Myspace friend list have some tenuous connection to the Hollerboard. They also have a song called
Wildlife, which makes me think that this might be the members' first band, as that's just the sort of classic first band move. Much the same in rap, where one has to follow the
State Your Name, State Your Intention rule:
"My name is Jay, & I'm here to say..."
"We're here to rock the party"
If
Geiger's
Cocain-e appeals to you on more than a narcotic level, you'll appreciate
Wildlife's mannered sound, with its not to classic 80's R&B, electro, disco and house. I'm eager to hear some remixes of
Nature, maybe by
Classixx or
Treasure Fingers? Their first release is the
International Girl EP. Scant info available on
Wildlife's Myspace page.
Japophiles Take Note!
Tanuki is a shape-shifting Hengu. Tanuki is the Japanese God of restaurateurs, has giant testicles, carries sake around him, is found beckoning people to enter bars or restaurants, and, as is often the case in the land of the Rising Sun, often found entering sexual congress with humans. We've got a lot in common.
