Sunday Funk Vol.3 (+ Hangout Session)

Hi all, sorry for the missed session on Wednesday the 7th. It's a tough time of year for me as I'm sure it is for many others, and unfortunately it means I am unable to commit to longer sessions on my discord server. However, I still want to offer my perspective and engage with you all, so I've come up with a semi-regular series that will begin with some monthly music sharing sessions this month.

I started making 'Sunday Funk' playlists for my discord showcasing all the music I'd been feeling lately. I've decided to bridge that over to my patrons too with a bit more commentary on my part about personal highlights of the selection.

1. Gremlinz - Ratchet

- What I find most inspiring about this style of music is how much it takes an intimate understanding of the sounds involved. In its bleak sample-fueled dread it is still able to carry a frenzied energy, and it brings me to ponder the function and conception of certain sounds as carriers of energy, of heat in dance music.

2. laur.en - splitting hairs

- In search of digital-era nostalgia, this internet-borne trap track turns to the aesthetics of old tape-loop music and dub electronics, and reminded me quite strongly of actual tape pieces organized more in loose segments of time than any solid metric.

3. Satl - Standing By (ft. SAIGO)
7. Rippps - AR...PS
12. S. Fidelity - Mixed Signals (ft. NDO)

- A rising influence in my musical worldview, R'nB is finding its way into my production with hints of wide drum mixing, vocal samples and harmony work, funk-styled synth lines and clear spaced out grooves. These tunes I've included here are definitely driving the change in my paradigm.

4. Albino Sound - Uneven Objects 2
5. Ploy - Zoom
8. Koreless - MTI
11. - dBridge - The Frame

- Over this year I've come to embrace less structured and sectioned forms in club music. I treat these tracks as examples of an inquiry into the regimented 8-16-bar mix-in-mix-out routine of dance music styles I'm most accustomed to. Tracks like these inspire me to think about negative space within the track and a foundational approach with sub-bass: on a club system, it provides the energy for transients to become physical objects, and every sound above it becomes almost ornamental. At least, that's what I've come to believe.

5. Elysia Crampton - Grove (ft. Embaci)

- The lore and story behind Elysia's music is often obscure, theological, personal, and definitely too complex to describe in a short analysis. Nevertheless, the music evokes "modern electronic folk" flavors with strongly personal notes delivered by singing and spoken vox. I was introduced to her work from a friend and I immediately found it beautiful how elusive but "real" the music felt.

9. Jeigo - Lost River
10. Cloud Lord - Teeth Wisdom

- After being deeply invested in underground drum & bass circles for a year, very little new music feels brand new, and I knew I had to search for 170bpm works that challenged my perception of the genre. Lost River brings a less-than-common natural acoustic funk to atmospheric jungle, topped off with lost & found vocal chops, and Teeth Wisdom grinds on with digital sandpaper drums while murmuring analogue synths bubbled on behind the front. The exploration of musical obscurity and warm-but-cold aesthetics in 90s ambient techno & trip hop was one of the first things to really fascinate me in my discovery of electronic music, and these tracks hearken back to a personally cherished time but staying musically relevant and worthwhile.

I hope you've found this read interesting and insightful. I'll be holding a hangout session in my Discord server on Saturday 10th Dec as well to talk about the tunes, among other things happening in my creative life. I've decided also to only announce hangout sessions along with these playlists, so I can gauge my availability closer to the date, hope you understand.

See you tomorrow evening 10th Dec, 9pm GMT. :)