WOEBOT

It's been with not inconsiderable relish that I've been listening to Funky House recently. It does amuse me that nearly everything that's used to describe it pejoratively is used as a compliment when used to refer to other genres. Martin Clark for instance has made great play of it being geographically rootless, and this has been widely picked up by just about every other commentator. But hang on a minute, we're supposed to applaud Dubstep when it hails from Canada or New Zealand or somewhere else notionally "Global", but that very same quality in Funky House makes it despicable? Come on! They're both equally "underground" a phenomenon, though don't think for a second I'm making a case for any music on the strength of that, though I suppose Dubstep might sell marginally less.

Does anyone remember the heyday of early Acid and chart-busting Pop-Rave, when Belgian proto-Gabba jostled in the mix with Italian Piano House, London art-squat-wannabe-house and Chicago hip-house? Back then the music's origin was generally seen to be totally irrelevent. So why is it so important today? The audience for House has dwindled to such a degree that, like in 1989-90 the same wildly divergent strands aren't once again forced to share the same stage. Some would argue that the proliferation and endless multiplication of dance music genres has reached a point where the sense in the generic distinctions has actually started to break down. This probably happened five years ago in truth, but nowadays, really. Funky House is interesting in this context because it's quite self-consciously an umbrella term to draw together a mongrel coalition of Electro-Techno-Disco-House whose sole shared agenda which is to drive the dance-floor. That motorising ambition isn't to be sniffed at in an era when it seems nobody is dancing. Back in the day people really danced. Hence the "Funky" appendage I guess, inspiring folk to frug off their inertia, cynicism and self-conciousness.

I couldn't argue an aesthetic case for 90% of Funky House, but even that faintly crap 90% (consisting as it does of fifth generation Strictly Rhythm off-cuts) is about, ooh, lets say 1000 times more interesting than most Dubstep just by merit of having a pulse, by aiming to be entertaining. Most current dance music has died a death of good taste and assumed sophistication. The Kompakt thing for instance, Jesus that sleek Mittel-European noodling is boring, you can't imagine people losing control or getting sweaty can you, they might spill their Martinis, get a cocktail stick in their eyeball. They're all too busy networking and taking photos of one another. No wonder most kids want to listen to guitar music!

The best Funky House is mucky stuff like Dirty Old Ann's "Turn Me On" (Phunkk Mob Remix), a hoarse knackered old diva (I think it may be a remix of the Three Degrees) over a colonically challenging electro bass-line. The tune rolls at, I dunno I guess about 140 bpm, a totally no-nonsense butt-shaking kind of tempo. Production has got so large on these records that the bass has real girth and it needs that kind of low-level velocity just to fit on the groove. And there's none of that twatting around with the lower frequencies either, that woah check out that bass-line geezer rubbish, the bass rolls at an ultra-satisfying pitch where it's crisply audible, its edges are punchy and focussed. Something like Leonid Rudenko's "Summerfish" (Scandall Sunset on Ibiza Mix) is another fantastic example, it's a completely addictive euphoric groove.

The bass-line on another of my favorite tunes Robot Needs Oil's "Volta" is another lesson is the joy of bass as lead instrument. I can't help but admit that the reason this rocks my soul is that it uses exactly the same kind of divinely instantaneous riff that lit up the great old Acid House tracks. The early A Guy Called Gerald tunes spring to mind immediately, especially as the way the hook is passed back and forth across various palettes. Remember those old intensifying climaxes that used to get so boring in dance music? Well Funky House has ripped up the rule book and nowadays these interludes are scripted with delicious inventiveness, spiraling into billowing gaseous clouds, tunes turning inside out, divas bursting out of imploding stars. Wilder & Clarke's "Stand Up" (featuring Katherine Ellis) on which the absurdly fruity choir of multi-tracked gospel delirium sits atop an insanely rough electro bass-line, undercutting all one's textural expectations, is practically a dictionary of these effects. Funky House at its best makes a complete mockery of the portentous riddimic theorising of Dubstep or Micro-House by actually out-stepping it in practice without resorting to drawing the listener into a state of emotional torpor. Tocadisco's splendid "I like it Loud" with it's idiot James Brown vocal hook, is infinitely more engrossing than almost all Techno made of the same base material.

It seems like last year was some kind of watershed. Primarily owing to the entropic subsidence of the initial energy flash of dance music. The end of the dance music continuum as a history which had internal consistency happened with Bruza's "Get Me" (2005) which surely must mark the apogee, and thus conclusion of Grime's aesthetic evolution. Grime being the final chapter in Acid House. What this also signaled was the end of one's ability to use the critical narrative around Acid House to generate useful meanings or allow one to make aesthetic predictions or judgments.

The generational loyalty to Dubstep (or Micro-House) is akin to clinging onto the Raft of the Medusa, even as planks are breaking away from the wreckage. The amusingly tipped Blog House phenomenon is just another example of how historiography in the form of crash-course histories of House has artificially created a new generation of aimless fans. To stretch my nautical analogy further, this is like charting a schooner to drop you off on the Raft of the Medusa. It's tempting to include here The Wire magazine's endorsement of Dubstep into the litany of crimes committed in the name of specious, bourgeois, pseudo-historical engineering**. Funky House, this utterly a-historical, response-centered music might be the antidote to the tedious over-inscription that has stripped everything from dance music which once made it innovative, interesting and fun, a chastening return to the fundamental pleasure principles.

* Something like the Burial LP for instance is a purely retrograde move.
** Dry-docking the raft of the Medusa and treating its timbers.