The trickle becomes a stream and the stream is shortly to become a flood. I’m on about albums that broadly (let’s not get bogged down in genre politics) fall under the ‘ghetto funk’ heading. The proto ghetto funk LPs were arguably Badboe’s bass wobble free Break The Funk from 2009 and Basement Freaks’ second LP Something Freaky from early 2011. Then young upstarts Morlack and Jayl Funk followed with an album apiece at the end of 2011 and this spring respectively. So far, so much of a trickle. Then Featurecast unleashed his game-changing Run For Cover this September and now Manmade and Roca Records label owners CMC & Silenta are all set to release Get It On Now with what the grapevine suggests is a flood of other artists on the scene waiting in the wings with full-length efforts ready to drop in the next twelve months.
Given the proximity of their release dates it’s tempting to compare the fourteen-track Get It On Now with Featurecast’s album. So I’m going to. Like, Featurecast’s Run For Cover, this too is what the PR is pleased to describe as a, “melting pot of,” of genres and styles that include funk, hip-hop, ragga and breaks. But the feel is very different. For a start this pair have absolutely jettisoned any sense of a retro feel that sometimes characterises ghetto funk releases. Two influences that particularly define this release are the frequency of ragga bass and rhythms (and vocals) and the high incidence of what I would describe as ‘vocals and other stylings more typically found on house records.’ The Ragga Twins-featuring This Is How We Rollin is the obvious example of the former, though others are Big Up Booty and MC Fava vehicle Get It On Now while CMC & Silenta’s penchant for female vocalists who would sound just as at home on a big Ibiza track (Malenda, Vanessa Iraci, Jennifer Lowpass, Linda Friedel) plus their application of the ubiquitous airhorn and a very Bob Sinclar-like whistle on Funky Town, represent the former. In fact, if anyone on the ghetto funk scene is likely to convert anyone from house music to breaks it’ll be CMC & Silenta. The range of bpms is both more resolutely uptempo and less broad than with Featurecast but if Get It On Now also lacks the ‘chunk’ or sheer sonic mass of some of the tracks on Run For Cover, every single track on this is resolutely dance floor-bound. With, I expect, every chance of success.
(5 November on Roca Records)