The daddy of dancefloor friendly mp3 blogs dilatechoonz has been running a series recently on liquid funk,which was drum and bass’s brief flirtation with 70’s soul and funk. As with ‘jazzy’ drum and bass a lot of it was the same lazy assed production but with a bit of wah-wah thrown in (for dancefloor crossover appeal). I seem to remember ltj bukem releasing hundreds of really bland ‘funk’ albums that all just blurred into horrendous overproduced background music. Thankfully the dc crew know their music better than that and have picked some real winners.
About the only real piece of that scene I got into was wax doctor’s mighty ‘atmospheric funk‘, probably because it was released on talkin loud. First time I heard it -it sounded like the freshest thing, a brand new style of music-though listening now I’m not sure how well it’s aged. Of course being an ignorant youth I had no idea that it’s big hook was cleverly lifted from this track from Donald Byrd’s sample heavy ‘Ethiopian Knights’.

Its a track that can’t decide if it wants to lock into a groove and stay there, afrobeat style, or go off on a jazz tangent and is probably a good a blueprint as any for what liquid funk would eventually become.

Get some.

Donald Byrd-Emperor