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Over more recent years I’ve had a strange pull to the genre that is “electro-funk”, a genre that originated in America from soul, R&B and disco from decades previous. For me there’s a lot of elements of this genre that have similarity to genres I’ve already been listening to for a while, namely synth pop, italo disco and minimal synth, albeit with a slightly different mood and rhythm.
One thing I love about this genre is the groove and the fact that many of the players in electro-funk are quite experienced keyboardists and musicians. Many of the wild synth parts that cross into bass lines and accents are all played by hand, in the very early days of MIDI. There’s a really great feel and some amazing unpredictable moments, and if anything it’s a genre that’s really fun to listen to — a change of pace for more “serious” genres I listen to and gets the pop-and-lock vibes started in any day of the week.
Some tracks are more on the electronic tip than others — going into more funk/disco territory, showing variation in the overall genre.
For those uninitiated, this is a playlist of some of my favourite tracks in the genre. Note this this playlist may get updated in the future but here’s a list of some of the tracks featured in this mix:
- The Pointer Sisters “Automatic”
- The System “Sweat”
- Advance “Take Me To The Top”
- General Caine “Yellow Pages”
- André Cymone “The Dance Electric”
- Zapp “Computer Love”
- The Egyptian Lover “My House (On The Nile)”
- Delegation “It’s Your Turn”
- Patrice Rushen “Forget Me Nots”
- Network “Cover Girl”
- Dunn & Bruce Street “Shout For Joy”
- Cashmere “Do It Any Way You Wanna”
- General Caine “The Bus”
- Kleeer “Get Tough”
- The System “It’s Passion”
- Komiko “Feel Alright”
- Tyrone Brunson “The Smurf”
- Q “The Voice Of Q”
- Jesse Johnson “Be Your Main”
- Larry Graham “Sooner or Later”
- The Egyptian Lover “Freak-A-Holic”
- Starpoint “Object of My Desire”
- Warp “Nunk – New Wave Funk”
- Fatback Band “Is This The Future?”
- Midnight Star “No Parking (On The Dancefloor)
- Mtume “Green Light”
- Zapp “More Bounce To The Ounce”
- Ollie & Jerry “Breakin’… There’s No Stopping Us”