| Avant-funk | |
|---|---|
| Other names | |
| Stylistic origins | |
| Cultural origins | 1960s, United States |
| Derivative forms | |
| Other topics | |
Avant-funk (originally known asmutant disco[2]) is a music style in which artists combinefunk ordisco rhythms with anavant-garde orart rock mentality.[5] Its most prominent era occurred in the late 1970s and 1980s amongpost-punk andno wave acts who embraced blackdance music.[6]
Artists described as "avant-funk" or "mutant disco" have blended elements from styles such asfunk,punk,disco,freeform jazz anddub.[2] Some motifs of the style in the 1970s and 1980s included "neuroticslap-bass" and "guttural pseudo-sinister vocals,"[1] as well as "Eurodisco rhythms;synthesizers used to generate not pristine, hygienic textures, but poisonous, noisome filth;Burroughs’cut-up technique applied tofound voices."[5] According to criticSimon Reynolds, the movement was animated by the notion that "rock's hopes of enjoying a future beyond mere antiquarianism depends on assimilating the latest rhythmic innovations from black dance music."[1]
MusicologistSimon Frith described avant-funk as an application ofprogressive rock mentality to rhythm rather than melody and harmony.[5] Reynolds described avant-funk as "difficultdance music" and a kind ofpsychedelia in which "oblivion was to be attained not through rising above the body, rather through immersion in the physical, self loss through animalism."[5]
Early acts who have retrospectively been described with the term include Germankrautrock bandCan,[7] American funk artistsSly Stone andGeorge Clinton,[8] andjazz trumpeterMiles Davis.[9]Herbie Hancock's 1973 albumSextant was called an "uncompromising avant-funk masterpiece" byPaste.[10] Jazz saxophonistOrnette Coleman led the avant-funk bandPrime Time in the 1970s and 1980s.[11] GuitaristJames "Blood" Ulmer, who performed with Coleman in the 1970s, was described byThe New Yorker as "one of avant-funk's masters."[12]
According to Reynolds, a pioneering wave of avant-funk artists came in the late 1970s, whenpost-punk artists (includingA Certain Ratio,the Pop Group,Gang of Four,Bush Tetras,Defunkt,Public Image Ltd,Liquid Liquid, andJames Chance, as well asArthur Russell,Cabaret Voltaire,Talking Heads,DAF, and23 Skidoo)[2][13] embraced black dance music styles such as funk anddisco.[6] Reynolds noted these artists' preoccupations with issues such asalienation,repression and thetechnocracy of Westernmodernity.[5] The all-female avant-funk groupESG formed inThe Bronx during this era.[14] The artists of the late 1970s New Yorkno wave scene, including James Chance, explored avant-funk influenced by Ornette Coleman.[4] The 1981 albumMy Life in the Bush of Ghosts byBrian Eno andDavid Byrne was described as a masterpiece of avant-funk byPaste.[15] The New York labelZE Records released the influential compilationMutant Disco: A Subtle Dislocation of the Norm in 1981, coining a new label for this style of hybridized dance music blending punk and disco.[16]
Later groups such asSkinny Puppy,Chakk, and400 Blows represented later waves of the style. By the mid-1980s, avant-funk had dissipated as whitealternative groups turned away from the dancefloor.[1] Many of its original practitioners instead became a part of the UK's first wave ofhouse music,[13] including Cabaret Voltaire'sRichard H. Kirk andGraham Massey ofBiting Tongues (and later of808 State).[1] Reynolds compared the UK'srave music andjungle scenes of the early 1990s to a "reactivation" of avant-funk, calling it "a populist vanguard, a lumpen bohemia that weirdly mashed together the bad-trippy sounds of art school funk-mutation with a plebeian pill-gobbling rapacity".[1] Avant-funk influenced 1990sdrum and bass producers such as4hero andA Guy Called Gerald.[17]
avant-funk sly stone.