Funkineven

“New fusion. Not jazz fusion, but a mess…organised confusion.”

“Different sounds. Especially the things I’m working on at the moment: I’ve got an acid bassline and a dirty distorted funk synth with it, but then the beats are all over the place. I’m not using one style of kick, I’m using four different kicks in one pattern. And nothing’s quantized. But there’s still a groove, it’s not messy. It feels like I’m free.”

Insightful words from West Londoner FunkinEven, and a beginner’s guide to understanding where his music comes from. Though there’s always a precise crispness in FunkinEven’s beats, his songs have a carefree, loose roughness about them. With masterfully crafted drums, effects and instrumentation, his productions are clearly the work of an avid listener and music obsessive, merging studied, fine-tuned sounds with his own electric personality.

The result is a unique take on fusion, blending a mountain of influences from the spaced-out synths of Zapp, the jackin’ swagger of Mike Dunn, jazzy broken beat jams a la Kaidi, the full-bodied soundsystem feel of Dillinja, Todd Edwards’ florescent bounce, the improv-fuelled soundworlds of Roy Ayers and George Clinton, Model 500’s percussive builds…and everything else that’s got the funk. “I let a lot of things happen – not by mistake, but by experiment,” he explains. “It’s almost like being in a lab and thinking, ‘I wonder if you add this potion to that,’ and see what concoction comes out of it.”