Show All Interviews

Interview with All Good Funk Alliance by Ollie Brooke

courtesy of InTheMix.com.au

As a recent convert to your sound I have to say it's refreshing to hear you effortlessly glide between funk and house and cover lots of territory in between. How would you define your sound?

Definitely a jamming party kind of style, it's music for having a good time to 'cos that's what we do. The new album gets down to a more serious sound but normally we do good time party music.

Recently Sydney superclub Home announced a shift towards the rock/band scene. While they are not dropping the DJ format completely, certain media interpreted it as a heralding of the end of the dance era, This is nothing new however, so what do you have to say about the longevity of dance music?

I believe it's here to stay. I think with all things that are fashionable there's a lot of things that come and go from style. One minute a country is into a style and the next it's not. I think you can never say dance is at the end, it's always gonna be here.

You're part of a new sound emerging in the electronic scene, with the likes of Skeewiff and Fort Knox Five both sharing your penchant for funk. Where do you see this new wave heading, compared to the old wave in the 70s?

I think it's gonna keep getting more sophisticated. You mentioned the band scene, it's gonna start being an incorporation of being really good in the studio and being able to do live performances. I can see there being a union of bands and electronic/studio sounds. I can see that DJing isn't really a show. People want to see a show or a performance; we'll be seeing more sophistication of live performances. It makes the music more acceptable for people that may not be as familiar with the style of music.

In music today, especially with the house, breaks and funk scene, there is a lot of borrowing going on from the roots sound of the 70s. With the scene setup as it is now, compared to the way it was then, what do you think is the incubating factor that has allowed these sounds such a successful second coming?

I think with the technology and sound, being able to make the music is much more accessible. So you're getting great sounds from people just at home on laptop studios cos there's some great plug-ins available to replace the hardware that was needed before. It makes it sound great, the expression and transmission of sound is much easier and better. It's not necessarily always down to the music. Sometimes it's how well it's heard which comes down to how it's mastered. Technology has got so masterful and people are coming out with great sounding music and that might be responsible for a lot of the styles making a come back.
Production nowadays is incredible, there are ways of making the shittiest car stereos sound good. That idea really started in the 70s with the compression wars, where the perceived sound of a song was louder, [so] psychologically it seemed better.

With your fingers in many musical pies what are the projects that you guys have been involved in, collectively or individually, that deserve more attention?

I have the B-Team which is the house persona, after that there's a project I do with a female singer which has a kind of Portishead feel. Russ is helping out with a crew called Jigger Bank City which is pretty fun, almost like strip club music. We'll see where all that goes but of course our hearts and souls are in AGFA. I love doing these other projects because sometimes it's good to write with different people using different styles, they know how to make different sounds and things like that and it helps to diversify the repertoire.

"Music is food for the soul", what are your comments on the statement?

Absolutely, the music to me is extremely spiritual and it just helps me be me, and it's cool that other people see it in different ways. Some music is meant to make your ego bigger, some is meant to be nostalgic. It's different to different people, it makes some people stronger; with me it does all those things. That's why I love it, it feeds my soul, it helps me see the beauty in life and just the power that life has, especially when it's a really well written piece, it just has so much power.

The title of your album is 'Social Comment', have you got one?

 

Absolutely, I think everyone should try to do their best part and try to help things out. The way things are now you can help even in the smallest degree, everything from writing letters to your senator to making music that gives positive messages. Anything you do to help is a good thing. It's so easy to live in a comfortable place, you don't wanna give up the comfort of everyday life and I'm sure people live in bubbles and don't want to get out of them. It's very comfortable to be in a nice place, it's also good to think about the fact that not everyone has things as good as you or I, sometimes along the way we should help other people out.

What does the future hold for you guys, will you continue to devastate the globe with your funk weapons or are there new unexplored avenues you wish to tread?

We're gonna keep up the Funk Weapons brand, finding new artists which we're doing all the time, keep writing, finding other vocalists here and there. The thing about the album with Swamburger was that we only met him once, everything was done via mail. There's a whole world you can work with now through technology, the future's bright and there's so much to be done and there's so many great artists we want to work with in the future.

Several musical waves have been born over the ages, classical, jazz, rock and electronic, do you think there are many or any musical frontiers as grand in their originality as any of those that we already have or are we now stuck with the current melting pot of elements?

I don't think it'll ever end. The current explosion of technology that's helping the new ways of making music and new interfaces and new ways of even think about new styles. I think it's gonna keep going, there's a neat thing going on now where we're mixing a lot of different cultures and there's a melting pot where the so much mixes of different music and that in itself is creating new styles that are pretty good but nothing operates in a vacuum, new styles are being produced all the time.
Something new and fresh is always coming in one form or another but on the flipside, even if you analyze music, it all comes from the same roots, none of it's that unrelated, it's hard to separate the style mentioned even though the sounds are different. If you break them down they're not so different.

Name five people who have built the foundations for the sound on which you guys now rest and what key elements have they provided?

Well Bronx Dogs is a big one. It was really them, they had a great Latino and party vibe. Propeller Heads, Skeewif, great talent and production. Fort Knox Five at the beginning were really helpful to us, they still are, especially Johnny, and Shrak is really great, like in the beginning they'd let me sit in the studio and show me how they'd do their sounds and show me how they made them really good. I'd like to be up there with them, I really admire their style.

Share On Facebook This interview has had 138 views