German ghetto funk, breaks, hip hop, funk, electronica and dubstep masters Funkanomics are playing Spiritbar on Saturday night as part of their Canadian tour and Shambhala's ricardO Hubbs and Christine Hunter caught up with the trio before they take the stage.
1. Tell us how the name of your band reflects in the music you play.
Most of dance music got its basics in funk music. It’s a genre, which will never die and most parts of our productions are based on funk combined with some up to date stuff. We love slapping basslines, funk instruments and urban grooves and always try to keep it real as much as possible.
2. How do you see electronic music defining a generation?
The past year’s electronic music became very fast moving and every genre got plenty of sub-genres in between short times. You can get plenty of productions, remixes and mashups in the web and it became a kind of lifestyle for many people out there, which everybody can get involved easier than back in the day.
3. You are all from Germany. How does electronic music vary from country to country, continent to continent?
Europe was most about minimal in past years. House is getting a big revival at the moment and Midtempo stuff always had its followers confined to a smaller scene, but there are always good parties, which is pretty nice to see. The scene in Canada is way bigger and the people are much more open minded into bass music then in Germany. We love the good vibes going on in Canada and it feels good to be part of it.
4. So you’ve been on tour in our beautiful part of the country. How has the tour been treating you? What’s the highlight of the tour thus far?
We love Canada, the whole country, the kind people, the great vibes and the open minded population. Nearly every gig on the tour has been packed and sold out so far and there is no general highlight for us, Canada itself is the highlight and it feels awesome to have such a great fan-base over here. “Canada ist wunder-wunderschön !!!”
5. We know this is a question artists generally don’t like to be asked, but here we go, when creating a set how much thought goes into your track selection and how much actually stays on course whilst into the live set?
We spend a lot of time on our track selection and love stuff with good party vibes. As we were raised on sound from the early ‘60s, ‘70s and some hardrock, before we found our sound into golden era hiphop, dancehall and reggae, we generally try to represent that and combine every kind of music, we dig at the moment. Funkanomics sets are generally based on stuff we like and every thing gets its little own bass treatment from originals to remixes to mashups.
6. Another track selection question here: how often does the crowd influence the next track you’re going to select?
We always look at the crowd’s reaction and as we are not fixed to one genre, we keep on playing stuff the crowd likes. Sometimes, we would like to play more tunes, we dig for ourselves, but if it doesn’t work for the crowd we change the genre, as the people are the most important part of every event.
For questions with Freddy J — who will also be playing Spiritbar on Saturday night — visit nelsonstar.com.