I gotta give credit to 2 Winnipeg locals for introducing me to the wonderful genres of UK funky and garage recently. Adam Hannibal from Balanced Records, and the same cat that got me into Dubstep in the first place – Scott Atkinson.

Generally, I take interest in a new genre from listening to 1-2 hour DJ mixes, not individual songs. As I’ve mentioned before, Scott consistently shares quality mixes on Soundcloud and beyond via his facebook and mixhard posts, and Adam plays out UK funky/dub/garage/future garage tunes regularly at his DJ sets. I was lucky enough to share table duties with him at a charity arts gig last November. The combination of Scott’s links, and Adam’s sets, got me hooked on these great (new) sounds.

Soon enough, I discovered one of the prominent purveyors of FUTURE GARAGE and UK FUNKY – GIRL UNIT – from the UK. He’s on the NIGHTSLUGS label run by BOK BOK.

Ask an electronic DJ what they play and nine times out of nine, they will tell you they play a ‘bit of everything’ or at a very least won’t admit to mostly sticking to 1-2 genres. With the amount of music we have at our disposal (pun intended) , most people listen to multiple music genres, or if you are like me, you listen to damn near EVERYTHING. However, most DJs stick to what they know, if they play DnB, they will generally only play DnB at any gig they booked for, same goes for techno or house DJs. I don’t subscribe to this idea, there is TOO much great music out there to stick to just one genre, and if you really dig into some of the tunes – and look at their speeds – you’ll find a lot of genres can easily be blended together. Dub/Breaks/Garage for instance, all have a half-time around 70 bpm. One big happy family of tempos, that sound great when mixed together. In addition to the dub/garage going well together,  DJs like GIRL UNIT, will mix in tunes from the pop/r&b genres into their sets. It keeps things fresh and interesting, and gives a slice of great tunes from EDM and the broader formats of pop.

You can hear this applied in a recent mix GIRL UNIT put together for for XLR8R. Page link is HERE.

And here in ANOTHER mix posted to FADER mag called ‘DOLLARS TO POUNDS’. It has a similar feel as the XLR8R mix. Mixing UK funky/future garage/dub along with American R&B into a delightful sound. God bless the UK DJs for taking this stuff so seriously, and keep the EDM genre fresh :)

If you want to hear some of these UK Funky/FutureGarage/Dub sounds LIVE, make sure to attend the BALANCED RECORDS 10 YEAR anniversary party on APRIL 30th. Facebook page is HERE.