As the dust settled on disco, a rising tide of electro and boogie funk artists emerged from the late 1970s to usher in the '80s with talk boxes, synthesizers, drum machines, and an approach that was more hard-hitting than that of their polyester-dressed predecessors but also maintained some of its sexy, melodic dance appeal.
LA's Dam-Funk (pronounced "Dame," sometimes stylized Dâm-Funk or DaM-FunK) leads the growing number of renaissance artists who are drawing on that era for inspiration.
Dam-Funk is intimately familiar with the sonic aesthetic, having grown up during electro's original peak in popularity. His neighbor and his neighbor's older friends turned him onto the freaky groove-soul bounce of P-Funk, Slave and Zapp when he was a curious youth, and classic tracks like Funkadelic's "(Not Just) Knee Deep" made an indelible mark on his formative mind. "They'd have their windows open playing this kind of stuff and it just rubbed off on me," he told me in a recent interview.
Dam-Funk was born and raised Damon Riddick in Pasadena, Calif., just northeast of Los Angeles and home to Caltech and the Rose Bowl. Pasadena didn't escape the gang violence that spread rapidly in LA in the late '70s, but Riddick, an only child, managed to avoid getting into trouble by getting into music. His parents bought him a drum kit that he played through childhood and adolescence, and in high school, he kept busy with sports (football and track), jazz band, and record collecting "even before it was called 'digging.'"
After graduating high school, Riddick rented an apartment with a roommate, dabbled in music, and worked around Pasadena while he figured out what to do with his life. A turning point arrived in the form of a bargain synthesizer.
The instrument was a MOOG Source that was stored under the bed of his roommate's cousin; it belonged to her boyfriend, multi-instrumentalist songwriter and producer Leon Sylvers III. "She sold the keyboard to me for $15, 'cause they had an argument or some sort of disagreement. 'Course they made up and are still together now." Riddick couldn't believe his luck. "It was played on all The Whispers' tracks, all the late '70s and early '80s SOLAR [Records] material. I bought that keyboard and that got my start into more serious instrumentation."
Ironically, his next turning point came when he actually crossed paths with Sylvers, who mentored and managed Riddick through the '90s and 2000s. Sylvers helped him get work as a session artist until 2005, when he found himself knee-deep in the West Coast rap scene, recording with the likes of Westside Connection and MC Eiht and wishing he were doing something else. "I got to the point where I was like, this stuff is cool, but I really prefer to do funk."
Riddick had been intermittently piecing together his own compositions, but after abandoning the studio gigs he was able to focus all his efforts on his music. He picked up odd jobs to support himself, "delivery jobs with my boombox in the passenger seat, rolling around LA, graveyard shifts, never giving up on my music while I had people telling me, 'Man, don't you think you should try something else?' Those words echoing in my head, amplified, started sounding like a bunch of bats." He posted tracks on Myspace, got noticed by hip-hop producer/DJ and Stones Throw Records founder Peanut Butter Wolf, and was offered a remix deal that eventually snowballed into an official recording contract with Stones Throw. "I owe everything to that man for taking a chance."
In 2009, at 38 years old, he finally issued Toeachizown. A double LP with 24 tracks, it's one man's magnum opus and considered by some to be a benchmark for the burgeoning modern funk movement. His take mixes the slow roll of '90s gangsta rap and a little Chicago house with the hallmarks of electro boogie funk — mid-tempo rhythms, hand claps, melodic chord progressions, lots of bouncing slap-bass thump, thick vintage synth bump, and R&B smooth vocals that bring sleazy cheese to some of the instrumentals. "Toeachizown was such a hefty presentation of music at one time, because it was almost like a light shining on my whole last 10 or 15 years in the game in LA, and I was able to do it from the heart without any creative clamp down."
The album got a hefty 8.3 rating from Pitchfork.com. That accolade, paired with heaps of other favorable write-ups and remixes of tracks by Animal Collective ("Summertime Clothes") and more recently, Ariel Pink ("Fright Night (Nevermore)"), earned him some indie street cred.
DaM-Funk's project with former Slave frontman Steve Arrington, Love, Peace, and Funky Beats, drops in November, and his 2011 InnaFocusedDaze EP was released in September and fuels his current tour. "This is just a prelude project, to hold people over, or at least let people know that I'm still here and not giving up or turning my back on my sound," he remarked.
Dam-Funk is joined by Master Blazter — Computer Jay (keys, synths) and Jay 1 (drums and triggers). "It's a very aggressive show, definitely more amped-up energy than the recorded music. It makes people move, and it's something that I'm very happy to be part of." He likened his group to a power trio "in the fashion of The Police, or Rush, or even Battles, that kind of vibe, but we do it live, and we hit hard, and it's modern funk."
dam-funk, boogie, electro, master blazter, p-funk, slave, zapp, damon riddick, InnaFocusedDaze, Love, Peace, and Funky Beats, Toeachizown, Pitchfork.com, leilani polk, music, interview
This article appears in Sep 29 – Oct 5, 2011.