Funkinevil - Ignorant / In The Grid

Label: Wild Oats

Following last year’s ace Night / Dusk EP, rising house stars Funkineven and Kyle Hall have come together once more to give birth to another transatlantic exercise in analog funk. An interest in raw, hardware-led grooves makes the pair a perfect match, as they offer a range of moods and sounds across the EP, all served with a retro-futurist flourish and a cheeky smile.

After the modern funk of Intro, a brief arrangement of racing arpeggios and classic vocoder effects, Funkinevil present their most striking composition to date in the form of Ignorant (Igno). A regular in Funkineven’s recent sets, this stark piece of minimal funk is perfectly tuned, as a deceptively simple array of hats, snares and synths provide a surprisingly full, low-slung rhythm. The duo occasionally change the pace by locking a loop, but the track’s raw groove is hefty enough to play on unadorned.

The B-side opens with the pair’s longest offering in the form of In The Grid, a dramatic mood-shift from the A-side’s brutal minimalism. It’s a lush piece of soaring house music, where crystalline clicks and claps adorn luxurious synth sweeps. A series of timely one-off details keep the groove novel over its unhurried course, including a striking moment at 4.30 harking back to the coin-collecting SNES era which likely birthed the majority of the pair’s hardware. It’s a plush, sophisticated piece of music, acting as a perfect counterpoint to the A-side’s tough vibes. As the wavering, slightly discordant noise of Outro fades, you’ll want to listen again to the exquisitely programmed, irresistibly funky machine grooves that these two seem to conjure so effortlessly.

 8/10