“I have a question,” Dumbell asked. “Got the funk?”
There was only one response at Brooklyn Steel, an 1,800-capacity venue in New York — an affirmative roar.
The French producer was in New York in September to promote his new album, Analogous Lovewith his first full-band tour. But the short jaunt, which also stopped in San Francisco and Los Angeles, had a special meaning—less a tour, more a mission of renewal. “My job is to make funk modern music again,” says Dabeull.
He speaks of this goal in unabashedly grandiose, romantic terms. “I don't make funk music for money,” he explains. “I make funk music for people's dreams.”
This is no small task, but Dabeull's efforts have been more successful than most. His top five songs on Spotify have over 135 million streams combined, surpassing many of his funk-obsessed peers—not to mention many of his early influences, which often languish in obscurity in the streaming age.
Dabeull “is one of the best, if not the best the best, modern funk artists out there because of its analog aesthetic — it's all raw synths recorded live,” says Ivan “Debo” Marquez, one of the co-founders of Funk Freaks, a DJ collective and record label from Santa Ana, California. “No one in the modern funk scene has had the range that he has.”
It took a while though. For years, Dabeull had to prioritize other styles of music, such as electro house, to help generate income, as he was not established and the genre he worshiped was indifferent.
He grew up in Paris and discovered American funk through friends and increasingly frequent trips to record stores as a teenager in the late 1990s. “I never went to school for music,” he says. “My school plays the Bar-Kays, Kleeer, really good funk from the 1980s.” (Kleeer's 1981 album is aptly titled, License to Dream.)
A young Dabeull played an LP on repeat, singling out the grooves: “What bass is that? What guitar is that? What effects does this guitar have?'
In the US, much of the vital funk of the early 1980s—often known as “boogie”—never got its due outside the black community, “stymied by a disco reaction to pop radio,” as he wrote Nelson George in his book. The Death of Rhythm & Blues. “Of the 14 records that reached No. 1 on the Black chart in 1983,” noted George, “only one reached the pop top 10.”
This freeze still has lingering effects to this day. As Dabeull put it, “for a lot of people, funk music [from this era] considered cheesy'.
Dabeull performs in Brooklyn
Lucia Aboitez
It's an unfortunate phenomenon: The near-universal love of Michael Jackson and Prince hits doesn't necessarily rub off on Midnight Star's “Wet My Whistle” or Kashif's “I Just Gotta Have You (Lover Turn Me On).” Some indelible music from this period, including tracks from the SOS Band, the Chi-Lites and One Way, never made it to Spotify — another obstacle to fandom in the modern age, as finding good material can take archival evidence work.
In many of these songs, the bass is the real star, svelte and muscular like an Olympic champion. This is why good DJs can still rely on these records to wreak havoc on the dancefloor. “Some people like steppers, the slower stuff,” explains Marquez. At Funk Freaks parties, by contrast, “we like the boogie feeling of dancing, sweating out the alcohol.”
And Dabeull's strongest productions can hold their own alongside the original gems. On songs like “On Time” and “JoyRide,” a track for frequent collaborator Holybrune, the bass lines are terrifically plump, but still relaxed. Synthesizers flash like emergency flares. the drums remain sharp and cut. singers locate breathy arcs in the space cleared by the soaring low-end.
Holybrune also sings on “You & I,” Dabeull's most popular song, which sounds like he took Dennis Edwards' 1984 classic “Don't Look Any Further,” crumpled it into a solid ball, and then shot her out of a cannon. . Dabeull's band bolsters its bona fides by going through other twists: At the Brooklyn show, they played a snatch of Earth, Wind and Fire's “Boogie Wonderland” along with the Rah Band's “Messages From the Stars.” a guitar riff invoked “Get Down Saturday Night,” Oliver Cheatham's sparkling ode to weekend debauchery. (The band also delivered a Michael Sembello version of Runaway Train Flashdance anthem “Maniac” – less groovy than “Boogie Wonderland”, but no less effective.)
In case anyone doubted Dabeull's allegiance to 1980s funk, when it came time to record Analogous Lovehe got his hands on the mixing console that Jackson had used to record Impressive work. “He's a bit of a perfectionist,” says Marquez. (Funk Freaks released a vinyl-only Dabeull 7″ in 2020.) Dabeull prefers the word “selective.”
“We're not just here to play the songs on the album,” says Dabeull. “We want to bring it back to the way it used to be.”
Lucia Aboitez
The console, which weighs over 1,000 pounds, was previously owned by French band Phoenix, who paid $17,000 for it during sessions for their 2013 album. Bankrupt! But the equipment had collapsed. “They said, 'If you can make it, you can make it,'” recalls Julian Getreau, who serves as musical director for Dabeull's nine-piece band and is credited on his releases as Rude Jude.
While this repair process took two months of “working every day,” according to Dabeull, it was worth every ounce of elbow grease: “Funking that board was magic,” he says reverently. “To keep the funk alive, you have to do it right,” adds Getreau. “You can't take the easy way out.”
Maybe it's the board—there's a hint of The Jacksons' “Walk Right Now” in its hard-charging Analogous Love track “Look in the Mirror”, while some of his louche slink Impressive workCloser, “The Lady in My Life,” segues into Dabeull's “Fabulous Kisses.” “Let's Play” goes in another direction, reimagining West Coast G-funk as tender music for lovers.
A large portion of the crowd at the Brooklyn Steel show wasn't alive in the mid-1980s when Jackson conquer the world with Impressive work — that was their parents' music. The importance of this is not lost on Dabeull. Many funk-loving listeners are “a little older. they miss what they used to hear when they were younger,” he says. “We want younger people to be intrigued and engage with it, so it's not considered an old genre of music.”
His plan seems to be working, at least in the three American cities he visited on tour. Because Dabeull's Los Angeles show sold out quickly — “that's the Mecca of funk,” Getreau notes — some fans jumped a plane to see him play in New York, adding the price of a bumpy flight to the concert ticket their. (Holybrune graciously carried their posters backstage for Dabeull to autograph.) Another fan made the pilgrimage south from Montreal, declaring the show “the most fun he's ever had.”
After his performance, Dabeull seemed slightly dazed by all the attention paid to State. “For us, it's unbelievable,” he said. A few minutes later, a member of his team informed him that all merchandise was sold out. “It's crazy,” replied Dubelle. “Why;”
His publicist answered gently: “Because people like you.” Or, maybe, they really have the funk.
