Phantom Phunk (ft. Pandapaws & C.i.D) – Wound Up [Review]
Wound Up has all the elements to make it a hip-hop banger. Forming in 2016 as a rock band, Phantom Phunk have evolved their sound to become more eclectic. The fusion between funk-filled guitar work and soulful vocal melodies blend spectacularly against the hip-hop beat and rapping style. It has the atmosphere of a group that has found their sound and are running away with it.
As you can probably tell, Wound Up has something in there for everyone. Its coolness oozes from the magical synth underbelly and is bolstered by the impressive arrangement of the rest of the instruments/vocals. It feels like you are listening to a Jurassic 5 track in places, as the jazz subtleties creep into the mix of pure, funkified hip-hop fluidity. Wound Up is the latest in a string of releases, so be sure to check out the rest too!
Xunemag.com
A Week Ago – Phantom Phunk (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
Innovation isn’t about not following any of the rules, it is about knowing enough about the rules to understand which ones are actually important, which ones can be bent out of shape and which can be discarded all together. Ironically anarchy, especially musical anarchy, is a more organised place than it would have you believe! And if anything of what I have just said is true, it is to bands such as Phantom Phunk that it is most applicable.
A Week Ago keeps enough of the tried and tested hip-hop structural beats and pop grooviness to ground it sufficiently, allowing the band to really be able to play with the melodies and explore the musical textures which they proceed to hang on to it. The bass line pops along in a funky fashion matching the slightly staccato beat which gives it energy and to this they add sweet vocal harmonies and strange electronic inclusions. There is a sunny aspect to the melodies but rather than play and easy Day-glo vibe card, instead there is something a bit trippy and confused about it. It’s like the joy of being lost in a new place and just allowing yourself to revel in the dislocation and feeling of being slightly untethered.
Breaking the rules and blurring the lines is what Phantom Phunk does best, and here they add a sense of blissful confusion to the proceedings and the result is a song which is both slightly off kilter and bang on the money!
written by Dave Franklin
Tongue Tied – Phantom Phunk (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
Four tracks in, as far as I’m concerned anyway, and I’m really falling for Phantom Phunk. I don’t understand what they are up to, how they blend their musical strands together, I just know that the world, and not just the music world, is a better place for them being in it. You have to stop thinking about what they do and just feel it. Some things are better remaining mysteries.
Tongue Tied sees them in a slightly chilled mood, dreamy soul vibes tethered down just enough to keep things from becoming too drifty and transient by after hours clubland beats and gentle and exotic, otherworldly electronica. It is spacious and unsecond-guess-able …that’s a word, I checked…it blends half-urgent raps with blissed out vocals, it sways and sashays rather than grooves and it conjures a joyous, carefree feeling like little that you have heard before.
Like I said, I don’t know how they do it, I’m not even sure what they are doing but as long as they stick at it, then we will always have a safe haven, a sonic oasis where we can recharge our batteries, not to mention our faith in the future of music.
written by Dave Franklin
Day By Day – Phantom Phunk (reviewed by Dave Franklin)
Music Review published in Dancing About Architecture February 05 2020
In a world where bands are trying to build the future by creating whole new genres to inhabit, mixing sonic potions like mad scientists in midnight laboratories, who think that the past is the past, what’s done is done and that anyone looking backwards instead of forward is some sort of dinosaur, there is one band which shows this all to be complete nonsense. Phantom Phunk have always respected the past. They are happy to be influenced by it to create their unique sound, a sound which is which is anything but nostalgic and backward gazing. Phantom Phunk might take the tried and tested building blocks of the past but are clever enough sonic architects that they can build whole new musical structures with them.
So whilst you can identify hip-hop lyricism, soulful vibes, funky grooves, pop melodies and any number of cool retro-references in their music, you have never heard them put together quite like this before. And that is the art of it isn’t it? Day By Day is the sound of progress and evolution but it is also the sound of modernity and forward-thinking. Why create sonic chimera’s that no-one want’s to hear when you can reweave all those pleasing patterns of the past into a cool new musical design? The future is bright. The future is Phunky!
written by Dave Franklin