It’s certainly disheartening, because we always had held high expectations for Dannic’s esteemed label, Fonk Recordings… But we observed increasingly incertitude about this project.
Founded in 2016 by the ex-Revealed groove veteran, Fonk centres around its label-boss and similar peculiar Electro House. It’s such a specific and recognizable style that in past reviews we simply term it “Fonkish”, and, if you know Dannic, you’ll surely get it. Anyway, this “Fonkish” style found a lot of appreciation in the EDM scene over time, inspiring many talented artists like Loax, Dirty Ducks, Pessto, Notalike. In fact, these names were often releasing on Fonk, with their own personal variations, obviously.
Differently from Dyro’s WOLV, who collapsed pretty early, Fonk had a various and interesting roster, often enriched by Dannic’s quality collaborations. There was hope for its future, especially in our view: its fan-base is solid and well established, the roster is active, the trademark is unique, but familiar to the average EDM listener. However, during 2018, there was a long moment of inactivity, making us suspecting that something was going on in the HQ. Spinnin’ later acquired it, and currently Fonk is seemingly one of its sublabels (even though they happen to be distributed by a certain “076” Records). We were happy about the news: with such a big major as Warner Music behind it, Fonk had the resources to expand, and for commercial releases, Dannic was using the main label, avoiding any digress.
However, Fonk has become almost inactive. Its website hasn’t updated past couple of years, the flow of releases has decreased (5 in the last 5 months, 4 of them with Dannic involved, including hidden credits on the Swanky Tunes release), many artists of the roster are working with other labels, there is no clear direction about its future. Has it lost its appeal? Or is the management headed to another direction? We’re uncertain at the moment, it appears that there isn’t enough effort in one of the minor labels with the potential.
Fonk seems no longer a team or a family, but only Dannic, a slower Dannic (who keeps releasing quality music eh, this article is not about him). We are worried and hope for a mentality change, otherwise, we are afraid to observe another WOLV scenario.
What do you think?
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