Review
Genre and Mood
Format:B make Chunky a cheeky slab of tech house, house and dance music. It is playful, groovy and relentlessly energetic, a track that seems to grin at you from the speakers.
Song Summary
“Chunky” is built on exactly what the title promises: a thick, bouncing bassline with a wobble that sits right in your chest. Around it the Berlin duo arrange chopped vocal fragments from Shorty Long’s 1966 Motown single “Function at the Junction”, crisp percussion and quick stabs, keeping the mix punchy and uncluttered. The radio edit cuts the six-minute original mix down to 2:38, keeping all the swagger while losing the extended DJ intro. Nothing here is subtle, and that is the charm: the low end is so physical that the track works as well on a car stereo as on a club system, and every element exists to serve the bounce. It is dance music as a good joke, told with perfect timing.
Musical Breakdown
Short and punchy, the edit gets to the groove almost immediately and rides it hard.
Intro
Drums and a teasing hint of the bass kick things off, filtered just enough to make you lean in.
Main Section
The full bassline drops in, fat and rubbery, with vocal snippets bouncing around it like a call-and-response with the crowd.
Bridge
A short breakdown strips the groove back to percussion and vocal chops, a breather that makes the return hit harder.
Climax
The bass slams back in with every element firing, the most physical moment of the track.
Outro
The groove rolls on before cutting away cleanly, leaving you wanting another round.
Concepts in Focus
“Chunky” is a lesson in sampling. Shorty Long, a Motown singer and multi-instrumentalist who co-wrote his own songs, released “Function at the Junction” in 1966 as a call to a party that would last till dawn. Format:B take short phrases of his voice, cut them loose from the original band and loop them as rhythmic fragments over their own production. That is why the writing credit includes Long and Eddie Holland next to Franciskus Sell and Jakob Hildenbrand: the vocal hook is theirs, the track around it is new.
The title describes the bassline. In tech house the bass often does the work a melody would do in pop, and here it is the main event: thick, bouncing and rubbery, with the vocal chops arranged around its rhythm rather than the other way round. Listen in the bridge, when it disappears for a few bars, to how empty the track suddenly feels.
This page is the radio edit. The original mix runs 6:04, with the long intro and outro DJs use to blend one record into the next; the edit runs 2:38 and arrives at the bassline almost at once. Compare the same approach in DJ S.K.T – Must Be A Reason (Radio Edit), another house edit built on a borrowed voice.
Artistic Context
Format:B are Franciskus Sell, from Erfurt, and Jakob Hildenbrand, from Berlin, who met on courses at the SAE Institute in Berlin and began releasing 12-inches on Highgrade Records in 2005. They founded their own label, Formatik Records, became resident DJs at Berlin’s Watergate club and released the albums Steam Circuit (2008) and Restless (2011). “Chunky” first came out on Formatik in late 2014 and was re-released by Ministry of Sound on 13 November 2015. Its official video, directed by the Surrender Monkeys, stars a drumming rooster puppet named Benny Hahn, built by Puppets Magic, a silly visual that suits a sample which dares a rooster to crow.
Impact and Reception
The single crossed over from the clubs to the charts, entering the UK Singles Chart at number 29 and the UK Dance Chart at number five, and appeared on Ministry of Sound’s The Annual 2016. For a tech-house tune built on a bassline, that was a remarkable run, and it gave Format:B a wider audience than most underground producers ever reach. It earns its spot here for its irresistible bounce and its refusal to take itself too seriously. Turn it up and try not to nod along.
