Mar 11, 2018

Sundaze 1810

Hello,

Today's Artist is one whose swirling mixtures of downtempo breaks, smooth ambience, and disjointed drum'n'bass helped put the Coldcut-owned, South London-based Ninja Tune label on the map. The first single from his 1995 Ninja debut Hed Phone Sex, "Long Road" , was featured on a number of compilations cashing in on the fashionability of "trip-hop," but Porcini's brand of laid-back, atmospheric breakbeat is less gimmicky than that connection suggests. His follow-up to Hed Phone Sex, Love, Pussycats, and Carwrecks, is filled with jittery, jazz-laden drum'n'bass with a good dose of usually quite twisted humor. .. ........N'Joy

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Funki Porcini's music is the fruit of a well-traveled life.

Porcini left England at 19 to escape from a squat in Kings Cross being savaged by violent Scots, stranded in London after a football game. Arriving in Los Angeles with three hundred dollars that disappeared in a week on cocktails and hamburgers he was forced into menial labour, stacking shelves in a Westwood department store before earning enough money to hitch-hike to San Francisco. Here he bought a saxophone and moved into the Residents' old warehouse, where Snakefinger was still living. San Fran was alive with a post punk scene of radical experimentation and it was here Porcini started his forays into recorded sound. Although there were some true luminaries on the scene, such as Mark Pauline and his Survival Research Laboratories, Monte Cazzaza, Factrix and a host of underground bands, Porcini grew restless and decided to drive to New York with two friends.

Moving in to the East Village with new found Australian friends SPK he enjoyed NYC but eventually came back to England - and hated it. After a brief trial of Berlin he settled in Italy and remained there for 10 years making music for film and television before setting up 9Lazy9 with Keir Fraser. After establishing connections with Ninja Tune from Italy, Porcini eventually came back to the mother ship and immersed himself in his studio 'The Uterus Goldmine', to produce first album 'Hed Phone Sex', a heady record openly made more for the pillows than for the dance floor. This was followed by 'Love Pussycats and Carwrecks', 'Let's See What Carmen Can Do', 'The Ultimately Empty Million Pounds' and 'Fast Asleep', where Porcini, together with Team Alcohol aka Rupert Small, produced stunning visual interpretations of the music, released on a DVD sold with the CD and premiered at The National Film Theatre in London.

Since the release of Fast Asleep, Porcini has been working on diverse projects involving animation and film; still in the Uterus Goldmine in deepest Warwickshire, he is currently working with writer/director Tony Grisoni on film scores.Eight years on from his last full-length album, Funki returned with not one album but two! In December of 2009 he released PLOD independently on funkiporcini.bandcamp.com and in May, Ninja Tune released 'On'.

The greatest provocateur and humorist of the early Ninja period, Funki re-animated with his sound intact yet sounding utterly contemporary. Mixing together surreal jazz, found noise, synthetic strangeness and dream logic, "On" is as beautiful and odd as anything he made previously. Porcini has promised to not let it go so long before his next release.

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Plod or to work with constant and monotonous perseverance....

Plod, released independently and after a long hiatus from the Funki Porcini name, gets back in gear with this little gem that not only complements the new sound of his work since Fast Asleep but a new age in bringing eccentric and quaint music. Many of the songs here complement for a nice sunny day or elevator music to a point even that it reminds you of classic 70s British cartoons, hence the title based off a Enid Blyton character. Mrs. Henderson and Carbide are so far the strongest ever heard in modern music so far with their simplicity yet well-paid homages to more traditional forms of jazz. Electronica, as is many of his albums are classified, is best the wrong genre for his work. It can go many directions but jazz is best too to mention of his influence.



Funki Porcini - Plod (flac 345mb)

01 Bed To Be 4:22
02 Carbide 4:11
03 Landscape No.1 7:24
04 Mrs Henderson 3:13
05 Lakeside's Shady Now 4:44
06 Spaced 6:04
07 Taking Down My House 7:48
08 Sounds That Pass In The Night 3:51
09 A Bright Burning Glow Dulls Slowly 3:59

Funki Porcini - Plod  (ogg   92mb)

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One of the earliest in Ninja Tune's stable of ambient breakbeat acts, James Bradell's Funki Porcini project slowed considerably during the 2000s, and he admits as much in the liner notes to 2010's On: "Obviously with the freeness of music it became dubious if it would support a family, and as a result I have had to resort to more practical and sordid ways of making a living." Consequently, On is a collection of recordings from the 2000s that Bradell had worked on only fitfully, but his deft touch is still intact. Ambient breakbeat tended to be an easily created and easily dismissed style of music (Bradell admits most of his early recordings put him to sleep), but its best practitioners understood how to create a mood much like a DJ would, whether the emphasis was dancing or relaxing. Bradell understands this also, opening with the beatless and beatific "Moog River," and waiting until well into the second track to introduce any rhythmic percussion. His tools are similar to what he used in the mid-'90s -- warm analog keys, a full kit of percussion samples that usually sound more live than programmed, and somber melodies that shift only slightly and slowly -- but also acoustic piano as well. The ambience here is enlightening, and for any ambient fans who remember fondly the heady days of 9 Lazy 9 and Hed Phone Sex, On will be similar and delightful company.



Funki Porcini - On (flac  431mb)

01 Moog River 3:15
02 This Ain't The Way To Live 4:52
03 Belisha Beacon 3:50
04 Undermud 4:58
05 On An Inconsequential Afternoon 2:26
06 The 3rd Man 5:54
07 Bright Little Things 3:18
08 Robert Crumb's Natural Gait 2:55
09 The Magic Hands Of Fernando Del Rey 5:51
10 Waking Up 6:23

11 At The Edge Of The World 10:10
12 Wasn't Was Is Wont Be 3:35
13 Night 5:21








Funki Porcini - On  (ogg  140mb)

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After the phenomenal album that was On, One Day, produced and distributed independently, serves to create a more poetic and mellow album that not only evokes images of daytime driving on a rainy day but also evokes a very romantic and chilly mood about it. Powerful to say the least and still manages to keep the many cues and quirks that was once established with Fast Asleep. While not as much of a standout as On or as distinctive as Fast Asleep, it still is a very strong album by all means to the point that it might have worked out when testing it to a friend reading an assignment in peace from Quietly Now to Periclese. Helium, One Day, and Metropolitan are by far the strongest on here.



Funki Porcini - One Day (flac  337mb)

01 Quietly Now 2:17
02 Möglichkeiten 11:16
03 Jiggle 3:21
04 Metropolitan 6:38
05 Cosy 2:52
06 Elephant And Titus 4:38
07 Periclese 7:26
08 Through The Gears 5:46
09 In The Glimmer Of The Sheen 6:19
10 King Boing 4:38
11 Helium 6:27
12 One Day 5:01

Funki Porcini - One Day  (ogg  130mb)

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On Le Banquet Cassio James Braddell has done himself a great job at making some music more moving and reminiscent of previous albums like The Ultimately Empty Million Pounds and Fast Asleep. Many songs have an ambient, flowing aura about it that makes you feel like you're stepping inside a calming realm (Maria, Locorama). Minor faults stand with its slightly Garage Band-sounding drums but the album is much more satisfactory than one could imagine. This is a more interesting and solid effort than One Day, The Ultimately Empty Million Pounds, and even Love Pussycats & Carwrecks and it serves that amidst much of the conflict Braddell has dealt through (digitalisation of music, inaccessible means for pure ambient jazz and electronic music), he still remains strong and a much more intriguing voice than the overtly pop Chemical Brothers and, to a certain degree, the cryptic Boards of Canada recently. On this album he creates another Ninja Tune-like but not officially contracted-as-an-album environment full of chaos, melody, rhythm, mystery, and oddball humour.



Funki Porcini - Le Banquet Cassio (flac  427mb)

01 Maria 1:47
02 Snowball 4:12
03 Le Banquet Cassio 6:56
04 Locorama 6:12
05 Incredible Thing 9:58
06 The Devil Drives 5:04
07 Foamer 2:53
08 Oblivious 2:33
09 The Emporer's Launderette 6:20
10 Six Minutes In Manchester 5:57
11 Diagonal Symphony 5:04
12 Golden 4:04
13 Wongky 3:56
14 A Rainy Night In England 10:25

Funki Porcini - Le Banquet Cassio  (ogg  176mb)

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1 comment:

Jimmy said...

I'd be very grateful if you could re-upload these Funki Porcini LP's.

Thank you.

Kind Regards, Jimmy