RhoDeo 2019 Grooves

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Today's Artists are Hull-based duo Fila Brazillia is the most popular and acclaimed of the noted Pork Recordings stable. Formed in 1990 by producers Steve Cobby and Dave McSherry, Fila followed Cobby's association with Ashley & Jackson, a moderately successful pop/dance group signed to Big Life! that went belly up as the label began demanding more and more pop and less dance. Returning to his native Hull from Manchester, Cobby met DJ/dabbler Dave Pork, and the two forged a creative alliance. Hooking up with McSherry to form Fila, the group's first 12", "The Mermaid," was released that same year on Pork's fledgling imprint (formed, actually, specifically for the occasion), gaining instant acclaim among DJs and headphonauts alike for its innovative fusion of funk, dub, house, hip-hop, and acid jazz.........N Joy

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Fila Brazillia followed their debut single with a string of full-length releases (Old Codes, New Chaos, Maim That Tune, and Black Market Gardening among them), which were instrumental in building Pork's reputation as one of the most consistent and respected of England's vast ocean of underground breakbeat/trip-hop labels. Later releases integrated elements of pop and drum'n'bass on a number of tracks. Fila's rep also translated into a number of acclaimed remixes, including Lamb's "Cotton Wool," the Orb's "Toxygene," and DJ Food's "Freedom" (over a dozen of which were featured on the 2000 collection Brazilification). During the new millennium, the duo released the mix album Another Late Night in 2001 and the studio effort Jump Leads early the following year. After two years of recording inactivity, in 2004 the duo released a pair of production albums (The Life and Times of Phoebus Brumal and Dicks), plus another mix album (Another Fine Mess). In addition to Fila, Cobby is also an active member of other Pork stable acts such as Solid Doctor (his solo guise) and Heights of Abraham, both of which have released a number of full-length recordings.

Their early albums were released on Pork Recordings, also based in Hull: Old Codes New Chaos, Maim That Tune, Mess, Black Market Gardening, Luck Be a Weirdo Tonight and Power Clown. After creating their own music label with Sim Lister, Twentythree Records, they released further albums A Touch of Cloth, Jump Leads, The Life And Times of Phoebus Brumal, Dicks and Retrospective. They have also released two DJ mix albums, Another Late Night: Fila Brazillia, for Azuli Records' "Another Late Night" series, and Another Fine Mess: Fila Brazillia, and two collections of remixes: Brazilification and B2.

Their collaborations include working with Harold Budd and Bill Nelson to release Three White Roses & A Budd (Twentythree Records, 2002). They co-produced the first Twilight Singers LP Twilight as Played by The Twilight Singers with Greg Dulli in 2001. Cobby and McSherry have produced more than 70 remixes for artists including Black Uhuru, Busta Rhymes, DJ Food, Lamb, Radiohead and The Orb. Bill Hicks, the controversial American stand-up comedian, satirist and social critic, "appears" on Fila Brazillia's album Maim That Tune (1996) and the album is dedicated to Hicks.

Their music has made its mark both on small-screen blockbusters (such as CSI and Sex and the City) and cult cinema films such as Dogtown and Z-Boys, Riding Giants and Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos, a 2006 documentary about the New York Cosmos soccer team. One of their better-known songs, A Zed and two L's, appears on Jam, a black comedy sketch show by British satirist Chris Morris. Their song "Here Comes Pissy Willy" from the Power Clown album featured as the theme to the James Whale Show on Talk Radio in the late 1990s.

After releasing their Retrospective album in 2006, Cobby and McSherry quietly ended their longtime partnership. Currently, McSherry is a lecturer in Audio Production at the University of Lincoln.

Cobby went on in late 2006 to form Steel Tiger Records with Sim Lister. Over the course of 2007, the label saw various digital releases by J*S*T*A*R*S (Cobby and Lister), Peacecorps (Cobby and guitarist Rich Arthurs) and by The Cutler (Cobby and ex-head of Pork Recordings David "Porky" Brennand). The first formal album by The Cutler on Steel Tiger Records was released on 7 July 2008, and the most recent "Everything Is Touching Everything Else" (Steel Tiger Records ST016, 10 June 2013) – with vocals by Isobel Helen, Archie Heselwood, Andrew Taylor and Little Glitches – distributed by Kudos Records Ltd.

In 2013 Steve Cobby provided the soundtrack for the Hull 'UK City of Culture 2017' bid film - 'This City Belongs to Everyone', produced by Nova Studios - on 20 November 2013 Kingston upon Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, was announced as the winning City, and so as UK City of Culture 2017.

After a 16 year hiatus, on 6 March 2020, the band returned with the release of the MMXX EP.


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Fila Brazillia live at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Recorded 03-11-00.
The 'concept' behind the show was to create a piece using 4 d.j. cd players, a d.a.t. tape and 2 mixers. The cd's were prepared beforehand and consisted of various random sequences. The 2 sets were unrehearsed and resulted in these two 'beatless' 20+ minute pieces.  I can almost hear the crowd of die-hard Fila fans as this CD contains just two tracks (boo!), both at 25 minutes long (hooray!), but with the predictable track titles (hiss!) of Victoria and Albert. Not that the track titles denote anything separate – run the two tracks together with a crossfader and you might just think it’s all one long 50 minute track. It’s not traditional FB sounds either. There are no beats, no bass, in fact – no rhythm section to speak of. This is pure ambient music – bloops and bleeps, with the odd sampled strain of music to bring you back to some familiar ground. However, that’s all it is – for 50 minutes. On the plus side, however, it’s lovely, unobtrusive background music – you know it’s there, but you’re not completely aware of it. It adds to, rather than creates an atmosphere – and I’m guessing, that’s what the music was for in the first place. You would be hard-pressed to get more chilled than this.

 Fila Brazillia - FB@V&A    (flac   280mb)

01 Victoria 25:51
02 Albert 23:35

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Nearly a decade after Steve Cobby and David McSherry jacked in a putative career in acid jazz to develop Fila Brazillia’s mix of chilled ambient and loose-limbed funk, it seems the music-buying world has gradually come around to their homegrown and often plain sound. On this, their sixth self-released album, the Hull duo branch out from their usual output to include guitars, wailing blues harmonicas and even – shock! – songs. At its best, their sound is fibrous, organic and streets ahead of their compilation-album rivals. It’s both grown-up and delightfully daft, like Vangelis gone disco (that’s meant as a compliment). Motown Coppers flies the flag for wilfully off-centre funk with its drum’n’bass-meets-country-blues groove. Tracks such as ‘We Build Arks’ could have slipped through the cracks of an overly chilled-out nation of music-lovers, but they are transformed by singer Steve Edwards into the kind of AOR epics that wouldn’t shame Glen Campbell or Jimmy Webb.

  Fila Brazillia - Jump Leads  (flac   353mb)

01 Bumblehaun 6:01
02 Motown Coppers 4:42
03 Spill the Beans 4:27
04 DNA 6:53
05 We Build Arks 3:50
06 It's a Knockout 6:33
07 Monk's Utterance 5:42
08 Percival Quintaine 4:53
09 Nightfall 7:35
10 Mother Nature's Spies 3:46
11 The Green Green Grass of Homegrown 3:50

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After the imaginative but often leaden-sounding Jump Leads LP in 2001, Messrs. Cobby and McSherry applied their usual mastery of sound science to The Life and Times of Phoebus Brumal, an extraordinary set of music that starts out bouncing like Basement Jaxx but ends up revealing more stylistic and musical innovation than anyone else in the field of organic electronica. That these productions appear on what is apparently a concept album centering on the daftly named figure in the title shouldn't scare away any listeners (although fleeing would indeed be understood). Without a look at the liner notes, which apparently include excerpts from the diary of Mr. (or Mrs.) Brumal -- but are actually nonsensical assemblages of words from artwork maestros Designers Republic -- the only clues that this material forms a concept album are in the seamless, excellent transitions between tracks. The first two songs feature the type of spangly disco productions that Basement Jaxx made a specialty, although Cobby and McSherry's process of Brazilification adds innumerable subtleties to the sound, and the openers are only the launching pad for the dozen tracks to come that, together, comprise one of the strongest full-lengths in dance music this side of the millennium. A few vocals do intrude, although they're usually dispatched quickly and treated well by the production duo. Unfortunately, Papa V's feature on the third track is the one least worth hearing; Djinji Brown's pair of songs on the second side should have been front and center (although perhaps a different order wouldn't have suited any concept at work).

Fila Brazillia - The Life And Times Of Phoebus Brumal (flac   403mb)

01 Platinum Spider 3:20
02 Underpuppy 4:50
03 Bullshit 5:10
04 Existentialist Singalong 1:24
05 Blowhole 4:11
06 Thatched Neon 5:09
07 You Won't Let Me Rock 4:10
08 La Boulangerie Digitale 4:13
09 Boca Raton 6:14
10 Bantamweight Werewolf 1:03
11 Madame Le Fevre 4:36
12 Romantic Adventure 4:42
13 Uberboff 4:35
14 In the Kingdom of Sound 5:45

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French for ten (Dix) Dicks has coincidently 23 tracks the same digits as their own 23 Records label, as well as releasing separate solo projects with Steve Cobbys “96” Solid Doctor and Dave “Man” McSherry Mandrillus Sphynx on 23 Records in 2003, the question remains, how do you release two albums in one year, squeeze recording in and run a label.
With Dicks being a less dance floor orientated as previous album “Life and Times of Phoebus Brumal” or Stylewise, this album sums up the word eclectic, taking tunes all over the place. You can tell how much fun they had making it. Sidearms And Parsnips rides along with the familiar Fila moniker with muted percussion, guitar riffs and background filtered sounds with a down tempo groove, harmonica samples and nice kit fills. Shellac has a drawn out beat backed up with a synth baseline and keyboard stabs to shades of what came of the previous album. D’Avros slides in a full interlude, meshing in electro synth chords, backed up by some bongo beats and more of the fuzz guitar. Bringing in the banjo ‘Kiss My Whippet’ bounces along with strummed campfire guitar over junked up beats. Ballon hinges on the hip hop tip with more of the abundant electric guitar riffs which run into more keyboard lightly feathering in between making for a lush tune, running with the Fila sound. The Goggle Box (Their 12″ EP release on a big pink bit of vinyl) picks up the BPM’s with electro synths stabs meshed with lounge fuelled house beats that wander around a light track with a touch of funk serving up a nice tune. Doggin starts up with the revving of engines, dropping in some lucid bass guitar with flowing synthy chords and filtered beeps and breaks, taking in turn what a Fila track is renowned for, a form of placid mayhem. Bringing the album full circle is the 23rd on track on the viscously pink CD Septentrion twist in some subtle smooth turntable effects with percussion layered in amongst tempered cymbal fills, live concert piano sounds and a double bass hailing out of a Dingee jazz club.

Dicks saturates your palate with everything and anything, sometimes feeling like your eating your dinner and desert all blended up and served as a shake. Loaded up with everything from the psychedelic rock, breaks infused electro and throwing some sampled material for good measure, and don’t forget that Banjo ! Once again, Fila Brazillia throw out an eclectic album as ever which has given them their status as some very well respected, cracked up, remix bandits. At least you can find “that” pink CD when your looking for it.

  Fila Brazillia - Dicks  (flac   380mb)

01 An Impossible Place 0:38
02 Sidearms & Parsnips 2:34
03 Shellac 2:16
04 D'Avros 3:19
05 The Great Attractor 2:39
06 Kiss My Whippet 1:56
07 Ballon 5:06
08 Lullaby Berkowitz 3:48
09 The Cubist News 1:57
10 Goggle Box 4:57
11 Heil Mickey 4:05
12 Doggin' 2:31
13 708-7606-19 0:52
14 And Flesh 2:17
15 Curveball for the 21st Century 2:29
16 The Hull Priests 2:47
17 Sugarplum Hairnet 1:37
18 Furball Shindig 2:43
19 The Third Tendril of the Squid 2:05
20 We've Almost Surprised Me 2:09
21 V.D. 0:21
22 Nutty Sack 3:06
23 Septentrion 3:20


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