RhoDeo 2022 Grooves

Hello, as regular visitors you know what to expect....some more Fila Brazillia but not their own work but their musical vision expressed under other monikers but still from Hull, today the man who can be considered the driving force behind Hull's music scene, Steve Cobby he's created so many musical alter ego's alone and with others aswell as labels, the man has been extremely industrious, respect....


Today's Artist is one of Steve Cobby's early alter ego's Sold Doctor.........N Joy

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Steve Cobby is a British producer musician, composer, and DJ, based in Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire. He is best known for being part of Fila Brazillia.

After disbanding his first commercially released band Ashley & Jackson on Big Life records, he co-founded Fila Brazillia with David McSherry in 1990. Together they released 10 critically acclaimed LPs and produced over 70 remixes for artists as diverse as Radiohead, Busta Rhymes, Black Uhuru, Simple Minds, James, A Certain Ratio and Moloko.

He formed Pork Recordings with David Brennand in 1990 then 23 Records in 1999 with Sim Lister and David McSherry and finally Steel Tiger Records in 2006 with Lister. More of an umbrella for his various projects than a label per se. His other writing and production collaborations include Heights of Abraham; J*S*T*A*R*S and The Cutler.

He has released three solo albums as The Solid Doctor : How About Some Ether and Beats Means Highs. A third, entitled Saudade was released on his own imprint Déclassé in March 2014.

Numerous remixes, from Harold Budd and Theoretics to Jon Kennedy and Yesking have been undertaken in a solo capacity.

Fabric nightclub has played host to many Cobby DJ sets and this was rewarded with an appearance on Fabric 18 alongside fellow Hull alumni Bobby Beige and Bliss.

He co-produced Afghan Whigs frontman Greg Dulli's debut solo album, The Twilight Singers in 2000 and co-wrote and produced Three White Roses and a Budd EP with Bill Nelson and avant garde American composer Harold Budd. Cobby has worked with Darren Emerson on his solo album, in an engineering and writing capacity.

His collaboration with Cabaret Voltaire’s Stephen Mallinder is under the guise of Hey Rube. Adam Regan from Different Drummer Records and Leftfoot promotions in Birmingham is also a regular collaborator.

Cobby has DJ'd in many places around the world including Croatia, Sydney, San Francisco, New York and Tokyo. He has performed live in Europe, Japan and the United States

Work
Production
Production, co-production and remix projects include Radiohead; Afghan Whigs and The Twilight Singers.

Film and advertising
As Fila Brazillia (with David McSherry) his music has been used in films, including Riding Giants directed by Stacy Peralta - and adverts, including for Nokia. As J*S*T*A*R*S (with Sim Lister) his music has been used for adverts including for Fiat and The John Lewis Partnership.

In 2013, 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 that year, Kingston upon Hull, was announced as the winning entry.

Solo
Cobby releases mainly work under the pseudonyms The Solid Doctor and J J Fuchs. In March 2014, Cobby released his first solo album for 17 years entitled Saudade on his own imprint Déclassé. He then released under his name Revolutions soundtrack (2015), Everliving (2015), Hemidemisemiquaver (2017), and Sweet Jesus (2019). Sweet Jesus is released digitally on may the 17h, without any marketing or promotion whatsoever, as a Bandcamp exclusive.

Collaborations
with David Brennand a.k.a. Porky to form The Cutler; singles released during 2007 and 2008 included "Stiletto", "Pickaxe", and "Cinquedea". Debut album Cutler was released in July 2008 and the Black Flag EP in 2009. The second album release (September 2012) was The Best Things in Life Aren't Things with vocalists Andrew Taylor and Russell Morgan. The most recent release (10 June 2013) from The Cutler is their third album Everything Is Touching Everything Else, with vocalists Isobel Helen, Andrew Taylor, Archie and Sheffield's alt-folk outfit Little Glitches; all on Steel Tiger Records.
with Stephen Mallinder, a co-founder of Cabaret Voltaire, to form Hey, Rube!; first album release Can You Hear me Mutha? (October 2012, Steel Tiger Records)
with DJ Adam Regan, of the Different Drummer Soundsystem and Leftfoot, to form Chieftain; debut release The War Bonnet EP (2012, Steel Tiger Records)
with Sim Lister to form J*S*T*A*R*S; released Put Me on a Planet on Steel Tiger Records in 2006.
with Sim Lister and Jake Harries to form The Heights of Abraham; most recent release Two Thousand and Six on Twentythree Records in 2006.
with classically trained guitarist Rich Arthurs of Orgatronics to form 'Peacecorps'; released Bushfarmer on Steel Tiger Records in 2007.
with Richard H. Kirk to form Citrus.
with Djinji Brown to form NorthEastSoundSystem.
with David McSherry to form Fila Brazillia; most recent releases the album Retrospective on Twentythree Records in 2006 and Neanderthal in 2007, also on Twentythree Records.

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Solid Doctor was a rather short-lived solo project from Steve Cobby, one of the master minds behind Fila Brazillia and Heights of Abraham. Its first long-playing release, the generously filled double CD ‘How About Some Ether’, was released by the Pork Recordings label in 1995, and compiles a series of pieces recorded / composed between 1993 and 1995, all of which previously unreleased – a good enough reason for considering it this project’s first proper album. I will say it without hesitation: this album is like a box of musical treasures. And an eloquent proof that Steve Cobby was once a genius (he still is, as a not so short bout of recent inspiration has demonstrated, after a few too many years of middling and mostly discardable releases).

‘How About Some Ether’ moves through the fields of ambient, downtempo, techno and house music, almost always with a class of its own. Starting with the classic downtempo moodiness of ‘U-Turn’ (with a haunting female vocal sample), the album goes on to offer such gems as the rootsy, bluesy dirge ‘Holy Roller’, the very melodic, almost jazzy ‘Lights on the Vibe’ (which would be included on the second volume of the great ‘Freezone’ series on the SSR label), the blissful ‘Pickyparkdickbods’, or the deep soul-jazzy house of ‘Ether’. There are many other highlights, too many to mention, and even if the album doesn’t always stay at the highest level of inspiration, it is never less than good, and as a whole it’s certainly one of the most impressive releases in Cobby’s long career.

 Solid Doctor - How About Some More Ether cd1 - Cracked Emerald -  (flac   413mb)

01 U-Turn 4:32
02 Short Wave 5:38
03 Holy Roller 6:23
04 Spicey Pipe 5:53
05 Anomie 5:56
06 Lights On The Vibe 7:31
07 O Say Krevlon 2:23
08 Pickyparkdickbods 7:13
09 The Room Is Breathing 4:24
10 Dusk 6:28
11 When I'm Dead 8:20
12 Bye Bye 6:56
13 I Love Life 4:14

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  Solid Doctor - How About Some More Ether cd2 - Sapphire  (flac   430mb)

01 Armed To The Teeth 8:11
02 Jet Smooth 8:35
03 Ether 12:39
04 Invisible Sunlit Snow 7:02
05 Cerulean Reverie 3:14
06 Mixamatosis 7:18
07 Land Of Dope & Tory 7:46
08 Ninety One Campion 3:30
09 Tomato 6:00
10 Slipping Into Another Dimension 5:05
11 A Moving Family Of Suns 7:04

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To celebrate the 21st anniversary of How About Some Ether I had initially intended to just remaster the original tunes.

In order to locate them a trawl through an inordinate amount of DAT tapes was in order. My labelling skills have never been above mediocre and so it proved to be a laborious task.
It was whilst performing this search that I discovered a substantial amount of unreleased work. Not having listened to it for the better part of two decades I was surprised by how many songs had stood the test of time. With this in mind I decided to include much of the new trove in the form of bonus discs.


Solid Doctor - How About Some More Ether cd3 Unearthed Ether I (flac   409mb)

01 Intruder 4:35
02 Striplight 4:50
03 Bay Systems 5:00
04 Open Source 4:43
05 As The Night Descended 5:46
06 Blackout 4:40
07 Western Edge 3:15
08 Silver Waltzers 7:01
09 New World City 5:06
10 Alt. Wakiki 5:07
11 Everybody Knows 4:45

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Solid Doctor - How About Some More Ether cd4 Unearthed Ether II (flac   336mb)

01 Gore Vidal 07:46
02 The Old Ever New Now 05:16
03 Sharsooz 06:25
04 66th Of '66 04:32
05 I'd Like To Take You Out 06:22
06 Satchitananda 08:27
07 Crystalline Existences 08:29
08 Check It Out 05:46
09 The Here And Now Are Nowhere 08:32
10 Open Universe 02:30

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Solid Doctor is the name of Fila Brazillia’s Steve Cobby’s main solo project and was responsible for the issuing of two very good releases in the mid-90’s, right in the period of Cobby’s most prolific and inspired phase. Though not as renowned as Fila Brazillia, Solid Doctor’s music is definitely as good as that band at their best.

The first release, the generously filled double CD ‘How About Some Ether’ compiled a series of pieces recorded / composed between 1993 and 1995, all of which previously unreleased – a good enough reason for considering it this project’s first proper album. 1996’s ‘Beats Means Highs’ is the second of those long-players, and – if nothing else because of its shorter duration – it might be the best entrance into Solid Doctor’s music. Like Fila Brazillia’s best music, ‘Beats Means Highs’ displays a virtually seamless combination of rhythm, groove and atmosphere. Some overall differences can be detected, though: if FB (at their peak, at least) preferred the exploration of a post-everything / highly assimilated form of breakbeat, Solid Doctor ventures into more directly identifiable rhythmic approaches. This means that in this album there are tracks that can undoubtedly be classified as drum & bass (‘Daddy Mik Mik’), dub (‘Our Sorrow’) or ambient techno (‘A Benign Chorus’), for instance, something that FB would generally not do. However, it’s the personal perspective that stands out – these ventures into well-established genres never sound derivative.

Let’s not measure our words here: ‘A Benign Chorus’ is a masterpiece. Stylistically, this very spacey trip piece sounds like a further exploration of some 70’s pioneering (ambient) electronic music (think Tangerine Dream, for instance) into an ambient techno context. It’s the wide emotional effect that the piece produces that stands out, though. The only criticism that ‘Our Sorrow’ elicits is that at its 11-minute length it seems to be a bit overlong. Otherwise, it’s a very suggestive and soulful exploration of dub, creating a mood that isn’t easy to forget. Opener ‘In the Offing’, with its midtempo breakbeat ambient funk stylistics, is perhaps the piece here that most resembles Fila Brazillia’s peak sound in both rhythm and atmosphere. On the other hand, a piece like the cleverly titled ‘Intranauts’ dives smoothly into 70’s soul-funk territory (real bass and drums; slow, atmospheric use of the rhodes electric piano), but never giving the impression of being a mere copy of what’s been done before. And these are just a few highlights, there’s not a single instance where the album disappoints.

  The Solid Doctor -  Beats Means Highs  (flac   311mb)

01 In the Offing 4:59
02 Sybarite 5:41
03 Daddy Mik Mik 8:51
04 North East 3:45
05 Our Sorrow 11:26
06 Faustian Bargain 5:23
07 O.K. No 6:18
08 Intranauts 7:28
09 A Benign Chorus 10:26
10 Flit 5:37

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