Pork

"Musicians have always been like jesters. Our medieval counterparts were troubadors on a pittance"

"It's instrumental music, man. It's a special language and it should be international"

pork DEEP night-time. Lashed. From pirate radio to the dancefloor as everyone shifts across town to a club called The Room where local crew Orange Street Sound System are residents alongside Pork. Younger than Pork's gang, they feel like the next generation: a potent system whose DJs can all scratch, get four decks rolling at once and have the additional ammo of skilled MCs and a lung-ripping soul diva. It might not be New York but it's the right vibe: hard kids in a shit town who don't mess around. Fila play with them tonight, Man and Cobby on two CD-players each, knocking out CD dubplates while Orange Street scratch and cut from the decks. Afterwards about half the crew slink home with the drummer from Hull's most famous residents The Beautiful South to get even more lashed.
The following day takes us back to where we started, chilled-out, a touch hungover and staring into Hull's marina as the warm sunshine gives it a touch of Cannes. It's hard to recall everything Fila played last night but perhaps the most striking song was their remix of Radiohead's 'Climbing Up The Walls'. In fact they play two or three different versions of the track, pitching them around each other to suspend Thom Yorke's voice in dub-soaked waves of lonely, timeless and perfect sound. "There's something about that Radiohead that's really spine-tingling," ponders Fila's Man, "their version is very good but ours is..."
Go on. Say it. In the end it's something he only dares whisper: "Better." Or maybe it's a draw. Fila Brazillia and Radiohead. Each as good as the other. Get used to the idea. And then the sun shines brighter still, making Hull's marina, for a few seconds anyway, look like the South Of France.

Pork Scratchings - The Best of Pork

  • Heights Of Abraham 'Electric Hush' (LP)
    The vocal bit of Pork, sounding like The Blue Nile, Radiohead, The Beach Boys and Pink Floyd. Imagine dreamy male vocals, complex harmonies and Cobby and Man's trademark Fila-style arrangements.

  • Fila Brazillia 'Old Codes, New Chaos' (LP)
    Where Cobby and Man rip up the rulebook on the four to the floor and probably make the greatest afterhours house album in the World. Check out the operatic chillfunk of 'Mermaids' or 'Pots And Pans' that discovers 'avin-it nu skool disco a good year before the Idjut Boys or Jeep Grrlz.

  • Fila Brazillia 'A Zed and Two L's' (single)
    A perfect, perfect single with hip hop breaks, keyboards as soft as wind and some nicked African vocals teasing out breathless harmony.

  • The Solid Doctor 'How About Some Ether?' (LP)
    A double CD rounding up Cobby's Doctor singles that deal in his trademark dreamtime dusk moods with weird sounds filtering in and out of ambient textures. Best stuff uses sampled folk singers, disco percussion and some fabulously opiated 70s jazz-rock.

  • Bullitnuts '1st Of The Day' (LP)
    The only release on Pork to rival Fila at their best, a hyper-smooth album with a touch of intelligent techno, some ambient rasta fuel and overall a more streamlined and futuristic version of the Pork ganja game.

  • Radiohead 'Climbing Up The Walls' (Fila Brazillia mix)
    What The 'Head would sound like if they'd been following Global Communication, MoWax and drum'n'bass.

  • Baby Mammoth 'Bridging Two Worlds' (LP)
    Bits of old movies, strange bursts of static, 808 drum patterns, deep house vocals and on standout 'Slipping Jigsaws' a guitar solo from Steve Cobby that elevates everything to a penthouse trip hop so lush that DJ Cam would kill to have produced it.

  • Fila Brazillia 'Soft Music Under Stars' (12")
    A great piece of understated beauty as sitar, temple bells, stand-up bass and brush-storke drums get faster and faster to shift from ambience to something blindingly cool and funky.

  • Fila Brazillia 'Luck Be A Weirdo Tonight' (LP)
    More greatness from Fila, this time upping the juice for some blaxploitation soundtracking, mental guitars and lots of careful tweaking around Fila's usual dub, jazz, ambience and breakbeat fusions.

  • Akotcha 'Soundburger' (LP)
    Pork's only London signings who sound a bit like everyone else on Pork except they sample Woody Allen and veer towards drum n' bass with some flashy but neat processing.

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