Mess

MESS is the third album in the Fila canon. It's the point at which the duo of Cobby and McSherry was justly becoming a force to be reckoned with on the Kingston-Upon-Hull scene. Among the denizens of the notorious downtempo scene, amid a riot of drum-and-bass, skanking basslines, Martian bleeptronics, and sampledelica run amok, Fila Brazillia and the mighty Pork label have carved out a unique niche.
MESS is an intriguing album. Those listeners fortunate enough to possess a rather dense jazz collection might find a number of their favorite bits here--albeit mutated, twisted, and wrinkled beyond recognition. In effect, Cobby and McSherry blast the hell outta the Blue Note catalog, reinventing '70s fusion along the way. Check out the Horace Silver electrofunk of "Big Saddle", for starters--big beat before the beats begged out. And then there's the Fila wit that drips out between the cracks of such tracks as "Wavy Gravy", with its sampled blurb name-checking Charles Manson over somersaulting percussion, wheezing synths, and some nut in the background sucking air through a pennywhistle. A big smile spreads over the face...|