Fila Brazillia - 'Luck Be A Weirdo Tonight'
No. 6 in our Top 100 Electronica Albums of the 1990s
The music partnership of Steve Cobby and David McSherry was one of the most prolific in the history of electronica. In the span of twelve years, the pair knocked out ten albums, ranging confidently through the swampy borderlands of house, ambient, funk, world, dub and jazz. Old Codes : New Chaos and Power Clown were two of their finest. But the seamless Luck Be A Weirdo Tonight, their fifth, was Fila Brazillia‘s crowning achievement. Produced in 1996 and 1997, it represents a highpoint in organic electronica, foreshadowing the full spectrum music of the 21st century.
Based in Kingston-upon-Hull, a port and river city in eastern England, the two met in the mid-1980s, allying around a passion for studio experiments. Cobby and McSherry were skilled musicians, playing drums, guitar, keyboards and bass — they fused their live playing, sampling and electronics to excellent and ironic effect, drawing on the samba rock of Jorge Ben or the hard bop of Art Blakey and the dub reggae of King Tubby — dicing up hip hop beats or channeling the ambient strums of Pink Floyd, evoking the bluesy legacies of Wish You Were Here and Dark Side of the Moon.
Cobby, who had cut his teeth at FON Studios in Sheffield, the birthplace of Warp Records, and who first formed a friendship there with Steve Mallinder of electronic music pioneers Cabaret Voltaire (they would later collaborate as Hey, Rube!), was a journeyman in search of a promised land.* An expert at playing, as well as recording and engineering, he was a one-man music machine. Hull was in Yorkshire and so like Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds, the northeastern cold of England kept “creatives” bopping about for spiritual warmth, going all the way back to The Venerable Bede, where Vikings and inquiring monks infused exploring and learning in the blood.
Heights of Abraham, which he would form in 1993 with ex-Chakk members Sim Lister and Jake Harries, scoured the upper reaches of that heat-vapored flight, with classic songs like ‘Sportif’ and ‘Tides,’ a project that still endures with three excellent albums in its wake. Truly prolific, Cobby would expand on his chill-house mastery with ‘Lights on the Vibe’ as The Solid Doctor, along with various solo releases and two more solid albums. Along with David “Porky” Brennand (of slight build, in fact, not pork build), Cobby founded Pork Recordings in 1990. The two would later form The Cutler, an outlet for their dub electronic obsessions, three choice albums to their credit.**
And yet Fila Brazillia remains his most famous work, the key partnership of McSherry evident in the wild verve and the rollicking humor the two brought into their learned explorations of sound. The dynamic duo were a blast, from their word-games for titling their songs and albums to their knack for finding or creating the right sound, electronically, electrically or acoustically, and orchestrating or playing it at the right time, the Hullensian gift for convergence, of land, river and sea, fluxes throughout. Equally masterful in their own ways, their greatest Dada trick was themselves.
“It’s all found objects,” Cobby once told Raygun Magazine. “If there is meaning, it’s in your head. It’s like Marcel Duchamp. You make the piece. We’re Dadaists. It’s a happy accident.” But the spark in Fila Brazillia’s organic electronica was far from accidental. Their music carefully weaved discarded sounds with bright new ones, dazzling the mind with a Frankenstein funk powered by the electric charge of their own creative brilliance. Luck Be A Weirdo Tonight was their Dada masterpiece, channeling everything from Dionysian dreams to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.
The path to the starting edge of that Wonderland — different from the Balearic breeze of Heights of Abraham or the funk-chop glint of The Solid Doctor or The Cutler — was easy to follow. Fila Brazillia’s second album Maim That Tune greatly diversified their sound after the psychedelic house-funk odyssey of Old Codes : New Chaos. Itself considered by many fans as their best work, Maim scoped out the farthest flung boundaries of the chill room, its ‘A Zed And Two L's’ and ‘Subtle Body’ finding a lifelong place in the crates and hearts of downtempo DJs and head-trippers.
It is a mix-ready pragmatism in Maim, with dance floor chuggers like ‘Leggy,’ ‘6ft Wasp’ and ‘Harmonicas Are Shite,’ that perfectly spikes the after-hours cocktail of 1990s sonic bliss. Black Market Gardening wound even further off the path, ‘Snake Ranger’ tripping out in a breakbeat trance and ‘Blubber Plinth’ hazing into Animals-era Floyd with drum ‘n’ bass rhythms — an instinct they would expound upon expertly with the opening and closing of Mess — the spry guitar exhilaration of ‘The Last’… and ‘The Return’… ‘of the Red Hot Brethren,’ cradling gems like ‘But Momma’ and ‘Blood.’
During this same blazing run, Cobby and McSherry began to make a name for themselves as remixers, their releases garnering them praise and fans among artists that ran the gamut. Remixes for DJ Food, Lamb, Fluke, The Orb, Busta Rhymes, and Radiohead, were earning them coin in the land; Thom Yorke sought them out as a genuine fan, inspired by their fusion of traditional and electronic sounds. In fact, similarities with Radiohead’s most acclaimed ‘90s album, OK Computer, are inconspicuous in retrospect. Remixing ‘Climbing Up the Walls,’ Fila Brazillia blueprinted, in some ways, their own 1997 expedition into the future.***
Two things separated Luck from their previous albums. For one, they “played” on it more, versus sampling smaller bits and takes of their sessions and then transforming them, building them up, layering and so forth. “There’s a lot more of us playing on this record…and less sampling,” Cobby has explained. “We’d gradually been adding ways to do that to the studio since Old Codes. More sampler memory, 8-track hard disk recorder and then Logic audio recording on the Mac…which we bought with the money from the Radiohead ‘Climbing Up The Walls’ remix.”
It was the golden age of sampling, and yet the chill was slowly freezing up independent underground artists who sampled past recordings heavily, after The Turtles sued De La Soul in 1989, and then Irish singer Gilbert O’Sullivan won his copyright case against Biz Markie in 1991. In many ways, the art of sampling — charges from the aggrieved argued it was simply “stealing” — went far deeper underground, from hip hop’s early days in the sun to rave’s nights in the dark warehouses of music history. But by 1997, scrutiny neared.
Magicians of sound, Fila Brazillia were already pushing forward in 1997, past the tall grass and their winding paths, to somewhere new and in many ways more exciting than their more sample-heavy beginnings. In 1998, the UK courts and government would put its own tough grip around Dadaist freedoms. No matter. For Cobby and McSherry had started out as instrumentalists and had bonded over a shared love around technology and anything-goes musicianship. In the same way that Lewis Carroll sidestepped the Victorian restrictions of his own time with wordplay and innuendo, combined with fantasy and nonsense, Fila Brazillia followed their own surrealistic rabbit into a double imagination of deep entangling drifts.
Second, Luck’s clever patterns require multiple active listens to open it up: jumping their backyard, Fila’s dense jazz rhythms and miasmic horns evoke a winding river trip. The first third of the album is all rapids and clears — ‘Billy Goat Groupies’ and ‘Apehorn Concerto’ pick their way through thickets of percussion, crashing on through marshes into tranquil pools of bliss; opener ‘Lieut. Gingivitis Shit’ bumps to deep bass and lily-pad tones, its howling guitar scratching an itch deep down in the soul, while the satyr flutes of ‘Hells Rarebit’ beckon Dionysian delirium before a hectic spinout in cooling waters. The second third of the album picks up the pace. ‘Rustic Bellyflop’ paddles and struts to an acoustic guitar that picks its strings like a daddy long-legs spider, before ‘Van Allens Belt’ bounces the raft to a slapping groove, its breezing synths sweeping you onto the river’s shore and into the shady forest and beyond.
If Alice’s adventure went from a riverbank and down a rabbit hole, then Fila’s went on the river and into a more pastoral Wilderland — just as immersive a tale, but suffused with the wind and the shimmer of sunlight, flashing off the currents of streams, or the leaves of trees. In fact, the presence of other imaginations is part of what makes it so compelling. Luck is not the vision of one author. It is indeed “jazz” in the truest sense of the word, for not only did Cobby and McSherry mind-meld, and play one off the other, but Luck was the strart of a sextet that included flutist Bernard Moss and a second drummer, Gary Burroughs, augmenting Cobby’s own drum-kittery.
It’s that group improvisation that gives Luck so much life. You can hear it in the bluesy sax on ‘Billy Goat Groupies’ and when guitars, flute, horn, drums and keyboard build and build to near excruciating heights, until releasing into the blissful Moog-drift of ‘Apehorn Concerto,’ twisting and pulling the listener deeper into a realm of both chaotic beauty and reflective wisps. Jamming at their Stunk Dusty studio, the Kingston-upon-Hull crew were letting their imaginations run on Albion Street. Blooming like clouds from its roof, their heady steam could upwell zeppelins.
Listening to ‘Her Majesties Hokey Cokey,’ one can picture an electro-shocking, jazz swinging version of Guys and Dolls and the ‘Luck Be A Lady’ melody that inspired the album’s title. Transforming such inspirations into phantasmic ululations, in of course Dada fashion, Fila were not just playing jazz. With Moss hacking and attacking their grooves with his pipes and horns, like a mad Pan losing it under the Moon, the low bass dollops of ‘Rustic Bellyflop’ could only be molded with a synth sampler unit, melting man into machine. ‘Lieut. Gingivitis Shit’ and ‘Van Allens Belt’ achieve a cyborg perfection by way of humor, vocoder, and McSherry’s operatic antics.
“We lost ourselves in our creative world,” McSherry told Ghost Deep almost a quarter century later. “I guess it was therapy, really. Steve would encourage me to get on the mic and I’d come out with stream of consciousness type stuff and we’d piss ourselves laughing. Everything seemed a bit hysterical and surreal to me but I think letting lash in the studio really helped.” That hysterical almost manic trance, Luck’s getting lost-in-music brilliance, came from a terrible tragedy that McSherry lived through at the time. His brother had committed suicide. And it was in music, disappearing in its melodies and rhythms, that kept him afloat and aloft.
“I remember coming into the studio and Steve asking me if I wanted to stay and work or go home,” he shared, revealing the source of the profound beauty — its mixture of sadness and wisdom — that runs throughout Luck; it’s the album’s river and rabbit —its run, rabbit, run. “I think by this time,” he continued, “we were putting in pretty long shifts in the studio — just treating it like a job really — coming into the studio four days a week, 10am-10pm. I don’t think we talked about it much but Steve was a massive help and I’m very grateful for him being there for me during that time.”
This is what makes Luck more than just another Fila album. Dadaist it may be. But it does have a deeper meaning, a meaning of loss — of trying to find meaning in what cannot be easily healed or reasoned, if ever. At the same time, this is also where the album’s joy erupts from, of finding the melody that led McSherry back into the world, the fellowship between him and Cobby: the emotion of love. On ‘Van Allens Belt,’ the shift up in tempo signals something of a watershed — its ricocheting drums webbing McSherry’s vocoder murmurs, which sound at turns like pangs of pain and at other turns like drunken giggles — a soul lingering at the edge of an epic weirdness.
And so the rhythm goes, a wallop of Akai-S1100 bass warping space and time, the song at one minute and 30 seconds thrashing through several bars of percussive-sax madness, before rolling into a hypnotic swoon, Cobby’s own drumming sampled and looped, windows into moments of devotion, stitched into a mantra of dislocation; except McSherry’s electric guitar wrangles it in, riding, riffing, and rising with an uncommon resilience. It’s the transition that marks Luck not as an album of two different minds, but of one great friendship, a brotherhood forged in music.
A trio of masterstrokes raises the album’s climax. ‘Pollo De Palo’ cruises to an introspective bass line, a suite of winds lifting you up through the trees and into a daydream meadow. The beautiful ‘Heat Death of the Universe’ flutters until a hopeful melody zips on high, drums and plucking chords coming to life like excited spectators of a distant rocket launch. The millennial fever of ‘Weasel Out the Muck’ funks out like tank music from the Vietnam War era, its kick drum buckling the breeze under a vapor of violins. A frenzy of keys is answered by a guitar line that would make wah-wah guitarists Jimi Hendrix or Mick Ronson proud. And when you think it can’t get any better, a billowy synth spills out of thin air like colored smoke, giving signal while leaving you dazed under the waving reeds, tides of peace washing heavenly.
The latter actually samples David Byrne of Talking Heads fame talking about “the act of packing our bags” as a “self-fulfilling prophecy” — how our fears can make what we fear become real. The guitar solo at the peak of ‘Weasel Out the Muck,’ and indeed the album, is McSherry doing his “best Hugh Cornwell impression,” revealing the influence of The Stranglers’ punk guitarist on his playing: “I think this is another good example of the dynamic between us in the studio — Steve is great at setting a scene in which you can lose (and surprise) yourself when you’re playing.” But without the ballast of ‘Pollo De Palo’ and ‘Heat Death of the Universe,’ Luck would never reign supreme — ‘Pollo’ just flies and flies, ‘Heat’ lifts and lifts and lifts, and ‘Muck’ trips and flips. As integrated music, Luck must be taken as a whole. And like Dark Side of the Moon, Luck simply doesn’t shine as separate pieces, because its Dada genius is ever so kaleidoscopic in its exorcizing brilliance, its synths and guitars growing brighter.
So Fila’s excursion through hidden samples and wild inventions concludes with the coda ‘Do the Hale-Bopp,’ its title alluding to the Hale-Bopp comet sightings of 1997. It’s a dubbed-out jam of rubbery bass and wobbling twangs, slowly rising up into the ether — a fitting end to an unforgettable trek through the weird and lovely world of Fila Brazillia. Adding to the fantastical mischief, Luck Be A Weirdo Tonight‘s cover is one of electronica’s best. When combined with the music, its storybook illustrations echo the psychedelic ardor of springtime nature itself: “Is that a bunny named Luck hopping through the forest?” you might ask. “Has he found what he’s looking for?”****
McSherry spotted the cottontail in a kid’s book he found at a charity shop. It’s from Margaret Wise Brown’s Home for a Bunny. Its classic art is by Garth Williams. In a time of loss, it struck him: “the idea of a cute innocent image for the cover of quite an ‘out there’ record,” he reflected many years later, for inside was Brown’s story of a brown bunny looking for a home. He talks to a robin, to a frog, to a groundhog. None can offer him a home. Until he meets a white rabbit who lives under a stone.
Many have found joy and comfort in Luck. After they finished it, Fila brought the renowned Ashley Beedle to Stunk Dusty after he DJ’d a club night in Hull, then sat him down and played the whole album. He was floored. At the end of 1997, the late writer Dan Sicko, author of Techno Rebels and a Detroit techno aficionado, listed it as his favorite album of the year. Less well-trod than other Fila albums, it is perhaps nonetheless electronica’s closest bid for its own Dark Side of the Moon.
But unlike Pink Floyd’s masterpiece, at points you can’t quite tell what is electronic and what is not. Not in an artificial intelligence way, but in a human way — tellingly, it is like OK Computer before Radiohead fully embarked on its electronic odyssey with Kid A. Fila would greatly decelerate in 2006 as McSherry focused on his family. But Luck is an enduring reminder of just how intensely their artistic fires burned, each listen yielding new discoveries in a spiritual wilderness that few can master.
That elusive rabbit spirit is never far away, haunting an acid jazz riverland on the outskirts of everyday life. Like Lewis Carroll’s curious Alice, or Brown’s brown bunny, once you hear its call, you can’t un-hear it. And you can’t help but cross over hedges into edges, disappearing into wonder, and a home of your own.
Track Listing:
1. Lieut. Gingivitis Shit
2. Billy Goat Groupies
3. Apehorn Concerto
4. Hells Rarebit
5. Her Majesties Hokey Cokey
6. Rustic Bellyflop
7. Van Allens Belt
8. Pollo De Palo
9. Heat Death of the Universe
10. Weasel Out the Muck
11. Do the Hale-Bopp
*Cobby’s collaborations are many, including his work with ambient pioneer Harold Budd, and producing duties for Afghan Whigs frontman Greg Dulli on his debut solo album, The Twilight Singers, and for former Underworld member Darren Emerson. As mentioned above, he has released several albums both solo and with others, as Heights of Abraham, The Cutler and J*S*T*A*R*S.
**An indicator of Cobby’s globe-spanning reputation among the chill-out elite, the remixes on The Cutler remix album, Everyone Is Remixing Everything Else, not only includes contributions by Darren Emerson, Richard Dorfmeister, Mark Rae and Pete Lazonby, but California stalwarts Gavin Hardkiss and Tranquility Bass.
***’Climbing Up the Walls’ was the first single off OK Computer, a vinyl only promotion release to help infiltrate the larger electronica fold, which was a true enthusiasm for the Radiohead crew, being influenced by Aphex Twin, Underworld, Fila Brazillia and others. Importantly, I do not believe that Radiohead are the same level of electronic innovators as Fila Brazillia, though I do believe they greatly readied the mainstream.
I think the comparison however is illuminating, because the two works prefigured the norm of the 2010s, when a new generation of musicians saw no separation between traditional and newer instrumental means, an era that Fila, perhaps more than anyone, manifested into being. Also, while I am well aware that most of today’s electronica fans have no idea who Fila Brazillia are, as opposed to say, Daft Punk, and while some Fila fans haven’t given Luck the listen it requires, nevertheless I do believe, taken on its own terms, that it’s of a musical and emotional quality resonant with the immersive legacy of Dark Side of the Moon, more than OK Computer.
Another well regarded band, Tortoise, also were playing in the fusion fields of post rock, jazz and electronica. Released just one year before Luck and OK Computer, Tortoise’s breakthrough album, Millions Now Living Will Never Die, brought a genuinely indie rock and experimental music approach to the conflux. And surprisingly, while Tortoise’s followup, TNT, would move back to more rock formulations, with dub still core to their sound, they helped form a triangle. Aesthetically speaking, all three are siblings. But Luck is best in my book.
Coming back to Fila’s remixes, which allowed them to also flirt with pop (Sneaker Pimps), trip hop (Moloko), Dutch jazz techno (Gerd), and Japanese acid jazz (United Future Organization), Fila were chameleons of sound who reigned for a time in the border countries of the ‘90s sonic revolution, conducting the waves of tumult.
The best place to collect Fila’s remixes is the double remix album, Brazillification (Remixes 95-99), which includes a version of their ‘Climbing Up the Walls’ remix. Three of the best remixes featured on the compilation are their mixes for Mellow (‘Mellow’), Euphoria (‘Delirium’), and Black Uhuru (‘Boof 'n' Baff 'n' Biff’).
In one last wrinkle, however, for the trainspotters out there, Fila’s original remix of ‘Climbing Up the Walls,’ which is more dubby their latter second mix, is only on vinyl and Radiohead’s ‘Karma Police’ and ‘Lucky’ CD singles.
****On the handful of artist samples used on Luck, two of the best and most prominent are KC & The Sunshine Band’s ‘I’m Your Boogie Man’ on ‘Do the Hale-Bopp,’ and Can’s ‘Moonshake’ on ‘Van Allens Belt.’ These cherry-picked jangles and bass-slaps add just the right resonance of cultural vim.