Ninja Tune
2003
Love, Pussycats & Carwrecks
About This Album
Braddell's second album in Funki Porcini guise is an enjoyable, quirky trip, as moodily atmospheric as it is subtly hilarious (and sometimes not so subtly). Advantageously steering away from another two-disc marathon, Love, Pussycats and Carwrecks instead takes up just over an hour of time of high-speed and meditative pieces, both touching subtly on a variety of styles in an overall context. The lengthy and slinky-by-definition (or at least by title) "Purrfect" starts everything on the right foot, a quiet and quietly dramatic combination of soft, slow beats, a mournful trumpet solo, and found sound samples, including a subtly trippy bit of someone walking down a street. Unlike most other trip-hop types who began and ended with Portishead, there's an actual sense of a different approach here, as the buried snippets of drum'n'bass loops make clear. The energy starts picking up more with the immediately following "Groover" -- there's more trumpet, as is the case for much of the album, but there's also a lot more speed and jungle-style loops -- and from there things continue merrily on. Enough random moments throughout the album keep it from being just something to put on while turning the lights down low and practicing seduction techniques.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,5,6,7,8,9,10 and 11)

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