Fila Brazillia - Beatless (2023) [Hi-Res]

Music journalists love labelling artists, but more often than not we don’t get it right. Understandably, this is something that artists themselves find frustrating. Fila Brazillia have felt this frustration for decades. During their most prolific and successful period in the 1990s, they were often mislabelled as a “chill out” act, despite rhythm and groove being a key aspect of the duo’s unique and nigh on impossible-to-pigeonhole sound.
On one level, this is understandable; after all, many of Steve Cobby and David McSherry’s most cherished tracks are those than roll along at a low tempo – at least in comparison to the high BPMs associated with the most popular club cuts and culturally dominant sub-genres – and their catalogue is peppered with beat-free interludes, immersive soundscapes and emotive, comedown-friendly ambient excursions.
Yet Fila Brazillia have never made an entirely beatless or ambient album, and their natural instincts still pull them gently towards the dancefloor. They emerged from the margins of underground dance music at a time when its ebb, flow and sonic ingredients were instinctively tied to Ecstasy culture. This national and international movement was rooted in an experiential arc that required a specific but shapeshifting soundtrack; at times thrillingly upbeat and rhythmic, at others loved-up, aurally kaleidoscopic and shorn of the last vestiges of groove.
Even as that generation grew up, had families, and left all-night dancing and messy weekenders behind, the desire for vivid, atmospheric and alluring downtempo and beatless music remained – at least as a contemplative and becalmed flipside to the rhythms and grooves that still got their blood pumping on a Friday or Saturday night.
This colourful, widescreen sound-world, created with warmth and mood enhancement in mind, stands in sharp contrast to the overly worthy and experimental approaches that dominate ambient music discourse in 2023. It’s music for soundtracking sunrises, sunsets and eyes-closed daydreaming, rather than chin-stroking or academic analysis.
If Fila Brazillia had set out to make an ambient album, it would sound like this. The 17-track collection contains music recorded at different times between 1990 and 2023, in different studios and in all manner of headspaces. There are classic cuts lifted from LPs and EPs (‘Subtle Body’, ‘Spores’); familiar favourites presented in unfamiliar forms (‘DPs R Us’, from Mess, appears in its unheard full-length form); cuts created for, and subsequently omitted from, film soundtracks (‘Theia’) and acclaimed albums (‘Vanitas’, ‘Yesternight’ and ‘Van Cleef’, all of which were intended to be included on 1994’s Old Codes, New Chaos); standalone tracks recently crafted from elements of more up-beat workouts (‘Ambient Apehorn’, which showcases the overlapping synth sounds of 1997’s ‘Apehorn Concerto’, and ‘Regard The End’, which is based on a small portion of ‘Heil Mickey’ from 2004’s Dicks) and even a brand-new recording, ‘Tone Poem’. This gently twisting, turning and evocative gem is a genuine ambient classic in the making, and proof that time has not dimmed Fila Brazillia’s mastery of beatless soundscapes.
Matt Anniss - June 2023