Fila Brazillia – Black Market Gardening (2xLP, Music On Vinyl, 30th Anniversary Edition)

Fila Brazillia's Black Market Gardening catches Steve Cobby and David McSherry at a particularly fertile mid-'90s moment, when the Hull duo were twisting the UK's chill-out language into something stranger and more playful. Originally released in 1996, this was their third album, built from the same anything-goes studio approach that had already made them one of British electronic music's real outliers: deep house, downtempo, breaks, ambient textures and dry humour all nudged together without much concern for genre rules.

What makes the record stick is how fluidly it moves. Across nine tracks, Black Market Gardening slips between hazy, bass-heavy trip-hop, cosmic synth lines, brisk breakbeats, funky guitar figures and flashes of drum 'n' bass, while keeping the listener guessing where the samples stop and the live playing begins. That blur is part of the appeal: Fila Brazillia never treat the studio as a clean, clinical space, but as somewhere to collage, tease and reshape sound until it feels both loose and meticulously built.

It also stands as one of the duo's most admired records, often described as a creative high point in a catalogue that eventually ran to seven albums and more than 60 remixes for artists including Radiohead, Busta Rhymes and Lamb. This 30th anniversary edition matters for vinyl collectors too, bringing Black Market Gardening back to the format for the first time since 2001.

Features

• 2xLP, 180g, Black Vinyl, 30th Anniversary Edition
• Music On Vinyl edition
• First time on vinyl since 2001