Funki Porcini's music is the fruit of a well-traveled life.
Porcini left England at 19 to escape from a squat in Kings Cross being savaged by violent Scots stranded in London after a football game.
Arriving in Los Angeles with three hundred dollars that disappeared in a week on cocktails and hamburgers he was forced into menial labour, stacking shelves in a Westwood department store before earning enough money to hitch-hike to San Francisco. Here he bought a saxophone and moved into the Residents old warehouse where Snakefinger was still living. San Fran was alive with a post punk scene of radical experimentation and Porcini started his forays into recorded sound. Although there were some true luminaries on the scene such as Mark Pauline and his Survival Research Laboratories, Monte Cazzaza, Factrix and a host of underground bands, Porcini grew restless and decided to drive to New York with two friends.
Moving in to the East Village with new found Australian friends SPK he enjoyed NYC but eventually came back to England and hated it. After a brief trial of Berlin he settled in Italy and remained there for 10 years making music for film and television before setting up 9Lazy9 with Keir Fraser.
After establishing connections with Ninja Tune from Italy, Porcini eventually came back to the mother ship and immersed himself in his studio 'The Uterus Goldmine' to produce the first album 'Hed Phone Sex,' a heady record openly made more for the pillows than for the dance floor. This was followed by Love Pussycats and Carwrecks, Let’s See What Carmen Can Do, The Ultimately Empty Million Pounds and Fast Asleep; where Porcini together with Team Alcohol aka Rupert Small produced stunning visual interpretations of the music which is released on DVD sold in conjunction with the CD and premiered at The National Film Theatre in London. He has also recorded under the name of 9 Lazy 9 with Keir Fraserello for Ninja Tune with more of a live sound operating out of the sunny Mediterranean.
Since the release of Fast Asleep, Porcini has been working on diverse projects involving animation and film; still in the Uterus Goldmine in deepest Warwickshire; he is currently working with writer/director Tony Grisoni on some film scores. Now, eight years on from his last full-length album, Funki returns with not one album but two! In December of 2009 he released PLOD independently on funkiporcini.bandcamp.com and in May, Ninja Tune will release ON.
The greatest provocateur and humorist of the early Ninja period, Funki re-animates with his sound intact yet sounding utterly contemporary. Mixing together surreal jazz, found noise, synthetic strangeness and dream logic, “On” is as beautiful and odd as anything he has made.' Porcini has promised to not let it go so long before his next release.
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