Who or what is Women of the Pore?
Short answer…We don’t know.
An unadorned and unaddressed, brown paper bag was slipped under our door.
It was apparent this wasn’t the usual take-out menu or political brochure, that often make its way to our doormat. The parcel was tied with a rough jute twine, and housed a cassette, whose only identifying mark was,”Women of the Pore” written along the side in a elegant script, practiced yet natural, a style not often seen today.
Who or what brought about this cassette? That my friend, we intended to find out! Our initial efforts turned up nil; libraries empty of information, people on the streets, silent! All we could find was an online chat group who were devoted to sussing out this very conspiracy – or conspiracies, rather. From the onset our inquiry was troubled and the origins of the tape was further muddled, by the feverish second hand accounts about the shadowy faction.
Some people say the adherents of Women of the Pore are part of a fanatical doomsday coven who moved their church subterranean during the cold war to avoid nuclear fallout; others say that it is a radical leftist militant organization who retreated underground, hiding from law enforcement. A few pointed to a theory that, Women of the Pore was begun as a top secret military program, to lab-grow Homo sapiens. The theories as to the purposes on this one were an endless point of debate among the online sleuths, as you can imagine.
We were also told the recordings may be Michael Leslie Winslow practicing a new routine imitating motoric rhythms and demon howls hoping to unlock true abandonment, while awaiting a Police Academy reboot. We couldn’t corroborate any of the reports.
Left without much to go on, we just focused on the music itself. What does, “Hot Town – Rip up the Streets” sound like? Well, if you can imagine getting left behind and locked into to a fairground after closing, you might have an idea. The carnies have long turned in for the evening; its the time when the rides, games, and prizes get to let their metaphorical hair down. Moments when mirrors silk-screened with pop culture references, can rub elbows with magenta feathered roach clips, and under-stuffed plush creatures.
A Gravitron spinning creates a whirring ambience as deep bass pulses from a pendulum ride. Faint psychedelic flourishes chirp from a rigged game, twisting metal from a ferris wheel, sounds that lurch forward held together by generator-motor rhythm section. None of this sounds as mechanical as this description may imply, oh no! These free flowing sounds are seedy and dangerous, just like a fair should be, the tension adding to the thrill.
So as you can see we still don’t know much about Women of the Pore, but we do know if you’ve got the guts, this is a funky album, and a canon in the Bunker Jazz catalogue.
Dig it?