As of noon on Wednesday, November 8th, 2000, people are in dire distress. The fate of the presidential election is uncertain. Sealed ballot boxes are being found in Floridian church rectories; Florida has the power to decide U.S. foreign policy, and thus, the fate of billions. How must Gore and Bush be feeling as of right now? Gore spent Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday sleeplessly tooling around the country, while Bush stomped through key Southern locations, eloquently espousing his caring reforms and his message of inclusivity.

What both camps, and the rest of the nation, need to do is to grab a cold one and chill until the votes have been counted down there in the Sunshine State. Everyone needs to get their head cleared up, and hook into a relaxing, fear-assuaging album-- something light, fluffy, and not connected with a multinational corporation having conniptions about how the stock market and their institutional investors are going to react if Forrest Gump's meretricious cousin gets the keys to the Oval Office.

And when our thoughts wander to who could be taking up residence in Observatory Circle, we really do need some chill. Perhaps if Cheney moves in to the vice-president's chalet, he'll not tear down Tipper's delicate home furnishings to start constructing annexes for his gun rack collection.

Well, who better than soggy Hull homeboys Baby Mammoth to brighten our dark hours? After all, they specialize in downy-soft, instrumental, jazzy hip-hop so downbeat you'll feel like you just smoked a pound of chronic and got laid thrice. And Best Foot Forward presents the sweetest berries from these guys' back catalog, all mixed into a soothing mousse by label stalwart Porky at the pub down the road, the Lamp, one chilly evening last February.

On no other track is Baby Mammoth's tranquilizing effect clearer than Best Food Forward's opener, "Quick Kick," which sounds splendidly like Grant Green liquidly plucking with a euphorically bleeping Cabaret Voltaire. Porky keeps that mood throughout Best Foot Forward and even adds a suggestion of Amon Tobin during "Moonburn." But that Tobin tension is soon relieved, and soon, smiles surround the frowns, pushing them far out into the North Sea. After that, the album really gets trippy with the closer, "Tolstoy," excerpted from the band's debut album, Bridging Two Worlds. This surreptitious, brush-drummed, eerily vocalized track rivals Banabila's "Mono/Metro" in being the track that could make Pork the only white meat for serious post-Orb ambient heads.

Whether the United States will immediately latch onto the extinct, hairy elephantine goings-on in Hull is highly questionable-- as questionable as Palm Beach County-registered Democrats casting their votes for Reform Party maggot Pat Buchanan. But while we wait for this mess to get sorted out, let's take a few minutes to reflect on the events outside our borders. And while we're at it, we might just want to think about drafting an apology letter to the rest of the world.

-Paul Cooper