Pigpile is a live recording from July 24, 1987 during the post-hardcore band Big Black's final European tour, released originally as a VHS tape (it was their second video release, following the 'Live' tape on Atavistic Records.) and later issued as an audio-only LP/CD. The recordings were made at the Hammersmith Clarendon concert hall, London. A 5" transparent heavy-duty vinyl record was included away free with all copies of the VHS tape and some copies of the soundtrack album, featuring a cover version of the Mary Jane Girls song "In My House". Lower-quality recordings from the Hammersmith concert had previously appeared in a different configuration on the bootleg LP Tonight We Walked With Giants.
Pigpile coincided with the re-release of Big Black's entire catalog on Touch-and-Go Records A limited edition of Pigpile was issued as a box set that included the LP and its insert, a VHS tape of the Hammersmith concert, the "In My House" one-sided 5" single, a poster and a Big Black T-shirt.[1]
Released five years after Big Black chose to disband at the peak of their artistic and commercial success, Pigpile received concurrent and retrospective reviews ranging from lukewarm to gushing. Writing shortly after the album's release, Spin Magazine remarked that Pigpile was "a live album with sound quality unworthy of an audio nut like Albini."[4] Looking back at Albini's career through Big Black and his subsequent band, Rapeman a decade on, Rolling Stone called Pigpile a "fun-but-not-revelatory live album," ranking it a notch below any of the group's studio albums.
^Bashe, Patricia Romanowski; Pareles, Jon; George-Warren, Holly, eds. (2001). Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll: Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll. Touchstone. p. 72. ISBN978-0-7432-0120-9.
[2]
