Music
The best kept secret in music
Press
“From the deep-dub opener, 'Ernie', to the soulful closing number, 'Hope', the group's debut is a slow-burn winner.” Observer Music Monthly (UK) June 2005 - OBSERVER MUSIC MONTHLY
Discography
June 2002
Midnight Marauders Sonar Kollektiv - 12 vinyl
Licensed to: Nightmares On Wax Back To Mine compilation
June 2003
Hope/Bluey Kartel 10 vinyl
Licensed to: Trust The DJ WorldWide compilation by Gilles Peterson,
Feb 2004
This Room/Ernie(live) Sonar Kollektiv 12 vinyl
June 2004
Hope (3 Generations Walking remixes) Kartel 10 vinyl
Oct 2004
Hope For A Generation CD EP Kartel
Available for download on iTunes
Feb 2005
Flashback / Midnight Marauders (live at BBC Maida Vale) 12 single
Seconds Especial records (Japan only) 12 single
May 2005
Runnin - Rebirth Of Cool (Island Records).
July 2005
Based On A True Story (album - CD/LP) - Kartel
Photos
Feeling a bit camera shy
Bio
Pacific purveyors of hi-tek soul Fat Freddys Drop are a seven-piece family of musicians whove grown up together in Wellington, New Zealand.
Emerging through a multitude of incarnations from funk jam bands to reggae soundsystems, jazz covers to live Detroit style techno, their debut album is called Based On A True Story.
Shipping Gold on the first day the album dropped, Based On A True Story made history as the first independently distributed album to hit No.1 on the NZ Album Charts. Within two weeks, the long player album reached Platinum.
Fitchie AKA Mu is rated New Zealands premier producer and as leader of the countries most uncompromising band, he drives the MPC 2000 (a sampler) cooking up Freddys bouncing beats and bottom heavy bass lines.
Joe Dukie AKA Dallas Tamaira, is the lyricist and singer whos stage name/alter ego is drawn from the names of his father Joe, also a singer, and his grandfather, a musician nicknamed Dukie after Duke Ellington. Influenced by Bill Withers, his resonant lyrics and sweet vocal hypnotize you.
Dallass cartoon sketches bring the bands alter egos to life and link them closer to their namesake, Fat Freddys Cat, a character from US cult comic strip The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers.
The bootae shaking horn section bring the jazz to Fat Freddys Drop. Meeting at Wellingtons acclaimed Jazz School in the mid nineties they have been at the core of a new musical movement in New Zealand via popular (NZ) bands such as The Blacks Seeds, Trinity Roots and of course Fat Freddys Drop.
The intricate licks of Fulla Flash AKA Warryn Maxwells tenor and alto sax intertwined with stabs from Tony Chang AKA Toby Laings trumpet come together with the wall of sound of Ho Pepa AKA Joe Lindsays trombone, creating crescendos of apocalyptic scale.
Jetlag Johnson aka Tehimana Kerr holds down the roots for Freddys with his old school reggae guitar skank while Dobie Blaze aka Iain Gordon serves up funkadelic proportions of analogue keys juxtaposed with stirring organ swells and south pacific style harmonies.
Meals are a sacred pastime for Freddys, and Dobie Blaze doubles as the family chef. His culinary feasts keep the family from going hungry, skinny bunch of punks theyre certainly not! As Fitchie says the band that eats together stays together!
Freddys HQ is affectionately referred to as the beach, home to Mu and Nicole, who drives the bands NZ label The Drop, and where the Freddys come together.
Literally 6 feet from the beach, The Drop studio is situated in the basement of the old 19th Century Bath House on Lyall Bay, one of the oldest buildings in Wellington; New Zealands capital city.
Life at The Drop exists on Island Time, the bros work at their own tempo, under few pressures from the outside world. The result, Based On A True Story, is an album unlike anything else youve heard. Recorded, engineered and mixed by Fitchie at the beach but written almost entirely live on stage during the bands infamously long sets.
Fat Freddys Drop are first and foremost a live band. No two Freddys gigs are the same as their improvised jams take each song into mystic supernovas of skanking soul goodness.
Based On A True Story is a fresh slice of future funk, ten tunes of surprises, fakes and freaky sidesteps.
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