15 November 2019 - 0 Comments

Fat Freddy’s Drop means different things to different people. Hundreds of thousands of fans have seen this internationally renowned live and recorded band play over the last two decades and four acclaimed studio albums. Be it swaying and sun-squinting into the afternoon haze at one of their summer European performances, or hugging a bassbin at an underground rave in Aotearoa. Everyone has their own unique and unforgettable Freddy’s tale to tell.

2019 brings a fresh musical foundation to unite a new generation of Fat Freddy’s Drop evangelists with the original rockers: Special Edition Part 1 drops hard on 15th November.

Part 1 of a long envisaged double album, Special Edition Part 1 consists of a combination of stress-tested concert detonations alongside studio bullets crafted at their Wellington command centre Bays studio. The Detroit techno-influenced musings of Trickle Down, the Steely Dan swagger of Raleigh Twenty and the sunset Balearic bliss of Six Eight Instrumental come from the latter, while Special Edition, Kamo Kamo and OneFourteen are the hard-won results of that magical live-in-concert FFD alchemy.

As with all Fat Freddy’s Drop records there is a finely crafted sonic progression born of a constant hunger for the new, though always tempered by an unshakable faith in the bass music of Jamaica and the importance of real songs with real soul.

Second single and future live classic Kamo Kamo is instantly recognisable as Fat Freddy’s Drop, the discordant Korg and Casio intro giving way to a cascade of descending bass, those iconic horns and Dallas’s rocksteady songwriting. It’s a vitamin D tonic to first single Trickle Down, with it’s Big Fun meets Burial Mix sound: the serious but euphoric collision between the sounds of an interstellar Detroit and Berlin’s wide-eyed 24 hour party palaces.

The making of Part 1 was a brave new frontier: each member of the band was wired into DJ Fitchie’s production software at a specific tempo, while being tasked with using electronic instruments other than those more readily associated with the band. After long jamming sessions the heaviest grooves were targeted and so the real recording began.

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