Fat Freddys Drop Invade America

On a distant planet floating in a sea of patched-together spaceships, Dr. Boondigga and the BW, a mad scientist and his sidekick robot, have kidnapped New Zealand’s high-tech soul mercenaries Fat Freddy’s Drop. Actually, the true story of Dr. Boondigga is not fully known, having been created first in the mind of Freddy singer and lyricist Dallas Tamaira a.k.a. Joe Dukie and then fully brought to light as the album artwork for Dr. Boondigga & the Big BW (released in the US on the band’s own label, The Drop) by New Zealand graffiti artist Otis Frizzell. The truth is stranger than fiction: a band of a Maori singer/songwriter and Maori musicians, a Samoan beat master, and a Kiwi horn section living in musical isolation on an island in the South Pacific have absorbed Black music in many forms and come up with an unlikely sound reminiscent of a chilled out Gnarls Barkley; the perfect wind-down from an MIA dance party.

“We’ve absorbed a few influences along the way: Berlin Bashment, Portuguese Top Forty, Tooting Bhangra Beat and Montmartre TV Shop Techno Hi-Life,” says trumpet player Tony Chang, who along with the rest of the horn section jump from Ethiopiques-style horn lines to New Orleans second line, from Afrobeat to Family Stone flashbacks, while vocalist Dallas can invoke the gentle soul of Al Green or early Rocksteady.

Sponging up so many different styles came naturally to musicians growing up on a tiny patch of land whose local music scene lacked a strong, identifiable sound and embraced Black music. Explains electronics wizard Chris Faiumu (a.k.a. Fitchie), “I grew up listening to American Black music from the early ’70s, loving soul music and loving jazz, and discovering reggae and hip-hop. That music wasn’t that developed here. I had to look offshore to find good music. And it mostly seemed to be African-American artists of the ’70s and ’80s.”

The draw of that music to Fitchie, a Samoan, played out the same for many other Pacific Islanders and indigenous Maori. In the music of Black America and early reggae, native Islanders found resonance in the lyrics of resistance and solidarity with their situation on the laid-back island. “Indigenous people drew parallels in the work of Bob Marley in their own struggle here in this country,” continues Fitchie. “Reggae is a music that suits the taste of life here. When you go to New York City, it’s a big change of pace for us. Reggae is good for our kind of island lifestyle.”

Fans who love Freddy for their easy roots reggae feel will find the grooves familiar. “The Raft” in particular plays like a chilled-out island sunset jam. The lyrics allude to the Freddy philosophy of artistic and creative independence, best summed up in the last line: “The industry will never find me. Here among the trees, My footsteps will be, will be all that I leave.” Putting money where their philosophical mouths are, Freddy plays this out through their artist-owned record label The Drop, and their unique music business model that seeks to promote and distribute music more directly. It is their Dr. Jekyll to the music industry’s Mr. Hyde. The Drop has teamed up with !K7 to distribute the album in Europe and the US. After building their European business out of Berlin for 7 years, it was natural to extend into the US via the German company.

Dr. Boondiga & The Big BW is a distillation of their live jams, what they love to do best. Playing live is at the heart of Freddy’s voodoo power. The best of the soulful slow burns and electro house jams find their way back to the lab at The Drop studio where fine tuning and sonic beat reduction happens in Freddy’s Island Time. From the D’Angelo-meets-Miles Davis vibing opener “Big BW” to the simply gorgeous final track, “Breakthrough,” each of these pieces packs more punch than should strictly be allowed. Early eyebrow-raisers are the shades of old-school techno in dancefloor killer “Shiverman;” the stealth German influence on “Wild Wind;” and the gorgeous, honey-coated soul of “Boondigga.” Rounding out the tracklisting are the two vinyl “The Nod,” a jazz-inspired track that makes you swear you were in New Orleans, is all about fun and draws from the experiences of living the Freddy’s cartoon-worthy life. The band’s name was inspired from Fat Freddy’s Cat, a fictional feline in The singles released prior to the album: “Pull The Catch” & the Alice Russell-fronted “The Camel.”

Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers underground comic strip drawn by American cartoonist Gilbert Shelton in the ’70s, though the expression was also apparently slang for a strong batch of LSD popular in Wellington in the nineties. “There were parallels with the cartoon characters, not just the way we looked,” Fitchie says.

A visual match to the band’s musical alchemy is the album’s cover art. Explains the award-winning Frizzell: “The style is somewhere between old English Whizzer & Chips comics and those crappy sorta’ pulp Thriller/ horror comics. All f***** up like they’ve been in your folks garage for fifteen years and you’ve just gone to collect them ’cause your Mum threatened to burn your shit if you don’t.”

Will Freddy escape the clutches of the evil Dr. Boondigga? Stay tuned with what Garth Trinidad at KCRW Radio in Los Angeles called “the bugged out love child of Isaac Hayes and Lee Scratch Perry.”