The Name of this Band is Fat Freddy's Drop

I can still remember hearing the sound of dub for the first time in 1980 on the Clash's Sandinista.  It was a gateway drug that led me straight to Linton Kwesi Johnson's Forces of Victory and Dennis Bovell's Brain Damage.  And then, of course, I recognized how much its sound had influenced everyone from Culture Club to the Police, all of whom had been soaking in the work of reggae geniuses like King Tubby and Lee "Scratch" Perry through the 70's.  Dub was a reggae beat slowed down and opened up with reverb and echo.  It was a musical rebuke to Margaret Thatcher.

But who would have thought that more than three decades later this beat would animate Wellington, New Zealand's Fat Freddy's Drop, a self-described "seven headed soul monster"? Their Blackbird is a a gumbo of soulful horns, organ, and swampy rhythm guitar that could have easily have been Sly Stone's follow-up to Fresh (if he had gone to Kingston and gotten his shit together). 

So forget that it's from way down down under and sample Fat Freddy's Drop and their "Blackbird." Time to get wise. 

New year, new music - NoW's Feeling Good

As the year starts with the snow swirling, I can't get enough of a 2013 disk that came to me via WSJ critic Jim Fusilli's year end column (he's a very reliable guide, but that's a subject for another post).

The album is Feeling Good by the West Yorkshire trip-hop team, Nightmares on Wax. Built around DJ George Evelyn, NoW is now in most ways a performing band but with the roots of its mixmaster boss.  Evelyn has a deep feel for the soul sounds he was raised on: Mayfield, Marley and Motown all show through.  His pedigree as a producer includes work with De La Soul in the early aughts. 

Can I find superlatives enough?  No, I cannot.  Feeling Good is the equal of the best work of Massive Attack and Groove Armada, steeped in dub and reggae, classic soul and ambient sounds.  The other night at my house, it had the whole room quietly pulsing -- twenty-somethings to fifty-somethings --and no one said, "Can you turn this down?"  

CHECK THIS OUT:   NoW kicking "Be, I Do" and then think, "Gee, if every track is as good as this this, shouldn't Feeling Good be playing in my ears/car/party right now?"