Fat Freddy's Drop

After cancelling their 2009 summer shows, Fat Freddy's Drop made a welcome return to these shores and wound up their tour in Manchester before heading back down under.

Formed around 10 years ago in Wellington, New Zealand, FFD have built up a huge fanbase worldwide, based almost entirely on their live performances - tracks develop live before finding their way into the recording studio, rather than the more traditional reverse. They are a difficult band to categorise, fusing house and techno beats with dub, ska and reggae rhythms, the funkiest funk and the soulful vocals of singer Dallas Tamaira. The band are made up of Tamaira, a three piece brass section of trombone, trumpet and sax, guitarist, keyboards and DJ Fitchie mixing it up on the MPC sampler. It is a line up that works to the hugest degree.

A FFD show has the feeling of a jam session as much as the playing of tracks and elements of jazz inevitably find their way into the performances. Album tracks form the base of a song before one musician or another takes it off to a different place, perhaps Toby Laing on trumpet pulling it in one direction before guitarist Jetlag Johnson (Tehimana Kerr) pulls it away in another. What this fusion of styles does create is a uniquely original groove that audiences find infectious - a FFD gig has a real feel-good factor to it and this gig in Manchester is no different.

The band play material from both of their studio albums - 2005's hugely successful 'Based On A True Story' but mostly the album they are touring here 'Dr Boondigga And The Big BW', an album that went gold in New Zealand on its first day of release last May. Fun and fanciful interpretations have an appreciative and packed Academy skankin' along with the band. 'Roady', as one might expect, brought the biggest response of the night and Johnson added a hugely successful guitar solo to celebrate his birthday. The band play a not-far-off 2 hour set that is enthusiastically received from start to finish, an enthusiasm the band seem genuinely humbled to be on the receiving end of.

If you get the chance to see these guys live, grab it with both hands. The BBC were right on the money when they described them as 'New Zealand's most critically acclaimed band...'

FUTURE GIGS