Bring Me The Head Of Freq Nasty
Author: Sas
Friday, August 6, 2004
LABEL: SKINT RECORDS
"massive - hardly your everyday club fare" THE INDEPENDENT
"Simply massive" IDJ - ALBUM OF THE MONTH
"gritty, dangerous and funky in all the right places" INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
It's the Freq-in weekend and we're about to have us some fun. New Zealand ex-pat Darin Mcfadyen, "Freq Nasty" to anyone who's felt the width of his basslines on dancefloors round the world, knows well that the shifting patterns of culture mean fun by the ton in 2004. Bring Me The Head Of Freq Nasty, his first album for Brighton's Skint Records and the second of his career, impacts right into the rubble of dance music, where genre distinctions are collapsing, monopolies toppling and orthodoxies disintegrating on an hourly basis. Which is a good thing. Freq Nasty is the walking paradox that proves the "death of dance music is the best thing that's ever happened to it."
Bring Me The Head Of Freq Nasty arrives at a time when nomenclature has never been a more useless device: bashment, breaks, hip hop, garage, techno and drum & bass are identifiable components of an album that is defined by none of the above. It's a genre-transcending palette of raw music whose pluralism mirrors exactly the fundamental shifts taking place in the world around. "Urban futurist music - that's what I get off on," Darin says.
"Music that's a reflection of cities like London where a lot of different folk are doing their best to get on and there's a lot of friction."
Bring Me The Head Of Freq Nasty was created during a long hibernation in his Brixton (CHK) studio with only a clutch of samplers, a powerful laptop and a very big imagination. He rationed appearances on his busy global DJing schedule and ignored radio, record shops and raves for eight months. What resulted is about as far from generic clockwork breaks as Brixton is from Brisbane "a cross-tempo Venn Diagram of an album, reflecting the genetic stew of urban music today: bashment, breaks, hip hop, drum & bass and garage.
On the single "Come Let Me Know," veteran Brit rapper Rodney P flexes skills over deconstructionist bashment riddims. "Clit Licker", meanwhile, applies breakazoid techniques to the progressive house formula, and turns out a pornographic breakbeat "French Kiss". "Boomba Clatt" with Roots Manuva and Yolanda, is a slice of tough ragga breakbeat action, perfectly adapted to peaktime, big-room conditions; while on album closer "Mad Situation", Junior Delgado adds some rootsical vibes to the proceedings.
Darin's album was produced according to one other principle: The Fuck-It Factor. That's what I introduced to the album. Thinking, "Fuck it, I'm gonna make what I make," and not trying to make it fit into a scene. You can't focus-group a record. It's an easy trap to fall into to where you know which genre you're in and who's playing what records. That's when a genre is dead.
Conversely, it's also when music is most alive: working at an intuitive, emotional level, rather than an intellectual one. Breaks and drum & bass continues to be Britain's most successful export - they've established themselves as the biggest scenes down under, in no small measure through Darin's evangelism. Meanwhile, Bring Me The Head Of Freq Nasty is a beacon leading the way into virgin territory, musical terrain nobody has claimed yet. Breaks, bashment, hip hop, trashment: the question is not "what do we call it- but can you feel it-"
Stick this CD on and plunge your head into a bassbin "these nasty frequencies speak for themselves."
Freq Nasty will be embarking on a mini tour this September in support of Bring Me The Head Of Freq Nasty. Dates confirmed include:
Sepember 9: Los Angeles - El Rey Theater
Sepember 10: San Francisco - Mighty
Sepember 11: Denver - The Church
More dates TBA