DJ Mu, Fat Freddys Drop

"Our average song is 10-15 minutes long; some are up to 20minutes"

December 10, 2008, 08:58 PM

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Fat Freddys Drop have been leaving crowds all over Australasia and Europe ravenous for years now since their 2005 release Based on a True Story. With their laid back, jam style shows, and a new album in the works, the Fat Freddys’ voodoo is well and truly working its way around the world.

On the eve of the final UK date of Fat Freddys Drop’s most recent tour, producer and beatmaker, DJ Mu (AKA Chris Faiumu or just ‘Mu’ as he introduces himself) takes time out of his pre-show preparations to catch up with us here at Altsounds.

Altsounds: You played a sold-out show last night here at the Roundhouse, how did it go?

Fat Freddys Drop: Yeah it was great, beautiful room, good crowd, you could feel that it was the second to last date of the tour, getting a bit tighter, pretty happy to be almost finished.

Altsounds: And final show tonight…

Fat Freddys Drop: Yeah, last one’s always good.

Altsounds: There is a fair amount of hype around your forthcoming album, are you as excited as some of the fans are?

Fat Freddys Drop: Yeah, we were hoping to have it finished by now, but we’re just not quite happy with a few things so we just need a little bit longer – hopefully get it out February/March next year. I mean, we’ve been working on it for about a year, year and a half so, yeah, pretty excited.

Altsounds: Fat Freddys Drop aren’t known to rush things…

Fat Freddys Drop: Yeah, we’re excited to come to the end of it, you know, just get it out there.

Altsounds: And tour with it as well I imagine…

Fat Freddys Drop: Yeah, we’ll probably be back [to London] summer next year.

Altsounds: So you’ll be heading home for Christmas then?

Fat Freddys Drop: Yeah, we head home on Monday, so no not long here at all.

Altsounds: Where are we likely to find the Fat Freddys boys on your last few days here?

Fat Freddys Drop: Probably do some shopping, and we’ve still got a lot of friends in London so we’ll be catching up with some people.

Altsounds: You have been touring here for quite some time now, you must have a definite fan base over here?

Fat Freddys Drop: Yeah absolutely, 5 years we’ve been touring here now.

Altsounds: I remember when you guys were playing gigs in the odd pub or bar in Auckland back in 2004/2005, how does that compare to these days, selling out a venue like this in London?

Fat Freddys Drop: Yeah it’s good, like I said, 5 years, it gets bigger and better everytime really, more comfortable. We’re playing to more and more people too, I mean, when we first started coming here we’d hire a shitty little pub down in Tooting Broadway, now we’re actually comfortable, get a hotel and things like that.

Altsounds: What do you miss most about back home when you come over here?

Fat Freddys Drop: Mostly playing golf, I’m a bit of a golf fanatic.

Altsounds: I find now that I’m overseas, I’m a lot more patriotic, do you feel the same when you leave New Zealand?

Fat Freddys Drop: Yeah, for sure, we’re proud to be Kiwis trying to get some success offshore but we’re also mindful that when we come here trying to push our profile over here, you know, we actually want people to get into us for our music. Like here in London, it was initially only Kiwis that would go to a gig, it’s good now, we’ve actually built up a crowd now, so it’s kind of more like 50/50 at the moment.

Altsounds: What’s a really good reason for someone to come to a Fat Freddys Drop gig? What can someone get from a Fat Freddys Drop gig that you can’t find anywhere else?

Fat Freddys Drop: Our live performances are 7 or 8 guys that are really good friends, good musicians who love what they do. You know, one day you come to a gig and the next day it could be completely different. We don’t just play the songs; we kind of try and jam it out, improvise new ideas and stretch the songs out. Our average song is 10-15 minutes long; some are up to 20minutes. So it changes all the time. You go to a regular show, and you don’t get people playing for much more than an hour, where as ours are around 2 hours.

Altsounds: Your first release from the upcoming album is ‘The Camal’, which included a video which can be seen on your website or Youtube. The video is creative in a simple way, whose idea was it?

Fat Freddys Drop: A guy that we travel with, MC Slave – he’s not actually a core member of the band but he travels with us as a guest MC, he takes a few cameras on the road and things, so we’ve got a big archive, and he also directs some of our videos – he did the Wandering Eye video. The Camal was never supposed to be a proper release, it was more “Let’s just get this one out because it’s finished early and just kinda slowly put it out there”, and with the whole internet kinda craziness, we think its good to have some sort of Youtube video and especially where it’s too expensive to shoot a proper video for 10 minutes long, he had a kooky idea that was easy to do, probably not appropriate for TV but yeah.

Where our studio is in Lyall Bay in Wellington, there’s a great café right across the road and that’s the ride on Camel in that café.

Altsounds: You mentioned Wandering Eye, some bands end up dismissing the songs that become their biggest commercial hit, how do you guys feel about that song?

Fat Freddys Drop: The lyrics are quite tongue in cheek and we didn’t actually think it would be that big – but you don’t have much control over that so you know, we don’t mind so much. You know, the lyrics are pretty stupid.

Altsounds: What are your plans for when the album comes out next year?

Fat Freddys Drop: We haven’t done much touring back home, so it’s just back on the road really, the past year and a half there’s not been that much touring. There has been a lot of studio work so we’ll be touring fairly extensively all summer, and in Australia and then come back [to London] for summer here.

Altsounds: Thanks so much for your time Mu and have a great night tonight! Cheers.

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