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Freq Nasty BIOGRÁFIA
FreQ Nasty
The artist known as FreQ Nasty AKA Darin McFadyen has over the last few years become known as the man behind a unique sound, championed by producers and DJ's alike- The person most likely to pull dance music out of the occasional creative cul-de-sac it finds itself in once every few seasons.
Born in the pacific Island of Fiji but brought up even further round the world in New Zealand Darin's musical upbringing was by his own admission unique. Not so much because his parents were into anything drastically avant
garde, but because being that far outside the UK he was afforded the opportunity of growing up without the snobbery that comes with this country's obsession with musical categorisation. You can see this 'across the board' influence throughout Darin's work.
These influences and ideas were finally cemented with the release of his debut album, an effective round-up of previous tracks 'FreQs, Geeks &
Mutilations'.
FreQ. Nasty's debut single was the much championed 'Boomin' Back Atcha'- A mid- tempo stomper of a track complete with bleeps and voice snippets straight out of trashy 50's sci-fi movies. It fast became the stand-out feature of the more daring deck-wrecker's set.
It was with the follow-up 'Underglass' however that Darin really started to make some waves. Truly a filthy fucker of a record it was near pornographic in its pursuit of the perfect low down and dirty kick. Acid sounds bent out of shape coupled with super-tight percussion and breaks pinned down by the fierce low-end responses that subsequently have become the FreQ Nasty trademark. 'Underglass' tweaked the music press enough for them to run articles in Muzik, NME, Update, and Jockey Slut. The ball was starting to roll...
Just as Darin was starting to be labelled as a leader of Nu-Skool Breaks he slipped that pigeon-hole with the release of 'FreQ-a- Zoid', a blinding piece of robotic disco that convinced even the techno purists that FreQ
Nasty was utterly right in his pursuit of machine funk. Part Kraftwerk, part
Daft Punk, with a little piece of Jaques Lu Cont's electro cheek dropped in for balance, the cut rocked techno, house and hip hop floors alike. This came as no suprise to anyone that knew that FreQ also released techno records under various guises.
Meanwhile and on the sly and at the same time Darin also released the superb
'Funky as...' with studio partner BLIM on Adam Freeland's much respected Marine Parade label. The style was different but the results remained similarly devastating.
This was about the time that FREQ Nasty started picking up more DJ dates around the country as clubs started looking for something new to rock their crowds. Darin's sound was perfect- A more varied and eclectic soundtrack that still blew speakers. An early residency at Bryan G's seminal Movement night at London's Bar Rhumba club had taught Darin early on that the key to his success as a DJ relied very much on bass, it was just a matter of time till this sensibility was relocated to new dancefloors.
Since those days things have rocketed. He's resident DJ at Bugged Out! Meets The Boutique at London's Fabric. He's a constant fixture at Boutique dates around the world and keeps floors jumping in France, Poland, Zurich,
Finland, Holland, Singapore, Slovenia, even New York's Twilo. He's toured
Australia extensively (finding time to play back in native New Zealand now and again) and has another Antipodean tour lined up for July this year. You should be able to catch the FreQ out a Creamfields festival this summer as well as Drum Rhythm in Holland.
As a remixer of other people's material FreQ Nasty has proven no slouch. To a lot of clubbers it was his and BLIM's bomb drop mix of Sousounde's
'Metisse' - where what starts as a crisp bassline evolves into a monstrous slab of distorted acid. The track became a huge hit from DJs like Sasha right through to the more underground Bugged Out types. This was followed by a highly liberal, reworking of avante-composer Steve Riech's 'Desert Music'. Since then FreQ has mixed Westbam, Asian Dub Foundation, KRS-One and hip hopper Mystikal.
2000 saw FreQ leave the consistantly supportive Botchit & Scarper for a new label- Brighton's Skint Records home to artists as diverse as X-Press 2 and
Fatboy Slim. As if to show people changing labels wasn't going to change him
Darin released his roughest release to date the agenda setting 'That's My
Style!' which welded tough rap samples with crisp up-tempo breaks and an ascending bass-line that once again flirted with acid distortion. The record that almost broke Fabric nightclub. Further tracks such as 'Amped' and
'Transforma' confirm that consistency is another one of Darin's skills.
Currently FreQ is working on his new album, his first for Skint, expectations are high- Darin's pretty much stopped all remixing duties while he concentrates on what is going to be one almighty speaker-wrecking hybrid of styles.
New remixes due to come out early 2002 – Fat Boy Slim ‘Retox’ & Gorillaz ‘Rock the House.’
Just you wait...
AZ ÚJ LEMEZRŐL:
FREQ NASTY
Bring Me The Head Of Freq Nasty
Release date: 13 October 2003
Label: Skint
Cat. No: BRASSIC30
It‚s the Freq-in‚ weekend, baby 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 2003. ŒBring 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 the proves the Œdeath of dance music‚ is the best thing
that‚s ever happened to it.
ŒBring 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. ŒUrban futurist music - that‚s what I get off on,‚ Darin says.
ŒMusic 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.‚
For the last twelve years, Darin Mcfadyen been tinkering with the back end
of rave culture and carving radical aural geometry out of uncut bassline
material and diamond-tipped breakbeats. In zones like Peckham, Brixton,
Whitechapel, where human interaction is at its most raw and hungry, Freq
Nasty has been crafting the sound inner-city danger and excitement onto some of the toughest dancefloor music of the millennium.
In 1991 he arrived in Britain from New Zealand via Australia with a one-way
ticket and burning ambition to make the music of tomorrow‚s world. He‚d been in bands at school and a devout student of the Akia Zen since he was a
teenager. Twelve years ago he stepped off the 747 as Darin Mcfadyen - a
lean, mocha-skinned six-footer with dreads grown below his waist - immersed himself into the raging elementalism of the drum & bass scene, and emerged, dazed and enthused, as Freq Nasty.
Con/t page 2 Freq Nasty
ŒI was involved in jungle by chance,‚ Darin says. ŒVini Reilly had started
the Motif and Sour labels, and Botchit & Scarper was a quirky offshoot.
Jungle was the freshest shit at the time. I had come from a funk and hip hop background and was looking for a sound: breakbeat was it. Expect no one was calling it that.‚
Back when jungle was still jungle, prior to its upwardly-mobile rebranding
as Œdrum & bass‚, Vini‚s visionary imprint began producing music that rolled
with the same rough-edged attitude and dynamism as drum and bass, but at a more moderate, club-friendly tempo - ŒBreakbeat‚ was born. Whatever the music‚s origins, Freq Nasty rapidly established himself as one of the
scene‚s pioneers, producing instant classic after instant classic with
studio partner Blim: tracks like ŒBoomin Back Atcha‚ and ŒRevolution Inc‚
from his debut LP, ŒFreqs, Geeks & Mutilations‚. As breakbeat flourished
into its own autonomous milieu of DJs, clubs, production techniques and
musical vernacular, Freq Nasty‚s tunes remained ahead of the pack. The
slithering, galaxy-sized bassline to his remix of Steve Reich‚s ŒDesert
Music‚ and his retooling of Sosunde‚s Metisse‚ were breakbeat‚s own Œinner
City Life‚ or ŒEnergy Flash‚: emblematic signature tunes of a scene built on
techno darkness, drum & bass edge and the rubber-powered dynamism of funk. Since then the likes of Fatboy Slim, Kelis and KRS One have all felt the
benefit of a Freq Nasty re-rub.
Towards the end of the nineties, two Freq Nasty tunes flagged up the
fast-breeding genetic link between breakbeat and the UK garage sound that
was becoming obvious to anyone with a passing interest in music
anthropology. ŒAmpedŒ and ŒGoose‚, like Timo Maas‚s mix of Azzido Da Bass‚s ŒDoom‚s Night‚, traversed genres effortlessly.
ŒRound 1998, I knew breaks and garage would be the same thing in around 18 months time, Darin recalls. ŒBreakbeat garage was the perfect synthesis of technique from breakbeat and the party element of garage.‚ Not that anyone, at the time, was interested in the semiotics. ŒIt was fucking cool having those records played by garage DJs, but in the garage scene, a good tune was just A Good Tune. The DJs didn‚t give a fuck. If someone said "what do you call this?" they‚d say, "Dunno mate - it‚s just a runnin‚ tune". There was much less prejudice then about what it was.‚
Con/t page 3 Freq Nasty
ŒBring Me The Head Of Freq Nasty‚ was created by Darin 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.
The whole project has also benefitted from the involvement of Jamie
Hewlitt‚s Zombie Flesh Eaters who, in their first music project since
Gorrillaz, have created a distinct look across the artwork, video and
website. The process started with the development of a Freq Nasty character, dreads and all, who appears alongside a real life Rodney P on the twisted basement rhythm of first single ŒCome Let Me Know‚. Elsewhere on the album, ŒClit Licker‚ applies breakazoid techniques to the progressive house formula, and turns out Œa pornographic breakbeat "French Kiss"‚. Œboomba 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 ŒMad Stuation‚, Junior Delgado adds some rootsical vibes to the proceedings.
Darin‚s album was produced according to one other principle: The Fuck-It
Factor. ŒThat‚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 a 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, ŒBring Me The Head Of Freq Nasty‚ is a
beacon leading the way into virgin territory, musical terrain no-one has
named yet. Breaks, bashment, hip hop, trashment: the question is not Œwhat
do we call it?‚ but Œcan you feel it?‚ Stick this CD on and plunge your head
into a bassbin: these nasty frequencies speak for themselves.
Con/t page 4 Freq Nasty
TRACKLIST
1. Come Let Me Know (featuring Rodney P)
2. Fresh
3. Boomba Clat (featuring Roots Manuva & Yolanda)
4. Amped
5. Brooklyn To Brixton (featuring Kovas)
6. Sil Num Tao
7. Clit Licka
8. Punkadelic
9. Goose
10. 2 Females
11. La Machina Latina
12. Mad Situation (featuring Junior Delgado)
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