Fata Morgana – Krabbels
Given that their name refers to an illusion, it seems only fitting that it took me almost a year to track down this crew from Deventer and Groningen. But it’s been well worth the wait – especially for you, dear reader, as you can download Krabbels here right away.
It only takes a minute to see what the fuss is about – just wait for the killer hook on 40 Days, and that’s the rest of your afternoon sorted. It’s irresistible – a sweet vocal sample, dope beat and a flow that dovetail together to create an anthem that should have garnered far more attention than it has so far.
From the little I can gather, Krabbels was intended as a teaser for the now truly long-awaited Fata Morgana LP. This might account for the high level of experimentation on here, or it could just be that Fata are truly on a creative tip. The way they play with rhythm and throw out syncopated rhythms like there’s no tomorrow is particularly refreshing, as is their habit of completely flipping the direction of a track around.
Alles of Niets begins nicely with a moody sample that listeners to Cee-Lo Green is the Soul Machine might be familiar with, before slipping into a mournful mariachi horn instrumental. It’s a trick they repeat on Standing Ovatie, whose raw Detroit beat mutates into a Saian Supa Crew style African breakdown. And somehow it works.
Once or twice Fata do lose you with their invention, but as my man The Joker said, you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs. If the price for tracks of the quality of 40 Days or Oke is a dodgy outro, then it’s more than worth it. And who listens to outros now anyway?
40 Days’ chorus goes (according to my crappy Dutch) ‘you’ve been waiting for a long time, but we haven’t been sleeping’. If they’ve been working on their debut album as hard as they did on Krabbels, and display as much wit, invention and straight quality, then it should be worth waiting another year for. Watch this space…