s w e e t b e a t s
february.25.2001 - #4xx
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artist : Fingathing
album : The Main Event
year : 2001
label : Grand Central
genre : Lo-Fi
catalogue : GCCD108
url : www.grandcentralrecords.co.uk
quality : CD 192k HQ True Stereo
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01.Intro 00:43
02.Check it Out 02:58
03.Big Monsters Crush Cities 05:56
04.Come on Girls 01:50
05.Head to Head 04:08
06.How to Smoke - Feat Dj Noize 04:11
07.Slappys Tune 02:22
08.Just Practice - Feat Mr Scruff 03:52
09.Big Kid 02:40
10.Remember This 00:48
11.You Fly Me 03:11
12.Ffathead 03:20
13.Slippin - Feat Veba 05:14
14.A Light Refreshment 01:11
15.Crowdpleasers - Feat Dj Noize 03:42
16.Ffling 03:42
17.The Final Bout 05:07
17 tracks | 54:55 mins | 75,6 MB
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FingaThing are a two piece live and recording outfit who are
scratch wizard Peter Parker on turntables and Sneaky on Double
Bass. The two of them met when Parker used to commute to Manchester
(from Crewe, 'where everyone was into Dexys Midnight Runners and
shit!') to go to a regular night called Eardrum but they never
spoke properly. They met for the first time doing the Grand Central
Sound System.
Enveloped by Hip Hop culture at the age of nine years old, Parker
was first inspired by Streetsounds' seminal Electro series. Trying
his hand, first at breaking and then graffiti he soon realised his
full hip hop potential was not in spray can art but in the art of
turntablism.
As those who have witnessed him will bear testament, his live shows
are both awesome and awe-inspiring. His pure technical displays
using classic 70s breakbeats and underground hip-hop have
hypnotised many heads and gained him many fans. He is also a member
of the Cutting Crew along with Statik and ex-DMC World Champion DJ
Noize.s
Sneaky is a classically trained Double Bassist who started playing
double bass 20 years ago. A well known face on the Manchester music
scene having established himself as resident at nights such as
Eardrum at the infamous Dry Bar.
All this lead to Sneaky appearing on several albums including guest
bass on Mr Scruffs Get A Move On from the 1999 album Keep It Unreal
(Ninja Tune) & some session work with Lemon D (Metalheadz) and
Dillinger.
But it was with the Rae & Christian live band that Sneaky & Peter
Parker (both original members) began to develop several extra
tracks live as part of the show. It was here that the first ideas
for FingaThing were shown and you may have seen them on any of Rae
& Christians UK live dates.
-- www.grandcentralrecords.co.uk
Straight outta Manchester, here come Fingathing with one of the
most consistently entertaining records I've heard all year. A duo
of Peter Parker (turntablisms) and Sneaky (double bass), Fingathing
have proved if nothing else that the NME can still get things right
occasionally in throwing some critical praise their way, but better
still have produced an album of witty, funky and diverse
instrumental hip hop. Parker's dexterity on the (ahem) wheels of
steel is as convincing as any of his competitors on the other side
of the Atlantic, while Sneaky not only provides the essential low
end acoustic bass authenticity beloved of the Ninja Tune crowd, but
throws in some spacey Bootsified filtered funk and sonorous massed
arco lines. A lot of the found voices (50's sci-fi film dialogue,
snatches of the Muppets and god knows what else) are redolent of
Coldcut and their alumni, and to reinforce the point Ninja Tune
regular Mr Scruff turns up one of the album's highlights, 'Just
Practice', which pastes material from guitar instruction records
over a slinky cocktail of bongos and twangy geetar samples. Clever
and extremely funny (particularly for those of us who have been
exposed to the horrors of Ulf Goran's guitar tutors and Bert Weedon
teach yourself records), but devoid (as is Scruff's work too) of
the smugness that occasionally creeps into the recordings of others
working the same territory. But despite the levity of most of the
material, Fingathing are capable of much more than the cut n' paste
aesthetic that they obviously excel at. 'You Fly Me' is a lovely
feature for Sneaky's plangent overdubbed basses worthy of any
Eberhard Weber record but less somnolent, while Rae & Christian
vocalist Veba guests on 'Slippin', a downtempo slice of aching soul
which comes on like a rougher, edgier Massive Attack, that could
furnish the duo with a hit single. The closing 'The Final Bout' is
a menacing slab of slo-mo funk with it's massed bowed bass riff
highly suggestive of Led Zeppelin's 'Kashmir', and indeed uses what
sounds suspiciously like a Robert Plant sample. Brilliant and quite
powerful, but without any hint of pretension or irony. A
commendable focus on brevity means that little on the record
outstays its welcome (17 tracks in 55 minutes) and once it's over,
you're likely to want to stick it on again. Q-Bert, Frank Zappa,
Marvin Gaye, Black Sabbath, Stan Lee (I think we can assume that
Peter Parker's not his real name then) and Ron Carter are all cited
as influences, and there's a little bit of all these in here, but
Fingathing make a noise that's definitely all their own. 'Keep
Music Dirty', it says on the sleeve. Amen to that.
--http://motion.state51.co.uk
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s w e e t b e a t s
we're all about discovering new artists
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greetings to klangwerk, mgc, sour, dh, & impg
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