Homemade Impresses

Wellington reggae seven-piece Fat Freddy’s Drop is compared to 70’s funk groups the Average White Band and War in a Guardian review of their latest nine-track album Dr Boondigga & the Big BW. The group  — who took home two Tuis at the New Zealand Music Awards for Best Aotearoa Roots Album and Best Producer  — is a Gilles Petersen favourite, their previous 2005 album Based on a True Story voted worldwide album of the year by Petersen’s BBC Radio 1 listeners. “Calling them a reggae group does not do justice to the range of genres they bring together, but ‘The Raft’ is a wonderful demonstration of their adventurous use of reggae studio techniques to deliver a song about survival through the challenges that lie ahead. Burning Spear would have been happy to sing with these horns behind him.”