Saturday, January 16, 2010

IM BACK...OW NO!



Holla Gents and gentle lady ladies.

Been a bit out of it with them posts and things, but life has kicked up the pace ever since the clock struck 12 on new years eve. I do promise ill try harder to not be slack with my random jibber jabber, so heads up if you even care. ha.
Anyways to kick off the year I've done some secret, stealth mission and done a private interview with one of Cape Towns bass'est live acts, P.H.Fat.

They have been around for a little while now, and have already established themselves as one of Cape Towns strongest, most uniquest, raddest acts. Their sound is rather sludgy, with massive bass driven bounce. If you dont know, its SICK. Read the interview, Its well worth it...

Interview by ED with Mike Z:


ED:Howdy champ. Welcome to the stage. Im sure you know what it feels like to be up here, but for those who dont know nothing about you, please expand?

Mike: P.H.Fat is bass heavy electronic rap music that people can go crazy to... Rap music is the most dangerous thing in the world to perform live cos' it's easy to bore the shit out of people... we're very careful to avoid that. Our shit is really energetic and alive...

ED:Thats bloody amazing. Who knew that. Showww. Well im glad we can kick things off so soon. Now for the record, how did this P.H.Fat business all come about? Like, who put the whole operation together, who's the brains behind the music and who does what?

Mike: P.H.Fat was initially just myself and Narch - we grew up together in our little suburb and myself and Narch sort of fell into making music together. We played a couple of shows just me and Narch but P.H.Fat wasn't really P.H.Fat till a Pretorian by the name of Disco joined us. He officially joined on New Years Eve 2008 but he was part of the show and part of the brains behind some of our stronger tracks for a while before that. He's crazy... Crazy Cool!

ED:That makes me proud, knowing you since we where 'wee lads', stealing money for tuck shop and telling girls we were going to put spiders in their sandwiches. I never would have thought that this would have been the future profession for you. tell me what your younger dreams where when you were growing up?

Mike: I've always wanted to be an out of work rapper... I'm living the dream man! living... the.. ahm... dream...

ED:Ha. I knew it. ok ok, well lets play catch up and get back to this 3 man live shit. Lets see who wears the pants. Out of the 3 of you, who gets the work done?, who is the boss?, who makes the chow?, who gets the drinks?, who is the bitch? blah blah blah...

Mike: I have a feeling that you are going to get three different answers for this one...
We're relatively democratic... Narch makes the chow (he used to be a five star chef!)... Disco drinks the drinks. Eventually we all get our piece of the work done. In stages.

ED:You have rather unique hair styles. Mike Z, i dont know how you do it or who does it, but every time i see you, you got new crop circles shaved onto your skull and that mad man Disko, he got a volcano up there.. Whats up with this? part of the show? I know you wear sunglass's during performance, but is the hair secretly involved for public publicity?

Mike: Do we wear sunglasses? Shit... Thats very claremont... I'm gonna stop doing that. My hair just happens. I have a friend who is a hairdresser and sometimes she does it. Sometimes I do it (you can normally tell when I've done it). It's certainly not part of the show. The only time I really think about my hair is when it gets in the way of stuff - at which point it gets made shorter in whichever style emerges... Though lately I've been pondering a rad 80's Mo-Hawk.

ED:Thanks for sharing your secrets with Monsters. Ok, I have to ask you something seriouse now. No more kidding around, so listen up. When is the album due? People are asking. EPs are good moves, but an album, thats massive. Hook me up.

Mike: man... your guess is as good as mine... We have enough material to do a full length album or maybe even three ep's. But We really haven't got our heads around the whole release thing yet. Is there any point releasing music? I'm not even sure if people want us to release. There is loads of interest from people who want to release us but shit is so different now... There is no real incentive that I can see to releasing... Especially hard copy stuff... It costs a shitload and no one really wants to buy it. I always want Djs to have access to our music and in my mind there is nothing better for a band than a really keen listener who wants to show all of his friends the cool music. Also I've found in CT once a band has released they pop for a while and then in no time their whole following knows their whole set backwards and is bored stiff by their performances. The one upside to a physical release is that we have something to show promoters... But really - there are cheaper ways to impress promoters. At the moment I just want our music to hit as many humans as possible and to perform a shitload...

ED: Serious? Rad. Ok, short and to the point. Get ready for "RAPID FIRE". This is a bunch of short, to the point questions. Answer them as you like. you ready? Bring it on:

a) Best gig?Rocking the Daisies/Earthdance
b) Worst gig?New Years Eve 2008/2009 (2009/2010 was rad though!)
c) 2009? Fun
d) 2010? Mo' Fun
e) 1987? Naartjie's Birthday year
f) Girls? Boys? Human Beings? one and the same...
g) Cape Town? Bass/Fresh
h) Bass? Joy
i) Favourite - toy My Studio
- food Raw veggies
- artist Lovage/Why?/Anti-Pop/All the cool Cape Town shit

j) Sex, drugs, Rock & roll? Just Sex and Rock & Roll please. Drugs are the crappest things in the universe.
k) dumb We've all done some dumb shit in our time I promise you...
l) animals I Love animals
m) Naartjie Delicious

ED:Thanks guys. This has been an silly eduction, but, I need to ask you one more thing before we call it a day. What is it about your style of music that keeps it so exciting? Your energy on stage, in the production, everything. Its world class.

Mike: I like to think it's because we care very much about how our music sounds and the energy is a result of us actually enjoying the music... Narch is a genius and I am bordering on Obsessive as far as the mix quality is concerned... Disco is my favourite rapper... How could we not have fun?


ED:High fives for years. Thanks Mike for sitting down and actually taking the time to do this. If there is anything else you wanna share, now is your time. If not, die..
Mike: One day we'll get a real website... for now go and look at www.facebook.com/phfat
If you wanna check out some work from these chaps.

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