FanuSamurai - Focused Mind (LP)
Finnish producer Janne Hatula is the creator of two separate and unique- yet inexorably linked- musical styles. For each of these he goes under an independent pseudonym: Fanu and FanuSamurai. Your alter-ego allusions are all there: Jekyll and Hyde, Bruce Banner and The Hulk; Saturday night and Sunday morning, take your pick- it all applies.
Where drum and bass artist Fanu hits you with a battery of choppy, junglist ferocity, Fanusamurai draws you in to its devastating aura of down-tempo and lush breaks. Let’s go ahead and immerse ourselves in the Japanese metaphors this album is so rich in. Fanu represents the Shogun Warrior- fierce, brutal, direct- whereas FanuSamurai takes on the role of the Ninja. Subtle, clandestine, yet no less lethal: both will have you holding your guts in your hands before you are even aware of their presence.
By no means a newcomer to the scene, Fanu has released cuts on Subtitles, Commercial Suicide, Offshore, Breakin’, Thermal, Warm Communications, Soothsayer, and LoCuts. There’s further work coming out on Nerve, Warm Communications, Darkestral, 13 Music / Vibe’z, Make-Shift, and Subtle Audio.
With his own record label, Lightless Recordings about to launch, it’s time to unleash the Samurai.
The debut album from FanuSamurai, titled Focused Mind, is released on Pauze Records at the end of the month, fervently anticipated by peers, critics and break-beat connoisseurs alike.
The album as a whole is an intense passage through technical percussion, focussed breaks and ambient majesty - and is an ultimately superior and accomplished piece of work. Bound by these constants, the FanuSamurai style morphs to surprising contrasts: opening track My Beautiful Paranoia kicks off with a sophisticated and mean drum-loop, yet is diffused by smoky jazz saxophone and calming strings.
Other tracks follow this inclination to round the edges of otherwise barbed beats: Something Violent 4 Me And You, an orgy of high-tech rhythm programming is flecked with soothing Japanese instruments. The divergence is expertly applied- hard enough for serious drum and bass aficionados to take notice, but never alienating those who appreciate well-crafted compositions.
Other areas of the LP focus on one purposeful, concentrated theme. Hagakure, for example, employs lengthy samples from cult movie Ghost Dog: Way Of The Samurai (“The Way of the Samurai is found in death. Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily.”) Combine this sinister dialogue with relentless breaks and unnerving effects and what you get is a wholly cinematic experience.
The samurai theme is continued in Shuuchuu, which eases into a blissed-out, Smokers’ Delight, trip-hop groove, accentuated with traditional taiko, or Japanese drumming.
Hatula cites his influences for FanuSamurai as DJ Shadow, FSOL, Underworld and Amon Tobin. While an entirely original experience, these stimuli, notably DJ Shadow, can be found throughout the album. Tracks such as Mantra and Snow People in particular, carry the unrelentingly funky drums from later Shadow classics such as GDMFSOB and Blood On The Motorway, or Unreal and Lonely Soul from U.N.K.L.E’s legendary Psyence Fiction album.
At once beautiful and fearful, savage and tender, Focused Mind drifts between immensely satisfying breaks, whispered voices like a busy dream, but always ends up as funky as fuck.
August 6th, 2006 at 10:11 pm
top review that, i’m gonna have to get a hold of that record !