Post Description

Fat Time - Fat Time (2004) Nederfusion

Fat Time plays instrumental jazz/rock fusion. The band name was taken from a song by Miles Davis and influences are, besides the latter, artists like Weather Report, Scofield, Tribal Tech, Yellowjackets and Herbie Hancock. 

Fat Time plays jazz rock. Not the elevator music without any bite that they call 'fusion'; no polished sounds, no stale formats, but an intensely jazzing, interactive, roaring, highly unpredictable instrumental potage du groove at 220 Volts - at least; Improvisation with a power plug. Contemporary, swinging compositions and grooves with their funky roots drenched in modern jazz. In short: FAT TIME! 

Soon after its 2002 launch, Fat Time could be heard on the better regional and national jazz stages. Audience, jazz aficionados, and music press went berserk and the hordes of fans grew rapidly. In the autumn of 2003, the band went into the studio to make a demo- and came out with an album. In 2004, Fat Time played the semi-finals of the Dutch Jazz Competition, the most important and prestigious Dutch jazz contest. Fat Time is a favorite regular on important jazz stages like Dizzy (Rotterdam), SJU (Utrecht), Buckshot (Groningen) and Casablanca (Amsterdam). 

The Band;

Pianist Mike Roelofs is heralded as one of the greatest young piano talents in the Dutch jazz scene. He studied jazz piano with Frank Giebels, Irv Rochlin and Bert van den Brink, and with his trio he won the Lions Jazz Prize as well as the Frazz Crossover Award. With Fat Time, groove-sorcerer Roelofs displays his monster piano chops on his Fender Rhodes, assisted by a box filled with freaky effects and an arsenal of analogue synths. 

Allard Gosens, also known as Henkus' guitarist, studied with Eef Albers. The gentlemen from the The Hague Conservatory had some reservations about the rock music brought forth by this Captain Speedfinger... Is acoustic jazz by definition better? We think: the more plugs, the better. Fat Time gets really Fat, only when Gosens starts spicing up his sophisticated jazz solos with merciless and ghastly rock. 

Bass player Marten Schulp is Fat Time's founder. His career as a professional sideman in pop and jazz music is long and succesful. He was the evil genius behind the infamous Frisian band Drie keer Belle & het Beest. With Fat Time, he plays the fretless exclusively. He is known and feared for his enormous numbers of effects pedals, which he uses for making the weirdest & most improbable bass sounds. 

In the person of Sjoerd Rutten, the most desired and apparently incompatible characteristics of The Drummer unite seamlessly. He is the man who can couple looseness to precision, pair dynamics with power, and combine virtuosity with expressiveness. For years he's been the favorite drummer of many. Rutten played at the North Sea Jazz Festival with the Searing Quartet. 

The cd ('s);

Since 2004 the first, untitled cd by Fat Time is out. Critics wrote: A nice, fat record; A group to watch! (Dagblad De Limburger); You can hear the fun and the joy in the playing (De Gelderlander); Fat Time is an excellent debut by the band with the same name, (...) You could call Fat Time a fusion band, but a fusion band of the exciting, creative, hard-grooving kind... and just the fun kind! Of course there is the link the band name makes to the 1980's Miles, and this is certainly true. But these gentlemen possess more than enough quality and originality to right away dismantle any comparison with any other stuff. (...) The original Fat Time compositions are undoubtedly strong, and the only cover (Miles' Black Satin) has turned into an interesting atmospheric piece of free playing. This is a refreshing, exciting, warm, groovy, organic and well-produced debut album by an excellent and promising young group. Period. (Bass Magazine) 

Tracks;
01. When John Meets Allison 
02. Dooie Kaas 
03. Blues For Herman 
04. Black Satin 
05. Jean Jaques Octeau 
06. New Day 

LineUp;