Hailing from the squats of South London, Fat White Family have spent the last five years building a reputation based on drugs, nudity, vulgarity and offensive comments (you have been warned). Their debut album is called ‘Champagne Holocaust’. The band know exactly what they are doing, pushing the buttons of mainstream media while enamouring critics with their music.
There’s dichotomy within the group though; some members are children of Algerian immigrants to the U.K. and yet (in the video for one song) they dress in military uniforms akin to The National Front. One brother waxes lyrical about freedom of speech, while another is drunkenly reporting his sexual escapades.
Where do you go when your interviewee says the proudest achievement while performing in his group was receiving fellatio from a fan? I was miffed. Did Nathan Saoudi, organ player for Fat White Family just give me the most honest or most disrespectful answer I've ever received?
I was expecting to interview Lias Saoudi, singer of Fat White Family, but found myself speaking with Lias’ aforementioned brother Nathan. In a recent interview with The Guardian Lias grappled with the challenges of being a young musician, "It feels like every year they move the goal posts. At what point am I going to be able to rent a flat and have a record player, so I can listen to other people’s music for a bit?”. I asked Nathan to clarify his brother’s comments, and he went on to share some brotherly advice "You gotta get those goal posts, and you gotta turn it into Gaelic football... it's a fast aggressive game... you don't need to move the posts, you can just run behind them, and slam the ball in from behind. From behind... yeah you just gotta slam it in from behind."
Fat White Family are touring to support their second LP 'Songs For Our Mothers', an album that can be best described as a thick slab of haze. Think The Brain Jones Town Massacre fronted by PiL era John Lydon covering Manson Family songs.
It's rather good and I look forward to seeing the songs come to life in a live environment. According to Nathan, they will too: "Before [a show], no one really talks, and then after you can see the point in everything, it gives everything value... It gives a sense that maybe all that misery was worth something".
Fat White Family tour New Zealand in July.
Friday 29th July, Kings Arms, Auckland
Saturday 30th July, Bodega, Wellington
