1 More Mix 078: Fatgyver / Fanu

Do yourself a favour, go grab a coffee and make yourself comfortable. This mix and interview runs super deep. Just as we like it.

It all comes courtesy of a man named Janne Hatula. You will know him best as Fanu or Fatgyver, a hugely proflic artist, DJ and audio engineer, and the mastering engineer of choice of a huge array of  top level artists across the electronic spectrum.

Certifiably one of those ‘hardest working people in D&B’ characters, the eminent Finnish artist has that perfect balance of output across his disciplines and his styles. Artistically he’s been hurling all manner of breakbeat punches at us for over 20 years and they cover a fantastic spread. His dusty hip-hop beatmaker style jams can be found under his Fatgyver alias while his darker junglistic choppage comes our way via his Fanu project.

There are many shades between and two key crossover points: Musically, everything flexes around the broken beat and creatively, his mindset is unbounded by trend, hype flavour of the month. Fanu very much drives in his own lane.

“Don’t be a boring, predictable artist,” he states. “You’re here to do whatever you want. Be a chameleon. Stomp a footprint there that will be noticed.”

Here are more reasons to stomp around. Like this mix, for instance. A unique trip where he ties his two aliases together and takes us on a journey from Fatgyver to Fanu and back again. The result is a timeless dive into honest breakbeat soul. A playful place where the parallels between hip-hop and jungle are both painted and subverted vividly.

All 100% his own material (with a few exclusives along the way), the mix was inspired by Fanu’s latest album Classy Coffee Cuts. Released back in October, it’s one of his most diverse and personal albums as he joins the dots between his many styles and really put his soul and influences out on display in a way that pays homage to the classic album alchemy that can often be overlooked in the contemporary game. Check the mix and read on for a full flavoured roast. This one is perfect for this time of year.

How are you and how do you have your coffee?

I’m good, thanks! Mildly beat by all the audio engineering client work (audio engineering) that pours in like crazy every year when the year is coming to a close. Can’t complain, though: I’ve wanted that position, and it didn’t come easy or fast either. It’s crazy that I started with D&B masters pretty much exactly 10 years ago and now I do full mixes and masters for producers like John Summit.

Coffee has to be dark! I like to rock it with my percolator, strong espresso style. Sometimes with milk, sometimes black. BTW oat milk does not belong in coffee or tea in my opinion, ha!
Death before decaf! (that is actually a title of a song coming out next year).

Haha. I definitely subscribe to your coffee views! You know what? I’m fascinated by your country and how extreme it can be in terms of the weather and daylight hours you have. Those long dark days which you’re entering right now and those endless bright days in the summer… Does the level of coffee (or how you have it) change depending on whether you’re closer to midsummer or midwinter?

Yeah, can’t lie, the overall variation between the coldest days in the winter and the hottest days in the summer is huge. It does get dark, but you need to learn to cope with it. Sounds blunt, but I say sometimes that you either take it or move elsewhere, but complaining isn’t a good option.

When I was younger, I used to be the kind of person that complains about it, but it does come down to clothing and to your mindstate to an extent, too. These days, I still go and hit the outdoor gym in the winter and ride the bike thru the winter, too. I can tell you it’s not too crowded at the outdoor gym in the winter, haha. But there are others there.

Funny or not, amount of coffee doesn’t change that much. But in the summer, iced coffee does hit differently.  BTW, I am not sure vitamin D helps that much, but getting off your ass and going out even when it’s cold will wake you up!

100% agree! More importantly, though, does the style of music you make change depending on the time of year?

This is a good question. Basically yes. The D&B side of brain gets activated much more when it’s dark and cold, while I tend to make more hip hop in the summer. I guess my DNB has always been more melancholic rather than happy, and my hip hop is kind of funky and US east coast style, which I don’t associate with wintery images in my head.

I kind of make whatever whenever though, and I’ll add I am not the master of my inspiration: I am slave to it, so I work on whatever that fickle thing wants to work on that day. I will say that the weather here is to thank for the type of D&B and electronic music I make: the melancholic, bittersweet style is quite likely because of that. If I was born and raised and lived in Miami, you know it’d be different.

Oh hell yeah. What other things influences the style of music you write the most in general?

I think D&B-wise my backbone was largely formed in the 90s: breakbeats, sampling pads…that sort of thing. I don’t think I’ve been super inspired by post-2000s music (I’ve seen Luke Vibert say he doesn’t listen to post-2000s stuff, haha). Same goes for hip hop: artists and bands like De La Soul, Cypress Hill, DJ Krush, Honda, DJ Cam and similar acts hit me so hard in my formative years. You don’t shake it off: you celebrate it.

It has always been a very natural thing, but as I’ve got older, I’ve somehow learned to celebrate what I do because I’ve realized I’m quite different from many others. Now don’t take that the wrong way! I’m not waving my own flag at all or saying that I’m better – all I’m saying is the majority of people making music do things that are much more modern.

I look up to producers like Luke Vibert, Aphex Twin, and Eprom, just to mention a few, who do everything. Also the first two of those have been doing it for 30+ years like I have, sticking to their guns, making whatever the hell they want, without catering to what’s hot and seems to sell in today’s music world. I feel I’m the same. You gotta celebrate what you are.

As for modern D&B productions: producers such as Detboi and Quartz are crazy good and under-rated. They make the style of D&B that makes me think, that is so fucking good and I don’t know how they do that. Quartz keeps it super fresh, doing a different track every time and blows you away, and Detboi’s stuff is just so Platinum Breakz…I listen to it and it makes me feel I need to open up the DAW and make some dark shit! I’ve discussed collabing with both in passing, and that might be interesting.

That would definitely be interesting! Let’s explore your variety as an artist. There’s a lot of hip-hop beats on the Classy Coffee Cuts album, but where’s the line between Fanu the hip-hop beatmaker and Fatgyver? 

Fanu is D&B, bass music, breaks, electronic, dance music. FatGyver is hip hop, funky beats…that sort of shit, chillout music, headnod stuff.

I know some people might say it’s best to make everything under one name, and I wouldn’t say they’re wrong (I believe even Mark Pritchard dropped all his aliases at one point), but I felt I needed a distinction between the stuff that’s electronic music / dance music and hip hop. The electronic stuff is 140-170 BPM in a nutshell and always has sub bass while the hiphoppy material is around 85-95 BPM most of the time and doesn’t necessarily be so subby.

And yeah Classy Coffee Cuts is almost like a tribute to Luke Vibert or whatever, heh: exploring different tempos and styles but still keeping it unmissably electronic music in your own style. I’d say the slower stuff on CCC album is closer to downtempo than hip hop maybe.

 

Yeah I’d agree. Essentially though, this deep love across the sonic spectrum is what Classy Coffee Cuts is about isn’t it? A Fanu-sized celebration of all things breakbeat! How do you feel about albums full stop?

Yes, the breakbeat is probably the connecting thread there. I want to say that in general, actual albums (as opposed to compilations of songs from different periods) are great because they are like a snapshot of a producer’s mind at a certain time.

This album is different from what I’ve made before, and future ones will probably be different, too. You may listen to your earlier albums and think, “Wow, I was in a different place back then”. How your life is directly affects your music. I think albums are super important to make because of that, but also, they give you so much more room than singles or EPs that in general have to be very “accessible”.

BTW, for the record, I’ve never cared being accessible at all, whether it be a single or an album.
Album in itself is a very inspirational thing: you have a spacious frame you have to fill with good music while having room to experiment. You ask yourself musical questions and come up with answers. Albums show what you can do as a producer, and those if anything allow you to grow, too.

Yeah couldn’t agree more. Would you say that Classy Coffee Cuts is the album you’ve always wanted to write?

Yes, one of them. At certain points in time, I’ve just got the feeling, “I have to make an album” – probably to capture that musical snapshot I mentioned. You mostly make it for yourself, but also to let others hear, “This is where I am right now”. This album cares probably even less about what (I think) people might expect. While in some periods I may have been fitting myself into a mould, later on I’ve been consciously trying to leave it.

As an artist, you’re probably always “ahead” or your followers, or in a different place. I mean, hopefully, when you’re growing and changing.

Like, you hear some acid influences on this one more than before. I’ve really been into acid lines and those sort of sounds in the past few years. More of that will come very soon…

As an artist, I’d like to do three things: 1) keep my style, 2) be unpredictable, and 3) explore.
I’ve tried to be a producer that keeps changing a little bit all the time and doesn’t repeat the same shit all over again. Even with songs that have done well, I’ve never wanted to ride that wave again. E.g., Siren Song: it came out great and definitely got me out there and earned many shows and many people told me I should keep making more tunes like that. I made one soon after that called Tales From The Sea (came out on Breakin’, Bassbin’s sister label) which is quite similar, but didn’t want to keep re-hashing it. I’d like to have crossover appeal but purely on my own terms. Albums aim for that perhaps.

Amen! It’s been a busy year for you hasn’t it? You had the Northern Exposure EP on Headz, then the FatGyver Peanut Butter Beats album AND this album… Two albums in a year is a pretty remarkable feat. How do you feel about it all?

I feel quite happy about it. I think it’s an okay amount of music, and it’s all varied, too, if you compare those releases. Keeping it chameleon, ha.

Trust me when I say I won’t be writing a full-length Fanu album in a while…jeeeez, it took a long time. It’s hard to make music that hasn’t been made a million times and which you can be fully happy with. So yeah, it was a good year and I was also able to fit in a D&B remix job for Beat Machine Records with a song called Hardcore Blips, which dropped on Dec 1.

I was at my most productive right before my audio engineering blew up, and I prob made and released 3-4 albums this one year. Pro-tip, by the way: don’t become a full-time audio engineer if you want to be a superduperproductive being…won’t happen.

Haha yeah I bet. Do you get much time to listen to albums as a music fan yourself as well?

When you do audio engineering and full-time and try and make some music on the side, I shit you not, you’re not always craving for music when you’re not working on some. Silence becomes a luxury. It’s not so much about not having time for music: it’s about energy for it and musical appetite. Like if you’re a full-time chef, you prob won’t cook that much at home.

But yes, I do listen to music; I try to listen to the type of music I don’t or can’t make myself.
Eprom’s Syntheism album is amazing and everyone should hear it. I listen to 90s style hip hop, funk, soul, etc…sounds funny, but I wish to absorb what they have offer, even if it’s on a subconscious level. I’m not that much into very modern electronic music that sounds overtly electronic if you know what I mean.

D&B/breaksy-music-wise I’d recommend Park Shadow, DJ Sofa, Out of Fuel, literally anything on the Finnish label Straight Up Breakbeat, Kuttin Edge, dgoHn, G Jones, ODJ Pirkka, Mister Shifter, Quartz, Detboi, Esc, Hologroove, John Rolodex, TRC2 (I used to mentor him a bit, and he put out an album and he’s released a lot recently and he rocks the breaks), also a dude called @bc_9000 on IG (he makes insane amounts of music in old Full Cycle / Krust vein but rarely releases anything so hit him up and pester him)….

Hip hop beats wise: Damu, K-Def, MF Doom, 12bitkid aka ewon12bit (he’s kinda elusive but makes the sickest shit and has an insane amount of old dope studio gear knowledge – and all that gear too! check his One Time for Your Mind album…someone should interview him), Johnny Dee from Finland (another elusive MF…check his Saimaa Soundwave album; he also has a new one coming soon), Def Dee, Ras G…

Oh wow. Loads of tip-offs! Thanks for the mix, too! Tell us everything about it…

Yeah I got super loaded on coffee when making that one! Anyways, you can only try and describe your music so far – so I’ve done a little 45-min mix of my productions only.
It starts with hip hop material, moves on to DNB, only to return to hip hop again. I think it gives you a decent impression of what I do. Breaks, fat drums, 90s vibes, but not rehashing the same old. I am very happy with that mix.

There’s some older bits but also new, some forthcoming things, remixes… It’s a FatGyver-to-Fanu-and-back-to-FatGyver mix, and I’ve never done one before. Had fun doing it, and I think it works well, and maybe DJs should do more of that?

I definitely think so! What’s in store for all things Fanu in 2024?

There’s a remix for Source Direct coming early-ish 2024 on Odysee. Also a six-track EP on Metalheadz sister label, Headz State. Those I can already confirm.

A wrapped up a remix for Pinecone Moonshine, so that should come. I said I wouldn’t work on a new full-length Fanu album for a good while, haha, so prob not that! But there’s plenty of FatGyver stuff cooking, and I wanna be hitting my SP 1200 and MPC 60 on my holidays, so do expect new FatGyver stuff in 2024. Might do a phat vinyl release.

I’ve been slowly brewing a new Lightless compilation, which is way overdue. Want to highlight some new artists. Two new things lined up for Finnish Straight Up Breakbeat label. More Patreon content will come all the time: e.g., literally just posted a video discussing and showing Photek-style drum editing, will be making some album song walkthrus (there’s some Metalheadz walkthrus already), and there’s a lot of breakbeat talk coming.

Speaking of breakbeats, I recently did some new merch items and slapped them up on my webshop on my site fanumusic.com, including Breakbeats hats. Well that’s probably more than enough and every reader is dying to see this one finish, innit? If you made it this far without falling asleep, I salute you – but if you did fall asleep, I’ll blame lack of coffee!

Classy Coffee Cuts is out now

Follow Fanu/Fatgyver: Soundcloud > Instagram > Patreon

 

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