Gatto Fritto - Gatto Fritto

  • Share
  • Over the last eighteen months or so, Uruguay's International Feel has quickly established itself as a closely-monitored brand for aficionados of sun-dizzy Balearic rock, goony disco and hairy Kosmische. What began in the summer of 2009 with Rocha's "Hands of Love" intensified with a somewhat astonishing series of high-profile releases and remixes from Joel Martin and Matt Edwards as prog wizards Maxxi & Zeus, Daniele Baldelli, Detroit's Marcellus Pittman, and of course DJ Harvey's productions as Locussolus. Following the astral disco of Bubble Club's excellent The Goddess EP earlier this year and news that Harvey's Locussolus singles are being collected for a compilation later this summer, it's tempting to think that International Feel's 2011 is beginning to rival that of, say, the resurgent Crosstown Rebels. The label's first artist album—and only their second CD after last year's Japan-only compilation—comes courtesy of the UK's Ben Williams, AKA Gatto Fritto. (No stranger to International Feel, Williams is actually half of Hungry Ghost, whose single "Illumination" appeared on the label last year.) It serves as the perfect album-rep for their brand: a tattered blend of fuzzy synth-pop, radiant Carpenter-esque lunar escapes and Balearic highway jams. Pitched somewhere, often within a single track, between the summer-drunk and the 3 AM dizzy, Williams has a talent for melding the bizarre with the eminently sublime without really delving too far into either to upset Gatto Fritto's internal balance. A gorgeous, vocoder-ized bit of computer balladry, for example, "Lucifer Morning Star," almost resembles the Day-Glo fetishizing of a band like Black Moth Super Rainbow, while "Hex," with its loose, liquefied disco tempo, mines the kind of soft billowy disco Young Galaxy nailed earlier this year. That said, as one might expect from a label that's made its name on the more hirsute end of the dance spectrum, Gatto Fritto is most successful when Williams indulges in beardstroking. With its eerie, chugging synth melodies and gothic choral passages, "Grinding of the Brakes" evokes a sense of creepy, last-man-in-space solitude, while beneath the guitar strums and Tangerine Dream synthplay of "Invisible College" lies a mammoth seventeen-minute Prins Thomas gem that's yet to be made. "Beachy Head" evolves from simple arpeggiated synths into a moment of squalling guitar-blur worthy of Manuel Gottsching or Emeralds' Mark McGuire. If Gatto Fritto's perhaps not so much a landmark achievement for Williams or International Feel, it's certainly both a promising debut and a pitch-perfect mission statement for them both. If they hadn't already earned our trust, International Feel's now beginning to feel decidedly buy-on-sight.
  • Tracklist
      01. The Curse 02. Hex 03. Grinding Of The Brakes 04. Solar Flares Burn For You 05. Lucifer Morning Star 06. Invisible College 07. My Etheric Body 08. Beachy Head
RA