Fatty is a desperate suite of consoling, tanked songs by UK composer Laurie Tompkins. Friends' samples, instruments, and voices sag and soar through intimately deranged, muckily decadent productions. The mind runs fast while the body lags, sludge in a cage, fat coagulating on bones. Opulent throw-downs from Teresa Winter, Gwilly Edmondez, Eliza McCarthy, and Otto Willberg are the backdrop for Laurie's voice to heave into the sky, or lilt, baffled, through the gunk. Elsewhere, Gwilly and Jess Hickie-Kallenbach (Still House Plants) are all power, grain, and delight as they sing through a scrub of electric violin and too-smooth keys. Aaron Parker binges through manic arabesques for spinnet, xylophone and vibraphone on "Sombor Shuffle", as strangely graceful as the Nuggets' no 15. The album is accompanied by videos and images by Joel Wycherley, whose dummy burb of dredged-up ornaments, wasted dwellings, and moldy mother nature feels realer and faker than life. His 33-33 debut is one of Laurie's three spring '22 discs, between an album with Eliza McCarthy for Entr'acte and another with Eliza and Ashley Paul for Hyperdelia.
Laurie Tompkins (b.1990) is a UK composer, performer and co-founder and co-director of the Slip label. From scores for samples, instruments and voices he creates a grabbable music that dreams and confounds. Bodies, things, words, and sounds strain under duress, looping their way through scenes of grubby presence, not-quite riff, moldy echo, and swollen bombast. Laurie co-directs Slip, which has released music by Yeah You, Mica Levi, Julia Reidy, Bass Clef, Object Collection, Mentos Gulgendo, Chaines & Competition. Old releases of his own include Ample Profanity (2018), with cellist Oliver Coates; Heat, War, Sweat, Law (2016); and Exorcise (2021), as Yes Indeed with bassist Otto Willberg.