Finga licking good

Concept albums are – by and large – rarely a good idea. A concept album with a sense of humour, on the other hand, is just fine by us. And while this month’s concept of choice is The Streets’ latest offering, there’s another contender on the shelves that falls roughly into the same bracket. But instead of Mike Skinner’s deadpan urban stories, Fingathing’s …And The Big Red Nebula Band is more concerned with making music for aliens. Indeed.

OK, so there isn’t a particularly high concept behind this one, but you have to admire Peter Parker and Sneaky’s imagination. It’s their third album for Manchester’s Grand Central stable – and the two previous have followed equally odd themes. The first The Main Event was preoccupied with wrestling, while the last Superhero Music was concerned with all things super and hero. …And The Big Red Nebula Band moves things on from this world to the stars – all within a bracket loosely defined as instrumental hip-hop. Like DJ Shadow with a grin or the band from Star Wars in adidas shell toes, Fingathing make music that it’s damn near impossible not to like.
“We don’t start off with a concept,” says Sneaky, “it’s just that that’s they way it’ll happen when we start working on it.”
A key element of the package is the distinctive artwork that accompanies it – and it transpires this also plays a role in the development of the music.
“It’s quite an organic process – our friend Chris does the artwork and I live with him, so when we are making the demos, he is hearing what we are doing and coming up with ideas from that, and that in turn affects what we do when we go back into the studio.”
And because of this, somewhere along the way with …And The Big Red Nebula Band, aliens got in the mix.
“On the last album we were quite into big sweeping sounds and strings, but on this one it’s more stripped back, in a way closer to the first one, using more electro beats and the like. The difference with this one is that we tried to make all the sounds sound as if they were coming from space”.
Less is more has always been a maxim relevant to Fingathing. Born out of playing live with Rae and Christian’s band in the late 90s, Parker – a DMC-standard scratch deejay and Sneaky – bass player extraordinaire - clicked and began gigging.
“It grew out of the live show – it just started off as us playing live and thinking we had something special. We’ve learned as we’ve gone along in the studio and I think you can hear that on the albums.”
It’s predominantly instrumental music – given that it fits into the hip-hop genre (albeit loosely), is there not a temptation to use MCs and vocalists?
“We worked with (GC regular) Veba on the first record, but we really think that working with people is something that has to be right – you have to click with them. There’s no point in just sending off a demo to someone and they stick something on it and send it back – we don’t want to work like that. So if the right person comes along we might do it, but probably under a different name.”
I suggest original madman MC, Kool Keith, and Sneaky demurs with a laugh.
“Yeah someone like him, it’d be great.”
Book that spaceship if that one ever happens.

Fingathing give their ...And The Big Red Nebula Band album a live airing at Crawdaddy, Dublin on June 29