according to legend (ok the press release thats sat on my desk), phonat is the alter-ego of one young lad from florence, italy, called michele balduzzi, who on the advise of the mofo hifi record label, packed up his machine and guitar and headed for the bright lights of london town to seek his fame and fortune.
good luck to you fella.
to those that have yet to hear any of this stuff, the album is quite simple to summarise :
fat boy slim + daft punk + justice + chemical brothers + girl talk = noisey dance fun(k), with added dirt.
clearly over the last few years michele has studied the mega selling success in the electronic dance charts and thought, ‘i can do that’.
and if the truth be told, he can.
of course, the end results are not always as successful as the creators of his source material, and at times the cheese factor veers a little too close, but hey, for a first album, this is not half bad.
cut up rhythmic loops and dissected vocal snippets are a calling card throughout the album with phrases being built out of the snatched sounds.
the most obvious example being the jittery electro funk of get down on my dirty street, where the song title is constructed out of vocal samples looped to build up the song title, a trick repeated on ghetto burning.
big room dance anthems impact the flow with hands in the air vibes of set me free, adrenalin infused synths-n-guitars form the basis of ghetto burning (feat. proper vocals by yolanda), acid bleeps are dropped into the disjointed techno noise of learn to recycle, and rock ingredients are turned up to the max for the dance floor filling (big) beats of big deal, and the darker moods of zombie army.
the debut album proves that while the production isn’t always the most original, phonat does have a way with his machines, and given the right type of exposure via a choice remix, or movie placement (this stuff is a prime candidate for any forthcoming crank styled move in which the visual intensity never drops), could easily become the name on all the right lips.
as it stands phonat is a very enjoyable insight into the state of of modern electronic dance pop whereby he has taken the "sample it, loop it, fuck it" directive that pop will eat itself laid down all those years ago, and taken it to the extreme, but still managing to make the end result very listenable.
more detail : here