Fredator – Bad Jazz (2010)

For at least as long as I've been living here in London, I've really appreciated the Finnish jazz scene. There are numerous amazing jazz bands in Helsinki and other cities as well. In my youth I played bass in a jazz school and through that school worked as a volunteer at a jazz festival in Espoo. I got to be taught by some of the best jazz musicians in the country. Despite all of this, I didn't necessarily appreciate the scene as much back then. It may be because I've grown a bit and like to explore new music a bit more nowadays, but today I'm really excited that there's such a vibrant jazz scene where I come from. Nowadays, whenever I visit Helsinki, I usually buy one or two Finnish jazz records. Fredator is quite a recent band that I found while trying to Google what was going on in Finland's jazz scene.



Fredator gets its name from a street in Helsinki called Fredrikinkatu, that people call Freda in their everyday speech. That is obviously combined here together with predator. Fredator has some great saxophone and trumpet playing on their albums. On the first album there's not that much of vibraphone yet, but that instrument becomes much more important on the subsequent albums. The drums and bass do their job really well, but they don't really get to shine much on this album. They're mainly just keeping the rhythm. Fredator doesn't play necessarily very complicated jazz, but I like their melodic approach that kind of works even for people who are not that much into jazz.

The first track on the album, Bad Man, is probably my favourite song on the album. It has some great old-timey riffs and some of the sounds remind me of 1960's jazz classics. Tambourine Monster has a bit groovier beat and the song is structured of loops. To Blues or Not to Blues is quite a basic jazzy blues song with great saxophone and trumpet sounds. Mmpappada shows some of the best piano sequences on the album. Fredator Meets Inuit has is a great rhythmic song with some latin beats and progressive beats. Waltz for a Princess is a great jazz ballad with wavy melodies. Jungle Jingle tones the sound down a bit. There's some great building going on in the song. The album ends in a beautifully slow ballad Deep Green Blue Notes that makes you want to sit in a dark jazz bar with a glass of whisky in hand.

I didn't even realise Fredator had made any music videos, but I managed to find a video for the song Bad Man. The video looks like footage from a heat camera. There's lots of dancing and goofing around town in the video, but also just normal city life in Helsinki.

Fredator's next album was also a great album and it's definitely a bit more complex, but I kind of like the sounds on this debut album maybe even more. It's closer to purist jazz sounds I've accustomed to hear from 1950's and 1960's legends even if the band is still learning on this album.

Listen to the album on Spotify.