In one of the later Matrix movies, there’s a scene where they’re all dancing in a massive cavern to this tribal, acoustic beat and it’s like the whole of the underground city of Zion is partying to this primal sound and it’s awesome. Only then you realise that the crisp electronic music and the steampunk acoustic instruments are totally incompatible … anyway, this isn’t like that, but the vibe is. Like something fundamental has been harnessed from the tribal past, and blended with all sorts of other influences and motifs that move us these days; it ripples up your legs into your belly with its irresistible rhythm.

For the uninitiated, Fat Freddy’s Drop are seven talented men from New Zealand who originally played in different bands before FFD took over as the one that they enjoyed most, so they went with it and ran.  Nowadays they’re a classic line-up in their home country and have been well known for about ten years, but for the rest of us they are a fairly recent discovery, arriving with the ever-increasing antipodean diaspora.

They’re loosely defined as dub reggae, but slide towards deep housey-style beats at times, so pinning them down is pretty tricky. But what they have in spades is bass. Big booty bass. And core influences from jazz, roots, reggae, soul and much more besides, creating a complex, layered sound coming from consummate professionals who do this for love. Listen in to Grooveshark and you’ll find the classics, and they’re some great, soulful, easy listening tunes for any occasion, but watching them live is a whole new story.

On Thursday the redherring got the good news that a couple of Freddys would be available for a pre-show chinwag. We caught up with the band’s saxophonist, featuring the slightly dangerous-sounding moniker “Chopper Reedz”, and trumpeter “Tony Chang” before the last-in-the-tour, sold-out show, in an unclean echo-chamber in the hidden depths of Vega. And they weren’t fat at all. Though food is definitely important to them …

So how’s it going so far?

Chopper: It’s good, this is our last show on this tour, so all roads lead to Vega. This has happened before actually, we’ve been here twice before, and it’s one of the best rooms we’ve ever played in. It doesn’t take too much convincing when this one goes on the tour schedule. Everyone’s like yes, that’s a must do.

How come?

Chopper: Well it’s a beautiful room, it’s a beautiful building to start with. You really can’t take it for granted you know, just ‘cause you’re from Copenhagen.

Chang: There aren’t places like that everywhere, at all. There isn’t a single venue like that in New Zealand. There’s a few venues around Europe – Paradiso in Amsterdam is another one – Le Trianon in Paris too, but those are the three top venues.

Chopper: And it’s good for us too, because the backstage environment’s really good, the building is lovely, and it’s not surrounded by industrial wasteland like a lot of places we go to.

Chang: It’s a really nice room to be in though, because it’s light with the beautiful timbre, and there’s something about the weight of … (Here I think he trails off into some advanced music thought, before thinking better of trying to explain it, and returning to the present) … especially with our music, because it’s very heavy with the basslines, and when you play in a solid room, they sound a lot better.

CR: And the audience is great, we love the audience here, the last couple of shows we’ve done here, the audience has just been really fantastic and wild.

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Later that night, and it seems they were right. From the bubbly clientele to the fine, pretty lighting on the ceiling, Vega is creating a great atmosphere. Stood on the dancefloor, fairly well back, and there’s chocolatey bass resonating off the warm brown walls, giving the smiling punters an irresistible internal massage. The band is building from soulful, super-chilled melodies into deep and probing, complex trance-like beats that own the audience – all arms up, gurning grins and rhythmic limbs.

You can’t move in here without tripping over a bar where young students kick back and enjoy the free show, still quick to pour beer – at 45 kroner per ‘plastic’. Not a great price, but not as terrible as some captive-audience milking operations. And this definitely isn’t one of those. Here the music comes first, and people aren’t getting drunk. The mood is exuberant, and the place is smoke free, with only the odd guerrilla stoners sending up smoke signals to draw the furtive bouncers, before vanishing into the crowd again.

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So what’s special about the audience here?

“Well there are lots of pretty faces,” they agree, before erupting in good-natured laughter. “Yeah it’s a fairly good looking audience,” says Chopper with ironic Kiwi understatement. “Stylish, happy fans.” Obviously a lot of music comes here, and ours is well supported, so people know a lot about the music and they’re enthusiastic, and that comes through.”   

Chang: There’s a lot of energy, they’re very respectful of what’s going on, within reason of course, I mean they pay to come to a show so they can do what they want!

Last night we played in Aarhus, and it was cool, it was great, and we were definitely receiving a lot of good energy from the audience, and it was a good combination.

Chopper: Yeah, It’s definitely a two-way thing isn’t it. If people are talking over the quiet moments in a song that can put you off your stride a little bit, but similarly if they just get buckwild and crazy, you know it’s all going down, and that, just sets everything alight really. I remember the last time we were here that the second half of the show was just nuts, it was crazy, and that’s a pretty fond memory.

So are you feeling on tonight, is it going to be a good show?

Chang: We’ve been on the road now for a couple of weeks solid, and we’ve just played four gigs in a row, so that’s not in our favour, but we’re in a fantastic room with a great audience, and our set is finely tuned, so I’m hopeful … I can’t say I’m confident, because you always have to be nervous. Always thinking about things you have to remember to do, and things you did last night that you don’t want to do again tonight.

Chopper: You gotta be cocky, but you can’t be too cocky

Chang: The main thing is to wear a nice jacket and a sharp tie, you can be quite arrogant about that sort of thing.

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Downstairs on the dancefloor, it doesn’t come across as too cocky ­- it seems the act is pretty well polished by this stage. Changing rhythms are almost imperceptible, and it takes a while to realise that the tempo has increased and we’re dancing like loonies, and the crowd is going wild, locked irresistibly into the quickening bass while distracted by the expert, minimal application of sound in heart-warming layers.

Transitions are lost in the crash of cymbals and tightly coordinated lighting, where, with expert timing the energy subsides to a calm, rolling burble and we’re back to super chilled beach vibes and happy skies. And the crowd are loving it. Wild and shirtless at times, they’re loving it so much that the band can hardly get a word in when they pause after about 20 minutes of solid, concentrated playing – so eager is everyone to show their heartfelt appreciation. ‘Fredheads’ they’ve been dubbed with semi-irony.

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Chopper: We actually came up with Fredheads. There are definitely a few out there! We’re really lucky in that we have a really motivated fanbase it seems. Last night someone had flown from Ibiza to see the show. And when we were in the States, the Fredheads were following us all down to San Diego, from like Chicago and Seattle.

So what do Fredheads have in common?

Chang: (with a mouthful of irony) They’re all very sophisticated music lovers and highly intelligent, above average in all respects … no, to be honest actually, they’re often people who have an interest in the country and culture of New Zealand. Sometimes people find out about NZ through FFD and sometimes it’s the other way around. Fredheads are like Kiwis who crop up in far-flung parts of the world, and you know, we’re really fortunate to have supporters of the group who actually promote the group to people they know. So a lot of people have discovered the band through friends and it’s great, we love it.

How do you feel about promoting your music? Are you against big campaigns?

Chang: We’re our own label you know, with no budget, and we just really do rely on word of mouth and try to reach out through our website and keep people informed, and we get great response. Our emphasis goes into making the interesting behind-the-scenes films that MC Slade makes, and providing remixes and so on, and just a more community approach than big campaigns, trying to get in big magazines, on the radio, trying to get on TV and all of that. Our songs are often a bit too long to play on the radio anyway.

Our band is not a perfect fit for traditional media, you know, our songs are too long, so I suppose that’s why we’ve had to develop another approach.

Were you never tempted to go with a bigger label?

Chang: We had some offers from bigger labels from the off, who were very much depending on altering our entire management structure, altering the way we do our publishing, altering the length of our songs, the kind of songs we were gonna do, it was just a little bit, a bit too much of an interference really. (Kiwi inflection) And it just wasn’t going to work for us either creatively or financially. Being independent is a big part of our identity, it’s a big part of how we produce music, and it’s the only way open to us really.

So you write on the tour. Are there any new songs on this one?

Chopper: Well actually, we’re going to debut a song tonight only. Hopefully it goes well, otherwise it might be tonight only! But I mean we’ve got a bunch of new stuff and new material that’s being threaded into the live set at the moment, and some of it’s not been released or heard up here before, including this brand new jam, which is very much in its formative stages but we think there’s enough flesh on the bones for it to be a good one. So yeah, I mean, truth be told this has been a really helter-skelter tour, so we haven’t had the time we’ve had in the past to sit on the bus and play with these things. But it’s definitely that process is ongoing, and it pops up everywhere we are.

So is there a kiwi sound?

Not a definable kiwi sound. But there’s a kiwi approach which is very fast and loose in the way that we look at music, and if you look at New Zealand artists that are getting out on the world stage, they’re happy to mix it up. It’s not just the dub-oriented artists who do that, its electronica and rock and all that who have a similar approach I guess, not too scared to a bend a few boundaries and straddle the fence on some style. That’s part of being from a far-away place, where the different scenes and styles tend to influence each other a lot, possible more than they would in the larger metro areas of Europe where the separate scenes tend to like to stay separate and work within the boundaries of what their style of music is. In New Zealand you’ll play with lots of different types if you’re a musician trying to be a musician.

So how are you going to relax when you get home?

Chopper: Well we’ve got young children, so lots of time with our families.

Chang: We’ve got a lot of things on at the moment, and we’re right in the middle of a recording project, so I think we’ll be saving our relaxing until the summertime.

Chopper: The funny thing about touring is it’s a tiring thing to do, but it’s also very energising and invigorating because you work things up to your new level, and you start spinning round, and in your head you want to kick them out, you want to get them captured in some way. And that’s what’s happened on the last few tours, as we’ve kept the momentum rolling. We don’t go on holiday, it’s actually part of the recording process to be out there playing because it just puts us in a better place to write.

But now I’m gonna tend to my broad beans. I love gardening and cooking. We all do that, we’ve all got pretty domestic lives outside of music, which we enjoy greatly.