Laurie Tompkins - Fatty (2022)

‘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 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 mouldy 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.