Orchestral maneuvers in hip-hop

"MEET FREDDY & THE CASUALS. THEY ARE HERE TO MAKE SENIOR CITIZENS GROOVE"

They are also here to prove that you can have both Can and Nas listed as your biggest influences, and that you can call yourself casuals without wearing Fred Perry and enjoying the occasional football game/fist fight. However, if they were to get in a fight, they´d probalby win. There are a lot of them.

For some reason, you don´t imagine a band who to be a ten-piece hip-hop orchestra. But this happens to be the case for Freddy and his Casuals, who use a horn section, percussion, accordion, three singers, bass, guitar, drums abd a rapper (that would be Freddy, rapping in Norwegian) to serve you hip-hop with touches of jazz, soul, rock, funk, afrobeat and, if you´re lucky, som subtle slices of psychadelic kraut rock.

- I notice that when we do gigs, says, we have people jumping in the front of the stage, but there are also the ones in the back, scratching their beards and nodding in recognition. Thats our goal, I guess, to capture both those groups.

Last year Freddy, who also plays the trumpet, was playing at by:Larm with another band. He handed out some Fredde & The Casuals demos to people, which resulted in a contract. This year they are celebrating the release of their debut album by playing by:Larm.

According to the band members, having many different musical influences within the orchestra makes the outcome enjoyable for a wide selection of listeners. There have been confirmed incidents if exited seniors (non-related to any member of the band) in the audience, clapping and singing along. What makes this possible? It´s not necessarily an explanation, but, as vocalist Camara Lundestaad Joof puts it, <I don´t even like hip-hop. But I like us.>