{"id":10108,"date":"2008-07-22T14:27:20","date_gmt":"2008-07-22T04:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stuartbuchanan.com\/?p=10108"},"modified":"2021-01-31T04:50:32","modified_gmt":"2021-01-31T04:50:32","slug":"fat-planet-rewind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/2008\/07\/22\/fat-planet-rewind\/","title":{"rendered":"Fat Planet – Rewind"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fat Planet is coming to the end of its journey (for now…). Here’s the story:<\/em>
\nIn August 2003, I started broadcasting the\u00a0Fat Planet<\/strong>\u00a0show on the (then) newly-birthed\u00a0FBi\u00a0Radio<\/strong>\u00a0in Sydney.\u00a0\u00a0FBi\u00a0was set up to take a unique view of Australian music, to reposition both the city of Sydney and the country as a place for new, original and innovative sounds \u2013 and to tarmac over the notion that we were good for nothing more than Kylie Minogue, INXS and Men At Work.\u00a0 When I was approached to do a \u2018world music show\u2019, I opted to toe the line on exactly the same philosophy \u2013 to reposition the notion of \u2018world music\u2019, and promote innovation and experimentation from unlikely locations.
\nOf course, the whole concept of \u2018world music\u2019 is in itself a paradox \u2013 it is a marketing and sales term, designed for ingestion by Western audiences.\u00a0 \u2018World music\u2019 means nothing to consumers in South America or Africa.\u00a0 Not only that, but it is quite insulting to apply such a broad and meaningless term to well-developed and flourishing local music industries.\u00a0 The term also generally implies indigenous and traditional sounds, and as I was quick to discover, most countries falling in the \u2018world music\u2019 category consider indigenous music in much the same way that Westerners treat their folk heritage \u2013 as something to be acknowledged, but mostly unrepresentative of the current musical climate.
\nBack in 2003, music was only starting to be distributed online.\u00a0 Most labels and artists had a general mistrust about duplication and piracy, and had yet to wake up to the web\u2019s full potential. Luckily, there were a few vanguards around the globe taking advantage of the medium \u2013 often from the most unlikely of places.\u00a0 Those vanguards naturally became staples on the\u00a0Fat Planet<\/strong>\u00a0radio show \u2013 music that was unreleased in Australia, often only released in its country of origin, but nonetheless music that was refreshing, challenging and utterly compelling.
\nAs so much of the show\u2019s pre-planning was spent trawling the web, I inevitably started to post a few links on my personal blog,\u00a0zero-G<\/strong>.\u00a0 The first tracks went online in January 2004 (Finland\u2019s\u00a0Lacklustre<\/strong>,\u00a0Wang Inc\u00a0<\/strong>from Italy and South African\u00a0Portable<\/strong>\u00a0taking early\u00a0honours) and, a couple of months later, the content shifted to its own URL at\u00a0fatplanet.com.au<\/strong>. Although this was something of an organic and common sense process, it was also partly inspired by the early pioneers of the mp3 blog who had started shortly prior \u2013\u00a0Fluxblog<\/a>,\u00a0Said The\u00a0Gramaphone<\/a>,\u00a0Music For Robots<\/a>\u00a0and, primarily,\u00a0Swen\u2019s Weblog<\/a>, a curation of mp3 links from artists that had appeared in The Wire magazine.
\nOver a\u00a0five year\u00a0period, the Fat Planet site went on to feature many hundreds of artists, exposing new sounds and styles often for the first time in an English-speaking environment.\u00a0 Fat Planet was also one of the first to expose emerging genres and feature tracks from scenes such as\u00a0baile funk<\/strong>,\u00a0kuduro<\/strong>,\u00a0congotronics,\u00a0balkan\u00a0hot step,\u00a0baltimore<\/strong>,\u00a0cosmic disco<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Boston bounce<\/strong>.\u00a0 Artists who received some of their early blog-love on Fat Planet included\u00a0M.I.A., Ghislian Poirier, Juana Molina, The Knife, Filastine, Konono No.1, Frikstailers, K\u2019naan, Mutamassilk, Edu-K, Esau Mwamwaya, Para One, Villa Diamante, Jahcoozi, Cardopusher, Sibot, Stacs Of Stamina, Tetine, Bostich, DJ C, Ramallah Underground, Sweat X, Peter Bjorn & John, Mochipet, Datarock, Annie<\/strong>\u00a0and many more.
\nIn January 2008, the Fat Planet blog was featured in the UK\u2019s \u2018Guardian<\/strong>\u2018 newspaper in Chris Salmon\u2019s column \u2018Click To Download\u2019.\u00a0 In referencing a number of mp3 blogs from all over the world, Fat Planet was dubbed \u201cBest Blog for world music<\/strong>\u201c.\u00a0 The Guardian called the blog: \u201ca fantastic melting point of cutting-edge international sounds; be it Danish rap-techno, Argentinean cumbia, Israeli dub or Chinese hip-hop. The range and quality of the music Buchanan tracks down is astonishing\u201d. (read the column\u00a0here<\/a>).\u00a0 Time Out also reviewed Fat Planet earlier this year, calling it \u201ca stunningly diverse range of music from all corners of the globe\u201d.
\nWriting\u00a0now in mid-2008, Fat Planet is drawing to a close (for now…) as it’s time to map some new terrain. Thanks to everyone who tuned in to the show or the blog, and I look forward to bringing you along on the next part of the ride.
\nHere’s some of the chunkier content from the radio show, all yours to digest in perpetuity:<\/em>
\nINTERVIEW PODCAST ARCHIVE:
\nLindstrom (July 2007)<\/a>
\nAmon Tobin (February 2007)<\/a>
\nMiho Hatori (January 2007)<\/a>
\nEl Perro Del Mar (January 2007)<\/a>
\nFrederic Galliano, Kuduro Sound System (December 2006)<\/a>
\nAnnie (October 2006)<\/a>
\nFilastine (October 2006)<\/a>
\nPeter, Bjorn & John (September 2006)<\/a>
\nOMFO (August 2006)<\/a>
\nCSS \/ Cansei De Ser Sexy (July 2006)<\/a>
\nPLUS:
\nFat Planet Arabesque Mixtape (2006)<\/a>
\nFat Planet Year Two Mixtape (2005)<\/a>
\nFat Planet Year One Mixtape (2004)<\/a>
\nFAT PLANET BLOG ARCHIVE<\/a> (All 300 posts, give or take …)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fat Planet is coming to the end of its journey (for now…). Here’s the story: In August 2003, I started broadcasting the\u00a0Fat Planet\u00a0show on the (then) newly-birthed\u00a0FBi\u00a0Radio\u00a0in Sydney.\u00a0\u00a0FBi\u00a0was set up to take a unique view of Australian music, to reposition both the city of Sydney and the country as a place for new, original and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[805,445],"class_list":["post-10108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fat-planet","tag-fat-planet","tag-fat-planet-blog","missing-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10108"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15800,"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10108\/revisions\/15800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}