Introducing Driftkikker and their album D-Time

If the term ‘contamination’ had not a negative connotation, it would have been the best way to describe the edges of Driftkikker’s work. But since the word ‘fusion’ have entered the music vocabulary of the 21^st century and gained a value of its own we feel constrained to use it.

However, the genres mixing of Daddo, the creator of Driftkikker’s project, from Latin to funk, from trip hop to groove, from ambient to you-name-it, has something more, which is mainly a provocative and innovative ‘lounge’ quality which careful listeners cannot miss out.

Driftkikker (literally in the Dutch language: impulsive frog) is a musical collective coming from the Netherlands created around the audacity and innovativeness of the eclectic producer and musician Daddo. After a well internationally received debut (Coming of The Light, 2006) Daddo has been able to put together an enjoyable second album of 12 tracks, fulfilled of precious collaborations and collated in a remarkable operation of sound engineering.

Although not totally original, the innovation of D-Time, released last October, starts in the working method: a basic arrangement is sent to a list of musicians, who each plays pieces separately for a following remixing. As Daddo puts it: “The trick for me here was not to allow any of the artists to hear the takes of each other so they wouldn’t be influenced.” The core of the band remains the same since the first release, with John Kakiay on drums and Nenad Radosavljevic on bass.

Thus, without stealing or lazily recycling from other genres, analogue and digital merge into an easy-listening flow of relaxing tunes, as it happens in Bright is my day, where Daddo’s voice and lyrics give their best. This is true in Love is the way, where in a bold encounter Emil Kunto’s accordion and Nelson Latif’s cavaquinho keep teasing each other, resulting in a tune measuring up with the best Gotan Project’s performances. The trespassing into more upbeat rhythms of Oh my love, is also quite remarkable. Some jazzy cues in other tracks complete the picture.

Like Coming of The Light, D-Time winks again at a wide international audience and aims – in its creator words — to “leave a part of it in each heart that comes in contact with its music.”

Someone has said this is an album that is easy to fall in love with, and we agree. It is a successful experiment of music in the internet era, taking total advantage of the misplacement of the time and the space.
Jazz lovers will probably remain diffident, but Driftkikker has surely become a project worthy of keeping an eye on, given that a third CD is already on the way and Daddo has no intention of slowing the development of his musical identity.

Live performances are scheduled this summer mainly in Benelux, where Driftkikker has already won the local audience’s heart and the attention of national media. Nevertheless, nobody would be surprised to see Driftkikker conquering European and British stages in the coming years.