MANKATO is basically the vehicle for one Darren Berry, a young songwriter from London's East End with a remarkable CV that already includes dues-paying time in a jazz orchestra, a ballet scholarship and a move to Brazil to learn capoeira. That's a combination of dance and boxing to those of you with good dictionaries out there.
Thankfully, though, Darren's "Billy Elliott"-style aspirations are reined in on "Flesh & Bone", MANKATO'S debut single and as good an example of fine young British songwriting as you'll hear all year.
Certainly, the input of former Nellee Hooper/ No Doubt man Fabien Waltmann behind the console has helped shape these songs, as his programming/ texturing skills ensure MANKATO exude a sheen of modernity (check the layered pile up at the end of "Safe As Houses" for the proof), but he's also canny enough to realise too much trickery shouldn't obscure Berry's songs, which - cliche though it may be - really are the nub here.
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And the songs spread across the 7" and CD releases are an impressive quartet indeed. "Flesh & Bone" itself is - superficially at least - the catchiest thing here, with freshly-scrubbed acoustics jousting with the programmed thrum before rising to a splendid chorus full of double-tracked vocals. "Safe As Houses", by contrast, is lusher, with a grandiose lope of a melody and huge atmospherics, while both "No Promises" and "The Great Indoors" suggest Berry has both a precocious songwriting talent a la early Roddy Frame aand also a knack for well-observed social comment befitting of, say, Andy Partridge or Damon Albarn at his most direct.
As first salvoes go, then, "Flesh & Bone" and its' attendant tracks are surefire bullseyes. MANKATO are up and running in no undertain terms.
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