Monolith Cocktail Blog

New Music Tip
Words: Monica Mazzoli

Continuing with our collaboration with the leading Italian music publication Kalporz a short summer break, the Monolith Cocktail will be cosying up and sharing reviews, interviews and other bits from our respective sites each month. Keep an eye out for future ‘synergy’ between our two great houses as we exchange posts.

This month Monica Mazzoli scouts out the Melbourne indie-funk-soul oddities Karate Boogaloo.



It’s “retromania” times: we know that. There are those who, however, in referring back to the past manage not to expire in the most pedantic revival. This is the case of the Melbourne funk-soul scene, which revolves around bands like Surprise Chef, Karate Boogaloo, Pro-Teens and a small totally DIY record label – the College Of Knowledge Records – founded by Lachlan Stuckey and Jethro Curtin (guitarist and keyboardist of Surprise Chef respectively).

The sound is obviously analogue, of course, of tape recordings, but the approach to making music is out of the box: the already mentioned Surprise Chef and Karate Boogaloo – the two bands that are the soul of the label – collaborate, exchange musicians, record tracks in the home studio (even the artwork of the records), do everything by themselves. They have a mentality open to any sound contamination and unconventional writing. In other words, Carn The Boogers – the first Karate Boogaloo album released in May 2020 – comes after two mixtapes (KB’S Mixtape No.1 and KB’S Mixtape No.2) in which the band had fun reinterpreting songs that have been sampled in classic hip hop and pop (to be listened to absolutely “Tour de France”).

On the new album the songs are all autographed, but the wanderer spirit of the groove continues: in the new tracks – all instrumental (as usual) – the band dances like a juggler on rhythm, without ever falling, always on the piece. The five minutes of ‘Space Language’ are perhaps the apotheosis of this musical trip. A funk-soul with surfing in the heart.