An exclusive not to be missed concert from multiple-Grammy nominated group Hiatus Kaiyote at City Recital Hall. In the two years since selling out Sydney Opera House, Hiatus Kaiyote have become one of the most sampled bands in the world. Featuring on the closing track on Kendrick Lamar’s Damn and the opening of Drake’s More Life record last year and popping up on cuts by Chance The Rapper, Anderson Paak and Rhapsody.
They’ve come a long way since 2011 when the four-piece band operating out of a small home studio in the mid-Northern suburbs of Melbourne, fired out a unique and kaleidoscopic vision of Future Soul. At once they shook down the paradigm walls and inspired even the US originators of the music.
Their first album Tawk Tomahawk took them to the Grammy Awards and the four corners of the globe. As a live act the near-telepathic interplay between the rhythm section of Simon Mavin (keys), Paul Bender (bass) and Perrin Moss (drums) set jaws dropping on a nightly basis. Out the front, vocalist Nai Palm combined soaring vocal technique, emotive guitar work and an irreverent, future-primitive DIY fashion approach, which proved spellbinding to all. In rapid-fire time Pharrell Williams was a fan, Erykah Badu was a fan. Questlove was a fan, even the late-great Prince was a fan.
Their sophomore album Choose Your Weapon saw the band hone their sound into something even more pure, organic and forthright. It went on another Grammy nomination and ARIA nomination at home.
Often revelatory, Hiatus Kaiyote’s music is also well-rooted in all of that rich lineage that makes it feel somehow warmly familiar.
Their phraseology cannot be bound simply by the 4/4 meter, it spills out into rhythmic rivulets which never sound unnatural or clever for clever’s sake. Jazz, Soul, Funk, Fusion, Hip Hop and Electronica are their predominant building blocks – but the resultant sonic shapes blur the edges and defy the pigeonhole. But like all great new art, their music has a sense of inevitability about it. It’s as if those notes and beats were somehow destined to fall together in that same inexplicable pattern all along, just waiting to be uncovered, un-locked by the right combination of exploratory, inquisitive musical minds. We can all count our lucky stars that those minds happen to live on our own doorstep.
