Melbourne-based producer, DJ and synthesiser wizard, Harvey Sutherland, has just released his debut album, Boy.
Recorded between London, Los Angeles and Harvey’s own Swimming Pool Studio with a string of special guests including genre godfather, DāM-FunK, sos and number of hotshot Melbourne session musicians, Harvey’s debut album Boy promises a one-way teleportation to a hypermodern vision of funk.
On this debut, Harvey takes a rigorously perfected body of dance music elements and fires them through a prism of influences – from the hyper-produced studio pop of Todd Rundgren, to the luscious grooves of New York boogie and the harsh snap of 80s coldwave. A self-diagnosed overthinker and perfectionist, the record’s finest fruits were birthed from endless nights of studio obsession and psychoanalysis, with Harvey’s theory of “neurotic funk” as his guiding North Star.
Lead single Holding Pattern reveals the album’s softer side – a smooth slice of city-pop that sees Harvey step up to sing a crooning lead vocal. A beta-male breakup anthem in the spirit of Todd Rundgren, he whines to his former lover about their doomed relationship, not quite realising who the culprit might be. It’s capped off with a zesty sax solo from Melbourne’s Damon Grant.
“I made most of this record in a circular loop between by studio and my psychotherapist – one informing the other, a slow grind toward some kind of Eureka moment, some realisation of self,” Harvey said of the album.
“It’s skeletal, angular, finished only when our time runs out. It is beyond the platonic ideal of Funk, as it is devoid of the necessary Looseness due to the neurotic overanalysis involved, however I feel comfortable in defining it as Neurotic Funk.”
Boy is out now.
Image: Ian Laidlaw
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