‘Mélusine’ by Cecile McLorin Salvant
Released: March 24, 2023
Label: Nonesuch Records

Mélusine features a mix of five originals and interpretations of nine songs, dating as far back as the twelfth century, mostly sung in French along with Occitan, English, and Haitian Kreyol.

The new album’s songs tell the story of the European folkloric legend of Mélusine, a woman who turns into a half-snake each Saturday as a result of a childhood curse by her mother. Mélusine later agrees to marry Raymondin on the condition that he never see her on Saturdays. He agrees but is ultimately convinced by his brother to break his promise, piercing his wife’s door with his sword and finding her naked in the bath, half snake, half woman. When she catches him spying on her, she turns into a dragon and flies out the window, only to reappear every time one of her descendants is on their deathbed.

Salvant, whose parents are French and Haitian, says Mélusine is also “partly about that feeling of being a hybrid, a mixture of different cultures, which I’ve experienced not only as the American-born child of two first generation immigrants, but as someone raised in a family that is racially mixed, from several different countries, with different languages spoken in the home.”

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“Boy” by Harvey Sutherland
Released: April 29, 2022
Label: Clarity Recordings

Drop the needle on Harvey Sutherland’s debut album ‘Boy’ and find yourself transported to a hypermodern take on funk music. Recorded between London, Los Angeles and Harvey’s own Swimming Pool Studio with a string of special guests and hotshot Melbourne session musicians.

In 2021, Harvey released Boy’s debut single, “Jouissance”, which immediately gained praise locally from Double J, Triple R, FBi, RTR, PBS and SYN, as well as NME Australia, Pilerats, Purple Sneakers, 10 Magazine, frankie, Rage and more. Globally, “Jouissance” has been championed by Paper Mag and Resident Advisor, while also receiving glowing reviews and airplay across BBC 6Music’s Gilles Peterson, Tom Ravenscroft, Huey Morgan and Apple Music’s Matt Wilkinson.

Over an illustrious near decade-long career, Mike Katz aka Harvey Sutherland has continued to solidify his reputation as one of Australia’s finest electronic artists. From early EPs reflecting his crate-digging influences, to festival appearances at Glastonbury, Nuits Sonores, Pukkelpop and Meredith Music Festival, to collaborations with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Harvey’s world continues to grow and flourish.

Take the vinyl of Boy, the debut album by Harvey Sutherland, flip it over, and on the back sleeve, you’ll find a diagram – an elaborate collection of graphs, vectors and philosophical theory that dissects the very nature of what it means to be funky. “It’s not that the player plays funk; it’s that the player is played by funk,” reads one cryptic line. “Even the most unfunky moment can be funky,” goes another. Trace the line of obsession through the unfunky valley and eventually, you end up at a place: ‘neurotic funk’.