To Never Forget The Source

Friendship EP

Friendship Theme

Appears on "One Hundred"
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/one-hundred/id588340204

MarksOnTheKeys (w Mark Speer)

Channel 1 Suite / Ode To The..

Ode To The Big Sea

Bobo Yéyé: Belle Époque in Upper Volta

Djougou Toro

Unstraight Ahead

Push Na Ya

Listeners

Theme for Us (feat. Chip Wickham)

OFFICIAL URL - ​https://hopest.re/LookAround

DANIELLE PONDER &
KARATE BOOGALOO

“Look Around” ​out July 24, 2020 via ​Hopestreet Recordings​.

New York singer and activist ​Danielle Ponder pairs up with Melbourne cinematic soul outfit ​Karate Boogaloo to deliver ​“Look Around,” a haunting reflection on the times we live in. ​“Look Around” was written in the studio with the band in the first days of 2020 when Danielle was in Melbourne, and at the time was conceived as a cry for help in the literal firestorm that was engulfing Australia. As 2020 progressed, the words that came in that moment of inspiration seemed to reflect each of the multiplying calamities this year has presented. When the death of George Floyd ignited indignation across the USA and the world, the lyrics to Look Around could not have been more apropos.

In Danielle’s words: “fires were raging through Australia and smoke covered the sky. It felt like all of our human sins had gotten the best of us and we were paying a price. I didn’t know that when I arrived back home in the U.S, the world would only get darker. I feel like my past self wrote this song for my future self knowing what was to come.” ​This song would help Danielle through what has been one of the most painful times to be Black in America.

Coming from different continents and different backgrounds was no obstacle to Danielle Ponder and Karate Boogaloo forming an immediate musical connection in the studio. Karate Boogaloo is a formidable studio band with years of studious focus learning soul music and its history. The instant connection is obvious on ​“Look Around”, ​as the band and Danielle sound like they’d been playing together for years rather than hours. Black Lives Matter, while being a US based movement, has a strong resonance in Australia where Indigenous people are massively over-represented in prison populations and in fatal interactions with the police. Thus, sales in July and August are going to be donated to the Equal Justice Initiative in the USA and Warriors Of The Aboriginal Resistance in Australia.

Danielle Ponder & Karate Boogaloo - Look Around

There is something simultaneously both brand-new and retro about 'All News Is Good News’ - the debut album from Melbourne's instrumental soul group Surprise Chef. It sounds like something dreamt up by lo-fi cousins of David Axelrod and Janko Nilovic, with dramatic Library-music-esque cinematic arrangements echoing both light and dark, delving into moments of dissonance and positivity. There is a meticulous education of 1970’s soul on display that touches on the legacies of the great composer / producers, yet at the same time, this is a truly contemporary record that could have only been made now. 

The first limited pressing of 'All News Is Good News’ was released on the band's own 'College Of Knowledge' imprint in November 2019. It slipped rapidly into the collective consciousness of underground music lovers around the world, with all copies selling out within a week and becoming a firm favourite at Mr Bongo HQ in the process. We felt Surprise Chef had made something very special, a future-classic, and that needed to be heard well beyond those lucky enough to have bagged those limited first copies.

Formed at the end of 2017, Surprise Chef have grown within the fertile, creative, and supportive Melbourne music scene. Whilst the band is comprised of four core members, the album features friends and family as guest instrumentalists on flute, saxophone, vibraphone, congas, and assorted percussion; all adeptly recorded by engineer Henry Jenkins from the band Karate Boogaloo. The warm-raw-authenticity of the album was captured in the recordings live to tape over a handful of sessions in the band’s home studio in Melbourne’s inner-northern suburb of Coburg. As band member Lachlan Stuckey explains “All of the music we record is tracked live to tape, simply because so many of the records we love most were made that way".

The results are a captivating journey of instrumental cinematic-soul that will connect with the hardened Axelrod, Truth & Soul, El Michels Affair, and Daptone's fans, as well as the open-minded first-time listener. We are very excited to share this first slice of Surprise Chef’s world, with plenty more magic from these guys coming around the corner very soon.

Ode To The Big Sea

The Cinematic Orchestra

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