'Carn The Boogers' / Karate Boogaloo
Melbourne funk favourites Karate Boogaloo earn their stripes with debut LP Carn the Boogers.
After having released two mixtapes of Boogalooesque interpretations of hip-hop sampled favourites and 80’s anthems, Karate Boogaloo have released Carn the Boogers on College of Knowledge Records, years after its recording back in 2017. Unsurprisingly, the album is named after the fan cry that the Boogers invented themselves; one which echoed throughout the amphitheatre as loyal fans flung their boots to the sky at Meredith 2019, and that became an unspoken mutual bond between audience members squashed like sardines at Northside Records’ annual tribute to funk-legend James Brown on Christmas night at The Curtin.
The LP itself cruises through deep-funk, cinematic soul and library music with 12 tracks that flow into each other with effortless ease and with titles as noteworthy as the album. Marriage For All or None At All is the opening track of the LP, the most dance-floor ready complete with washy synth-lines, arpeggiating electric guitar and an up-tempo groove.
Funky Mummy continues on the same trajectory with break-heavy drumming, wonky guitar and syncopated bass and synth stabs that facilitate a dreamlike groove that wanes to the call-and-repeat dialogue between guitar and base. The punchy synth lines are honed in on in Slappy, with a background guitar line that builds tension with increasing delay akin to the buzzing of flies.
The Lawsuit is my personal favourite track of the LP. The idea of cinematic soul was lost on me before embarking on the listening adventure of The Lawsuit. Now, I understand it to mean to downtempo beats, an emotional electric guitar melody that resonates with its romantic aura and a textured synth-line that succumbs to distortion.
Hump Day Hymn starts with a call of Carn The Boogers from the band members themselves (meaning they’ve had this cry for at least three years!) before evolving into an up-tempo syncopated groove with transformative synth rolls. The tempo is brought down a notch in Poppy where an intoxicated haze of subtle percussion and wonky guitar develops, reminding me of being in the fields amongst nature. Space Language, however; trades the fields of our lovely Earth for otherworldly stabs in an extraterrestrial haven where funk is the language of communication. The final track Reminder is a down-tempo lullaby that forms a subtle but resolutive conclusion to the narrative that Carn the Boogers takes us on.
In all, Carn The Boogers is a captivating debut LP from Karate Boogaloo that reminds us that the four-piece band have truly carved their own unique sound full of drunken guitar lines, wishy-washy synths and syncopated stabs from bass and drums alike. Here’s to a 2020 with new KB music!
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Images by Izzie Austin
Article by Margarita Bassova