Boy

M/M - New copy.

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’.

“I wanted it to come across kind of pseudo-academic – you know, psychobabble,” grins Mike Katz. A producer and bandleader from Melbourne, Australia, Katz has been releasing music under the name Harvey Sutherland since 2013. The concept of neurotic funk came out of a chat he had with his friend Sam, a Lacanian scholar and meme lord. Yes, it’s meant tongue-in-cheek. But there’s the germ of something serious in there too, something Katz addresses further in Boy’s naggingly groovy lead single "Jouissance”. “I learned the word from my therapist – there’s no easy English translation, but it’s the itch that demands scratching, a masochistic desire.” The term seemed to speak to Katz’s musical process – a congenital perfectionist and overthinker doing his utmost to get louche and loose. For me it represents an obsessional energy, a frustration in finding the funk,” he laughs. “It’s about acknowledging my shortcomings along the way.”

• Tracklist
• Characteristics
• Barcode and other identifiers