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HARVEY
SUTHERLAND
releases
second record
DEBT

Out now via Clarity Recordings

Australian
tour dates this
November

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Photo – Izzie Austin

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“one of our current favs, someone whose groove we are massively digging at the moment” – Tom Ravenscroft, BBC 6 Music

“another solid gold banger from Australian fave Harvey Sutherland,…this makes me really sad that I’m not in Australia like Harvey Sutherland, like looking forward to summer.. this feels like such a summer bop..” – Nathan & Deb, BBC 6 Music

“always a good day when the local synthesizer guru drops new music” – Simon Winkler, RRR

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Melbourne’s Harvey Sutherland releases his new album, Debt, via his own Clarity Recordings imprint. In addition to the release, he’ll also be playing select dates in the States beginning this week to celebrate the album, presenting a new live show for the first time in the USA.

The album is preceded by three singles. Most recent single, “Running in Place” feat. They Hate Change, sees the rap group THC trade verses over Harvey’s slick, woozy deep house roller. An understated and moody slice of 2-step, “Remember” features an airy but commanding vocal performance from Vicky Farewell, an Orange County-bred multi-hyphenate. Her lyrics imply a lost lover, but it’s unclear whether the conversation she’s having is real, or imagined. The weightless half-step production lends a dubwise flavour, referencing elements of “Lovers Rock” reggae with all its requisite nostalgia and romantic complications. “Body Language” features Julian Hamilton (The Presets) who contributes an ethereal vocal performance over Harvey’s kaleidoscopic grooves, and caught the attention of Mixmag and Resident Advisor upon its release with the announcement of Debt, and was recently named Song of the Day by The Current/MPR. Here in Australia, there’s been an outpour of love with rotation adds from Double J and support from The Guardian, Rolling Stone AU and Music Feeds. Last week, an intimate group of fans were treated to Harvey’s live show, getting an early glimpse of the new record at Live at RRR.

Debt concerns itself with the cost of doing business in the meme economy. In his first LP since the 2022 debut, Boy, the Australian artist reduces his fusion – y disco repertoire to 10 microhoused funk essentials. This is minimalism not so much as aesthetic conceit than pressurised container, shaken in the Escher-ized time and space unique to our overdriven, red-lining present. The album’s title nods to the financial contortions necessary to strive/survive/thrive as an independent artist. But Debt is better understood as the ledger of what we owe and to whom, in the course of a creative life. What’s the ROI of being an artist, a son, a friend, a partner, a father? Have we been worth our loved ones’ own investments? If that sounds transactional, this is merely the lingua franca of our overwhelmingly digital culture, a grifter’s bazaar in which Bob Dylan tunes up over Salt Bae and Wordsworth’s pitch is opposite the Rizzler.

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Debt came to life when Harvey Sutherland acquired a freight – load of Y2K minimal cargo from Akufen, Ricardo, and Baby Ford — courtesy of local Melbourne hero Martin L — which bent the album towards a moreish pointillism. The resulting music’s eyes – down minimal gestures within expressive pop shapes feels apt for the apparently contradictory things we can’t help craving: immediacy and craft, on-tap “authenticity,” life lessons drawn from Reel nonsense. A few years after the “neurotic funk” of Boy, a thorough excavation of interiority that comprised Harvey Sutherland’s first LP proper, Debt is his to-the-point response to pressures that manifest outside the self. But in its own way, it remains a reflection of Harvey Sutherland’s musical innerscapes, which stretch across the grit and glitter of private-press disco and the sensual grids of Metro Area.

As with Boy, Harvey Sutherland opens Debt to a tight crew of collaborators — the Tampa rap duo (and Jan Jelinek heads) They Hate Change, California native Vicky Farewell, who appears on the smoky Lovers’ Rock of “Remember”, and one of Australia’s great songwriters, Julian Hamilton of The Presets. The album’s globally dispersed cast is a natural extension of a charmed musical life that has taken Harvey Sutherland to the DJ booth at Panorama Bar, a stage on Glastonbury as a bandleader, an opener for Khruangbin and Hot Chip, and a remixer for Disclosure, Cut Copy, Genesis Owusu, and loads more. One of Debt ‘s concerns — anxieties!? — is that these experiences are precariously held and easily lost in the infinite scroll of AI slop, which has already become a kind of musical impresario, responsible for music that has been streamed a billion times and made by musicians that don’t exist. But Debt has no time, or space, for complaint. It’s the same game it’s always been — artistry or bust.

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DEBT is out now via CLARITY RECORDINGS
BUY/STREAM HERE

DEBT tracklist

1. Chop Chop, Movie Boy
2. Cigarette
3. Body Language ft. Julian Hamilton
4. Flash!
5. Remember ft. Vicky Farewell
6. Nobody Like U
7. Theme For Z
8. Running In Place ft. They Hate Change
9. What Do You Need To Feel Heard?
10. Hummingbird

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HARVEY SUTHERLAND –
Australian Tour Dates

Friday 7 November – Beach Hotel, Byron Bay NSW
Saturday 8 November – La La Land, Brisbane QLD
Friday 14 November – The Night Cat, Melbourne VIC
Saturday 15 November – Sydney TBA

Tickets for all shows are on sale now.

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About Harvey Sutherland

Harvey Sutherland, née Mike Katz, the Melbourne-born record producer, keyboard player, club DJ and bandleader, made a name amongst his hometown’s electronic underground with a string of cult dance singles. He has produced remixes for Disclosure, Khruangbin and Chromeo among many others, toured with Hot Chip, Maribou State and Carly Rae Jepsen and also contributed production to Genesis Owusu’s debut Smiling With No Teeth. In 2022, he released his debut album, Boy, with Resident Advisor noting that “Katz’s sense of musicality has always been head and shoulders above his peers…his songs are full-blooded and fleshed-out, a collection of irresistible disco and funk with clever turns of phrase and killer grooves.” The album was nominated for two ARIA Awards (Best Electronic/Dance Release and the Michael Gudinski Breakthrough Artist Award) and won the Music Victoria Award for Best Electronic Work, was nominated for the Australian Music Prize and peaked at #2 Dance Album, #5 Vinyl Album, and #10 Australian Album on the ARIA charts. His new album Debt follows a string of club singles “Hummingbird,” “Nobody Like U” and “Cigarette” – released in recent months to acclaim and play across BBC Radio 1, 6 Music, KCRW, dublab, NTS Radio and a slew of Australian community stations – which also appear on the new album.

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HARVEY SUTHERLAND
INSTAGRAM – TIKTOK – X – RA – WEBSITE

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AMNPLIFY – DB