Karate Boogaloo

Karate Boogaloo play A L P H A B E T on Thursday 4 February, presented by the venue. They're a Melbourne funk and soul quartet whose tightly coiled grooves draw on small combo instrumental bands like Booker T & The MG's and The Meters. The four friends met at high school and forged a hyper-fluent, almost telepathic musical language through years of basement jams, lacing retro-soul self-seriousness with a wry, left-field wit.

Their approach is guided by a steadfast commitment to bending the rules. They record and mix on tape with no plugins and no edits, release exclusively in mono, and follow their own 'KB manifesto' of chosen limitations, expressed through their KB's Mixtape series of LPs. 2018's KB's Mixtape No. 1 became a cult classic in Melbourne, and KB's Mixtape No. 2 followed in September 2019 through Hopestreet Recordings. Beat Magazine has called them 'funk twisters', and Everything Is Noise described their sound as 'endlessly creative... a rich and cinematic musical language'.

It's an instrumental night, so the focus is on the playing rather than the singing. The set is built around the same kind of tight, locked-in grooves they've been honing since those early basement jams in Melbourne. If you're into the sound of the MG's or The Meters, this is exactly that territory: instrumental soul and funk played by four people who've been playing together since school.

A L P H A B E T is at 11 Dyke Road, Brighton, BN1 3FE. Doors open at 19:00, and the band takes the stage at 20:30. Tickets are £17.50.