Premiere: Supathick enlist Perth favourites for debut EP, Dinner And A Film

Header image by Dan Hildebrand.

Around six months ago we introduced the world to Supathick, a new supergroup of sorts that consists of members spread across Perth's electronic, jazz and hip-hop worlds with a common love of collaborative songwriting and creative experimentation. Made up of members spanning Demon Days, Almond Soy, Wooly Mammoth and Grace Armstrong, the five-piece very much feels like the highlights of these groups' overlaps; rich jazz and brightly-lit pop moving amongst a backbone firmly placed in this nostalgic funk and disco realm.

Supathick is very much a product of a music space that thrives on community-built collaboration, but in saying that, the group's debut EP takes that to an entirely new level. Premiering on Pilerats today, Supathick's debut EP Dinner And A Film feels less like a collaborative EP and more like a line-up of West Australian names you should be paying attention to, going even further from the rich electronic/jazz/soul tapestries to deepen their sound and really relish the creative freedom that a group like Supathick can bring to the table.

Dinner And A Film are four tracks that sit well within the Supathick universe despite being fleeting in sound and textures; the group using the EP to show that even if they move between different sounds and flavours, there's a common core that keeps everything in check and distinctly them - that being this romantic, soulfully rich funk sound that moves between dancefloor-ready in some of the EP's most upbeat moments, to ones a little more slow and subtle, like the brilliantly smooth Here & Now.

The entire EP feels like a highlight, which makes it hard to pick favourites. I'm There enlists DULCIE's Saskia Brittain for a track that feels like the centre of a Donna Summer / Tom Misch Venn diagram (which is incredibly exciting to say), while both The View and the aforementioned Here & Now - which features Kaitlin Keegan and Leah McFetridge respectively - dabble in this smoother, sensual take on the Supathick sound that feels more heavily drenched in their experience within the soul, jazz and trip-hop worlds.

However, most eyes will be centred on the EP's final track, and there's a good reason for that. 100 Miles feels like an encapsulation of Supathick at their peak, enlisting two Perth favourites - go-to rapper Hyclass and freshly-label-signed Your Girl Pho - for a track that really captures Supathick and their multi-faceted sound at the height of its craft; their soulful edge emphasised by Your Girl Pho's potently rich vocal, while Hyclass takes Supathick to a realm unexplored, adding a hip-hop touch that really brings this collaborative experimentation to the forefront.

Recorded by Jack Seah back in 2018 and 2019, the group admit that they've been "sitting on these songs for too long now," but that also means that we probably won't have to wait too long to see what's next: "We’ve just recorded four new tracks too!"

Take a dive into the EP below:

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