Says Nai, 'I was ready to give up on the whole band idea, because the musicians were amazing вЂ“ like, really gifted musicians вЂ“ but it needed more than that. Bender, who'd made it his 'mission' to seek out complementary players, found that challenging. In fact, the fantastically named Hiatus Kaiyote came together over time, its members encountering one another fatefully in various bands, cafГ©s, and share houses. Straight away I was like, Oh, man, I gotta do a band with this girl.' He business-carded her post-gig but Nai, having no formal musical background, was initially unsure about collaborating, worried her songs were 'a bit weird'. I'd never really heard that combination of elements before. She just started playing and singing and I was like, Whoa, what is this? This is crazy! I was instantly blown away by the voice and the complexity of the tunes. It was like this child's pink shit little nylon guitar. 'She started the set explaining that her guitar was locked in someone's house and she couldn't get it, so she had to borrow this one. 'I didn't know what she was gonna do because she was there with this really whack pink guitar,' Bender remembers drolly. Bender, as everybody calls him, was hanging out at Gertrude's Brown Couch in Melbourne's groovy inner suburb of Fitzroy when the striking Nai performed solo. Hiatus Kaiyote's story begins with a girl toting a novelty guitar. It seems to pass by in a small fraction of that time.ItвЂ™s inspiring to think that a four-piece band from the mid-Northern Melbourne, Australia suburbs could explode around the globe with a genre defying cascade of soulful sounds that would inspire the likes of some of the most respected names in popular music and a rabid legion of fans worldwide. Even with the addition of a Q-Tip-enhanced version of 'Nakamarra' here, the album is succinct at 35 minutes. 'Nakamarra' is the least complicated of the bunch and is warm and relaxed enough to pass for a cover of a Soulquarians project, though it's hard to imagine even Bilal coming up with 'We two will breathe, aqua queen/Though vast distance between us, heart sails with love.' The stormy 'Lace Skull' resembles Grace-era Jeff Buckley, especially though the jabs and spirals from Palm's guitar, while 'Malika' has an alluring ebb-and-flow quality. The other five tracks are fully developed songs. 'Ocelot' is wickedly choppy with Palm's voice left raw and imposing: 'My, my, my ocelot tongue is sharp and I'll eat you up.' The knotted 'Boom Child' is funky enough to cause animated scowls, while the instrumentals 'Rainbow Rhodes' and 'Sphinx Gate' make for a twinkling, dreamlike succession.

Five tracks are two minutes or shorter and leave lasting impressions. They're rooted primarily in decades-old forms of jazz, funk, and soul, yet they sound modern through abstract hip-hop twists and delightful weirdness. Led by singer, songwriter, and guitarist Nai Palm, whose slightly scratchy voice croons and howls one moment and then soothes and attacks the next, the band alternates between straight and crooked R&B. Tawk Tomahawk, homemade and self-released in 2012, also impressed Salaam Remi, who signed the band to his Sony-distributed sub-label Flying Buddha. KCRW's Garth Trinidad and BBC Radio 6's Gilles Peterson were among the first DJs to pick up on them, and the likes of ?uestlove, Erykah Badu, and Flying Lotus expressed enthusiasm. As with Sweden's Little Dragon, New Zealand's Electric Wire Hustle, and Denmark's Quadron before them, Australia's Hiatus Kaiyote gained notice through a loose network of figures that promotes and/or creates progressive R&B and hip-hop.

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