They may not be a household name across every corner of Australia, but the artists who count themselves fans of Hiatus Kaiyote most certainly are. The Melbourne-formed quartet is marking 15 years of genre-defying music this month with a series of headline anniversary shows — a milestone that has prompted the band to look back across four albums, three Grammy nominations, multiple ARIA nods, and an extraordinary list of admirers that includes Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Drake, Kendrick Lamar, Pharrell Williams, SZA and the late Prince.
A catalogue that titans keep reaching for
Hiatus Kaiyote's music — a vivid, restless collision of futuristic soul, jazz, funk, R&B and hip-hop — has proven irresistible to some of the biggest names in global music. Their work has been sampled by Beyoncé and Jay-Z, and by Drake and Kendrick Lamar, placing a Melbourne group at the heart of some of the most celebrated recordings in contemporary hip-hop and R&B.
Frontwoman Nai Palm says hearing those interpretations has looped back into the band's own live performance. "Our song The World It Softly Lulls — there's a vocal part we're doing live that's actually how the sample on the Beyoncé and Jay-Z track was chopped up," she explains, referring to the pair's 2018 track 713.
The group is also signed to Brainfeeder, the respected label founded by Flying Lotus, and has drawn the attention of Doja Cat, who covered their track Red Room for a BBC Live Lounge session. "She adds a vocal run that is really hard for me to un-hear," Nai says with evident admiration.
Finding new life in old material for the anniversary run
For a band that has always looked forward, revisiting 15 years of output for a two-hour show has been both a challenge and a pleasure. "There's a lot of going back through our old material and seeing what we love and re-arranging it so that we love it again," Nai says. "I never want to not like what I do and just be going through the motions for the sake of it."
That tinkering spirit has always been central to Hiatus Kaiyote's live experience. As the band members have grown — musically and personally — Nai says they now have "more colours to paint with," though knowing when to hold back matters just as much. A song like Nakamarra, she notes, demands restraint: "You don't want to over-colour it because the beauty of it is its simplicity."
Nai, who describes herself as "not really a numbers kind of guy," acknowledges the significance of the anniversary nonetheless. "It feels like my entire life. How do we fit four albums into a two-hour show? That's been really fun." She returned to Melbourne recently after a trip to Papua New Guinea, where she served as a mentor in fellow artist Ngaiire's Musik Blok programme — making the return to a Melbourne winter all the more jarring, she jokes.
Creative restlessness that goes far beyond the studio
Hiatus Kaiyote's creativity extends well beyond their recordings. Their inspirations span the mating rituals of leopard slugs, Studio Ghibli director Hayao Miyazaki, French opera and classical music. They have put their stamp on tracks originally by Gorillaz, Jefferson Airplane and Dolly Parton's Jolene — the latter alongside Emma Donovan — and have even reworked their own catalogue into easy-listening muzak to soundtrack a pop-up store of album-inspired products.
Managing four distinct personalities and musical tastes within the band is, in Nai's words, "literally the bane of my existence" — but also a core creative principle. "A huge ethos of the band is people will perform better and write better if they feel valued and if they feel like it's a true expression of what they like to do," she says.
With the anniversary shows now underway, Hiatus Kaiyote demonstrate that 15 years of rule-breaking has only sharpened their appetite for what comes next.
