Forming over 5 years ago, the Melbourne, Australia-based funk/soul collective The Cactus Channel have developed a reputation for being one of Australia’s premier funk and soul instrumental bands, as they’ve released two full-length efforts and four 45s, backing sessions for Mojo Juju and WILSN, as well as production work on future soul and old school soul records.
Internationally recognized, Australian-born, Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter and producer, Nick Murphy, best known to the music world as Chet Faker has been pretty busy over the past two years or so, but in that time, Murphy collaborated with The Cactus Channel on the “Kill the Doubt”/”Sleeping Alone” 7 inch, which was recently released digitally through Downtown Records across North America and Hope Street Recordings throughout the rest of the world. The single pairs an eerie and anxious arrangement of stuttering percussion, shimmering guitar chords played through gentle reverb, brief blasts of organ and horns with Murphy’s effortlessly soulful vocals to create a sound that is modern but subtly nods to old school soul.
Lyrically, the song’s narrator is nervous, uncertain, paranoid and driven mad by lust and their own insecurities and seems to be in a tensely dysfunctional and confusing relationship in which his own doubts and insecurities never seem to assuaged, and he seems to be constantly at his wit’s end. He expresses dismay, frustration, confusion, desperation and desire within the turn of a phrase in a song that’s uncomfortably tense and yet sexy.
