Soul

Stylus were an Australian blue-eyed soul group formed in 1975. They were the only Australian act to be released by Motown Records in the USA. Stylus toured supporting George Benson, Average White Band, Ike & Tina Turner, and Little River Band. According to rock music historian, Ian McFarlane, Stylus "scored a number of hit singles and became very popular on the Australian pub and concert circuit". The group disbanded in 1979 and subsequently had various reunions. In 1998-99 Japan's Toshiba-EMI re-issued three Stylus albums on CDs (For the Love of Music, Best Kept Secret and Part of It All). Their reunions have resulted in a live album, Still Alive (2003); and a new studio album, Across Time (2010).

With a sold out headline show and more than 400,000 streams under his belt in 2021, Cadence is ready to take over the electronic scene with his signature dance sound, perfectly crafted for late summer nights. The vibrant melodies, soul-stirring lyrics and dance grooves which have become staples of the Cadence sound have attracted support from some of the biggest names in Australian music and with an all-new live show ready for the stage, 2022 is shaping up to be a huge year for this exciting new act.

MOTOR CITY SOUNDS pay tribute to the classic era of Motown and Soul music. Packing dance floors wherever they play, MCS bring an energy that can only be created by a live 10-piece band. Performing songs from artists such as Stevie Wonder, Jackson 5, The Supremes, Martha & The Vandellas, The Temptations, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye and Otis Redding. Not just another cover band, "Motor City Sounds" recreates the sound and atmosphere of Motown and Soul from the 60s and early 70s, with authentic arrangements and instrumentation.

​Featuring top-class musicians from around Victoria, including an X-Factor finalist, a former member of the John Butler Trio, and sessions with top Australian artists such as Geoff Achison, John McNamara, Brett Garsed and Neil Murray.
Available to perform a purely Motown tribute or a full night of Soul hits from many a favourite artist.

Motown music was forged from the idea that African-American artists could and should be heard on the same radio stations as any other musical act. The label and the music brought black and white together. Motown played an important role in the racial integration of popular music as an African American-owned record label that achieved significant crossover success.

"...I recognised the bridges that we crossed, the racial problems and the barriers that we broke down with music. I recognised that because I lived it. I would come to the South in the early days of Motown and the audiences would be segregated. Then they started to get the Motown music and we would go back and the audiences were integrated and the kids were dancing together and holding hands..." Smokey Robinson - Motown artist.

Deity, the debut album by Melbourne-based vocalist and songwriter Emma Volard, is a record of tensions: caught in the push-pull between light and shade, joy and sorrow, chaos and order, it’s an album that draws power from the divine messiness of the human experience. Synthesising acid jazz with modern R&B, dub with pop, and future soul with old-fashioned grooves, it’s a statement of profound artistic intent for Emma: a 12-part journey of self-expression and hard-won self-determination that combines the classic and the cutting edge to build something sleek and scintillatingly new. “This album is a revolt against oppressors, particularly those in the music industry — an f-you to anyone who tries to tear us down,” she says. Cathartic, vulnerable, and deeply, defiantly empowered, it’s a definitive document of feminist soul: a call for listeners to “discard the judgement of others, and embrace their bodies, their minds, and their souls.”

Raised between the hustle-and-bustle of inner-city Melbourne and the organic serenity of the coastal town of Philip Island, Emma’s upbringing provided the kind of musical education money can’t buy. Singing and dancing along to pop classics like “Spinning Around” and “I’m Blue” as a toddler snowballed into drum lessons from the age of eight, which turned into vocal training in high school and a voracious appetite for all the classics she could get her hands on, plumbing the depths of her grandma’s record collection to unearth gems by Aretha Franklin, The Beatles, Joe Cocker, and Ella Fitzgerald. Emma’s training continued while studying music at university, where she discovered luminaries like Etta James and Erykah Badu, the latter of whom would become a clear guiding light in her journey towards a place of gleaming fusion jazz music.

This omnivorous upbringing is written between the lines on Deity, which embraces the fullness of Emma’s multihyphenate musical upbringing, touching on breathless polyrhythms and indelible hooks, a clear-eyed political bend and, at the centre of it all, Emma’s sublime, silken vocal. It’s a potent combination that Emma has showcased with her band during live sets at Meadow, Leaps & Bounds, and Brunswick Music Festival, as well as in support slots for celebrated artists like REMI, Emma Donovan, and Horatio Luna.

Deity was led by “Femininity”, a powerful statement of intent that encapsulates Emma’s devoutly feminist politic with the cutting-edge bricolage of her music, which was praised by tastemakers including Double J’s Zan Rowe, Triple J’s Nkechi Anele, and Gilles Peterson. Combining cinematic strings and a motorik guitar groove with Emma’s plush, soulful vocal, it’s a jaw-dropping introduction to a record that touches on loose, acidic techno (“My Desire”), ambient spoken-word (“Searching”) and, in its spectacular, dynamic coda, the kind of darkly-toned avant-garde jazz practised by UK luminaries like Moses Boyd. Above all, though, Deity is a statement record, one that positions creativity as a brazen political act, a mode of self-expression that can’t be silenced or diminished. “Deity is a love letter to myself,” she says, “That reminds me to embrace who I am, to break boundaries, to express myself without fear, to allow myself to grow and to love unconditionally.”