25-Aug-2020 | Snooch Dodd & The Pro-Teens

Snooch Dodd & The Pro-Teens

I Flip My Life Every Time I Fly is the first single and title track from the upcoming Pro-Teens album. The tune is a clear rendering of the sound represented on the album; a heavy mid-tempo cinematic soul cut with deep hip hop sensibilities, easily likened to a meeting of El Michels Affair and Madlib. Rich in vivid musical textures, the track features deeply layered instrumentation of hammered dulcimer, dual guitars and analogue keyboard sounds, creating an eerie, dramatic soundtrack-esque mood.
 
The Pro-Teens is the mysterious, all- but-anonymous studio project of Karate Boogaloo drummer Hudson Whitlock.
 
Between 2017-2019, Whitlock wrote, recorded and released three anomalistic cinematic soul albums attributed to ‘The Pro-Teens’. Using pseudonyms such as ‘Dead Honest Dean Amazing’ and ‘Libby Clique-baité’ when crediting players on the albums allowed the project to maintain anonymity, which created a sense of mystique when the LPs appeared on the racks of Melbourne record stores.
 
‘I Flip My Life Every Time I Fly’ is the next in this series of Pro-Teens albums – this time, the project is symbolically led by fictional keyboardist ‘Snooch Dodd’, and carries greater sensibilities of the relationship between break-heavy soul/funk and boom-bap hip hop beats.
 
Directed by Whitlock, the record was learnt, arranged and recorded on the spot at the College Of Knowledge – a weekend-long flurry of live recording that saw percussionists strewn throughout the hallway, a marimba in the lounge room and a BMW sedan with a microphone to the engine on the front porch.
 
The record features a notable cast of Melbourne instrumentalists, including members of Surprise Chef and Karate Boogaloo, reimagined as characters in the imaginative alternate cartoon reality of The Pro-Teens.
 
The Pro-Teens represent yet another piece in the puzzle of underground cinematic soul in Melbourne. I Flip My Life Every Time I Fly follows on from College Of Knowledge Records’ recent releases of Surprise Chef’s All News Is Good News and Karate Boogaloo’s Carn The Boogers albums.