Thank you for visiting our Pozible campaign page!!

We are Highlife, a world music act based on the Sunshine Coast. Our sound is a unique concoction of African rhythms, psychedelic funk and improvisational fusion, described as ‘afro/psych’. With your help, we aim to finish our debut album and share it with the world and we're offering some great incentive rewards to our supporters.

Introducing ourselves - the band is built around Hayden Hack, a talented singer/songwriter who was raised in South Africa and the UK by professional musician parents. Hayden, who settled on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland after immigrating to Australia 12 years ago, grew up around touring artists and has himself recently returned from a solo tour in his homeland of South Africa. Completing the Highlife rhythm section is Nathaniel Combs, a percussion teacher who has just returned from studying in West Africa, well known jazz drummer Max Sportelli, Brad Wenham on 6 string bass and Paddy Kiernan on electric guitar. We're also reguarly joined on tour by the Highlife dance trio and our good friend, the legendary Bassidi Koné, a very talented balafon and djembe player from Mali, West Africa who also features on a few tracks on the upcoming album including the most recent release Sing My Soul (featuring Bassidi Koné).

We have been working on the album for some years now. We've released the first two tracks and are in the process of recording and mixing a further 8 tracks to complete the album, but budgetary constraints have slowed things down. The first track from the album, Aware, won a Queensland Music Award for best world music song and the follow up, Sing My Soul (featuring Bassidi Koné) was released in December 2018 (check out the new clip for it below!). We're super stoked to be sharing our original music with you and we're very excited to be releasing new tracks during 2019 and the full length album around December/January with your help!

In a world where 3 minute pop songs rule the charts it's refreshing to know that there are still musicians out there who put art and originality before commercial conformity. Highlife is a project that aims to push the boundaries of convention and create music with heart and soul, the roots of which run deep in tribal culture and connection, where old and new intersect and inspire movement of the mind, body and spirit. We're pioneering our own sound which doesn't fit into any corporate box and by contributing to our campaign, you're encouraging this musical evolution. You are an important part of the creation! In return for your pledge, we look forward to sharing the rewards with you in the near future!

You'll notice that the expected delivery date on most rewards is January 2020, this is when we expect to be releasing the album in full, assuming that the crowd funding campaign is successful. Many of the rewards however will most likely be delivered well before then, such as the t-shirts, house concerts, gig invitations, etc. These rewards will all be available in the second half of 2019.

Based on the first two tracks we've realeased, we've been able to put together this budget to finish the remaining 8 tracks for the album.

Here's a little message from Natty at the studio:

Studio time (recording the rest of the tracks in the studio) - $1500 total

Mixing (by the legendary Lord Tanuki himself - Paulie B)- $450 per track (450 x 8) = $3600

Mastering (making the tracks sound awesome on your devices or on the radio) - $200 per track (200 x 8) = $1600

Replication (printing and production of the CD's) - $1350 

Merch (printing funky Highlife t-shirts for y'all) - $1000

Artwork (album art and graphic design) - $500

Total = $9550