The Prayer

Dune Castle Records Presents… For Private Use Only by Cantrips, two heaving psychedelic funk pieces composed by Cantrips' Patrick Ryan and recorded over one day by a studio band including members of Surprise Chef and Karate Boogaloo.

Cantrips is a Melbourne psychedelic funk and cinematic soul group led by multi instrumentalist and studio producer Patrick Ryan. With heavy groove sensibilities, Ryan composes head nodding psychedelic funk music from the Dune Castle Throne Room, a DIY studio in Thornbury, Melbourne, from where he operates the label Dune Castle Records. Ryan composed two tracks in homage to David Axelrod's work with Psychedelic Pop band The Electric Prunes in the late 1960s. Ryan performed these pieces with members of Surprise Chef, with Henry Jenkins (Karate Boogaloo, Surprise Chef, Emma Donovan and The Putbacks) producing the two pieces.

This release follows a psychedelic funk LP composed by Ryan under Dune Castle named Dark Age Martial Arts. A self released record; it was nominated for the Australian Music Prize 2022. It received airplay and support from Radio DJs around Australia on stations such as PBS, RRR and FBI, as well as featuring on radio shows across England, Scotland and France. It also received considerable support from record stores in Australia and the UK.

The Prayer and The Big Break are two bombastic psychedelic funk tracks that take cues from David Axelrod's work as composer and producer of psychedelic pop and rock group The Electric Prunes. Axelrod composed two records; concept albums that integrated Gregorian Music into psychedelic pop and rock, both of which hold true to his penchant for cinematic psychedelia and jazz funk sensibilities. Conceptually, these two tracks explore and aim to embody momentum and energy, as facilitated through the necessity for presence during a live studio session.

Composed by Ryan, the sheet music was brought to Lachlan Stuckey, Jethro Curtin, Carl Lindeberg and Hudson Whitlock (all of Surprise Chef) and Henry Jenkins (Karate Boogaloo) in a cramped DIY studio attic in Collingwood, Melbourne. The crew then spent the day learning, arranging, performing and recording the pieces. Bombastic jazz funk beats, fuzz wah guitar, farfisa organ, heavy bass and triumphant piano make up the DNA of these pieces, made to burn hot.