Sugarlicks Records is a label and production house working with a diverse collective of artists, performers and producers in Auckland City since 2001. We specialise in conscious, uplifting and diverse urban soul and electronica.
The label was established in 2001 as a result of the live nights at famous Auckland venue Khuja Lounge, where a melting pot of artists came to mash together Pacific soul and hiphop, percussion and electronic music with spoken word and performance. The label came to specialise in electronic soul music with a Pacific yet global flavour.
In 2015, Sugarlicks also became a boutique agency representing predominantly New Zealand artists to a Worldwide audience, with an initial focus on the Asia Pacific, MENA and South American markets.
Our Philosophy is simple: the authenticity and expression possible through music and the arts has the power to transcend cultural boundaries, and transform societies – to educate, inspire and unify.
We embrace the revolutionary avant-garde in art – as a new conception of spatiality and the unfolding of time, as a championing of youth, experimentation and originality, and as a counter to mainstream or hierarchical art or structural practice. We believe in art and music as revolutionary practice to expand the notion of the sensible, and reclaim authenticity from the numb mainstream.
Listen to label releases here, on bandcamp, youtube and soundcloud.
From “Transculturalism – How The World is Coming Together” by Claude Grunitzky and TRACE magazine contributors:
“Some individuals find ways to transcend their initial culture, in order to explore, examine, and infiltrate new, seemingly alien cultures. These people are “transculturalists” and their experiences show that in the future it will become increasingly difficult to identify and separate people according to previously accepted delineations. In essence, we are saying that transculturalism defies race, religion, sexuality, class and every sort of classification known to sociologists and marketers. Transculturalists lead unusual lives, and some people continue to call them heretics. They date and marry outside of their race or religion; they date and marry inside of their gender; they travel on a whim and venture into faraway lands; they dress unconventionally, and customize new dress codes regularly; they live in areas their parents were once barred from, and take jobs previously considered outside of their leagues; they listen to, and create and criticize music they are not supposed to listen to; they display high levels of creativity in the arts and other progressive disciplines.
What succeeds empire? Time will tell. And time does tell, for those who are willing to listen, and look around, and be surprised. Today is less like yesterday than it has ever been. When people are not busy predicting, they find it easier to discover. Fresh attitudes only now gaining scale and traction–transglobalism, transculturalism–promise much for the future. The very value of these attitudes derives from the fact that they are not inherited. ”