Selected Works is a weekly (usually) newsletter by Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand)- based freelance music journalist, broadcaster, copywriter, and sometimes DJ Martyn Pepperell, aka Yours Truly. Most weeks, Selected Works includes a recap of what I’ve been doing lately, along with what I’ve been listening to and reading, paired with film photographs I’ve taken, plus some bonuses. That said, sometimes it takes completely different forms.

NEWSLETTER RECAP:

Over the last few weeks I’ve been republishing a series of updated archival interviews and feature stories I wrote about musical legends and myths like Midori Takada, Alice Coltrane, Doug Hream Blunt and Jess Sah Bi & Peter One. There will be more of that coming over the rest of the year, but for now, I just wanted to recap on the one’s I’ve published for you. I think they’re pretty great.

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FRIDAY MORNING AT VOGELMORN CAFE:

Once a year, I play a Friday morning DJ set at Vogelmorn Cafe in Wellington. This year, it's Friday the 6th of November. I’ll be spinning a long set of floaty house, techno and boogie from 9 am until 12 pm. Entry is free, and you can get a $3 bottomless filter coffee. Bring a friend. Bring your laptop. Bring your children. Within reason, bring whatever!

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WHAT I’VE BEEN LISTENING TO:

Juan Atkins, the man behind Cybotron, Model 500 and many other influential parts of proto-techno and techno history, has just passed away aged 64. I’ll be revisiting a lot of his music over the next week. For today, here’s a Model 500 record he released on R&S. RIP to an amazing musician, thinker and leader.

Here’s a debut from a couple of years back. Proper journey electronica.

I can’t stop talking about how good this glossy deep house EP is. The Japanese producers really know what they’re doing.

Higher Intelligence Agency. Say less.

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WHAT I’VE BEEN READING:

RA: Juan Atkins, techno pioneer and Belleville Three member, dies aged 64: Juan Atkins, a founding father of techno, has died aged 64. Greensmith Artists, the agency that represents the legendary Detroit producer, broke the news to Resident Advisor today, November 1st. A representative of the company confirmed that he was found unresponsive in his hotel room in Mexico City prior to a planned performance at YuYu Cine Club, and later pronounced dead after being taken to hospital. Read here.

DJ Mag: Recognise 119: Paige Tomlinson: Liverpool’s Paige Tomlinson channels big-room rave, trance and hard house euphoria into her mix for the Recognise series, and speaks to Kelly Doherty about finding her feet DJing for Defected and Moxy Muzik, her Social Pleasure party brand, and her love of dance music at its most exhilarating. Read here.

Mixmag ANZ: Venue Spotlight: Angel Music Bar - One of Naarm’s most regularly soundtracked CBD spots has been renewed rather than replaced. Mixmag ANZ spoke with its new owners Edd Fisher and Jamie Bennett, alongside programmer Naomi Salim to find out why. Read here.

Crack Mag: DIIV: Dress for Success: Five albums into a turbulent career, and in the wake of the Altadena wildfires that left frontman Zachary Cole Smith and his family homeless, US shoegazers DIIV have teamed up with A. G. Cook for a creative reset. And it might just be their most urgent work yet. Read here.

FIN.

Selected Works is a weekly (usually) newsletter by Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand)- based freelance music journalist, broadcaster, copywriter, and sometimes DJ Martyn Pepperell, aka Yours Truly. Most weeks, Selected Works includes a recap of what I’ve been doing lately, along with what I’ve been listening to and reading, paired with film photographs I’ve taken, plus some bonuses. That said, sometimes it takes completely different forms.

In 2007, the American jazz pianist, organist, harpist, singer, composer, and spiritual teacher Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda passed from this world to the next. In life, Alice Coltrane was a visionary with an extraordinary story, but until the 2010s, her legacy was at least partially obscured by her long-departed husband, John Coltrane, arguably the greatest jazz saxophonist of his generation and an incalculable influence on the genre.

In the years following John’s death in 1967, Alice underwent a series of revelations. After releasing a remarkable run of cosmic jazz albums in the late 1960s and 70s and pilgrimaging to India, these revelations led her to establish an ashram (a religious retreat) outside of Los Angeles and create a singular form of devotional music that could only be born from a life lived through the peaks and valleys of total ecstasy and inescapable agony.

Though once a relatively obscure part of the musician’s history, Alice Coltrane’s worship recordings have become a much more frequent topic of discussion over the last decade. With Vedic chants punctuated by handclaps and tambourines, these songs differ from Indian and Nepalese devotional music in their use of celestial, star-spanning synthesiser, organs, strings, and drones; Western melodies and composition; and vocals tempered by the Detroit church choirs of her youth. It’s music that truly sounds like nothing else, born from her need to create for and with her spiritual community. Only she could have made it.

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Born Alice McLeod in Alabama in 1937, Alice Coltrane spent her childhood and teenage years on Detroit’s east side. The fifth of six siblings in a musical family, she took up piano and organ at a young age. By 16, Alice was accompanying several local choirs and gospel groups. Through these experiences, she first connected with the idea of devotional music. At the same time, the city’s burgeoning jazz scene called to her, and Alice became a familiar player around town before heading to Paris with her first husband, jazz singer Kenneth ‘Poncho’ Hagood.

There, she forged musical connections with players like Bud Powell, Lucky Thompson, and Kenny Clarke. She performed around the Parisian capital, took part in televised jazz broadcasts, and in 1960 she gave birth to her first daughter, Michelle. But Kenneth was using heroin, and as his habit grew, Alice returned to Detroit with her daughter and moved back in with her parents.

Back in Motor City, she returned to the local circuit and was captivated by the widescreen visions John Coltrane expressed in his albums of the time. Alice saw John perform in Detroit in 1962, and a year later she opened for him in New York with vibraphonist Terry Gibbs’ ensemble. Over time, they forged a relationship, and in 1965, two years after it began, they married in Juarez, Mexico. Yet by 1967, John would be dead from liver cancer. The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long.

During their time together, Alice and John had three sons, John Jr., Ravi, and Oran, and stepped beyond the framework of their traditional Christian upbringings, exploring Hinduism, Zen Buddhism, and Hare Krishna practices in search of something sublime and higher. This deep dive led to John’s titanic masterwork, A Love Supreme, and other freeform records that looked toward the light in their own way.

After John’s death, Alice went without food and sleep for days, suffering from hallucinations along the way. Her spiritual drive led her to the Vaishnavism branch of Vedic religion, where she met the Indian spiritual master Swami Satchidananda. Through his teachings, she found a connection between the individual and the infinite. Alice also learned to play the harp and began recording and performing with the era's crucial open-eared jazz musicians.

A series of incredible albums followed, mostly released through Impulse! or Warner Bros. Records. In 1970, she travelled to India with Swami Satchidananda on a five-week pilgrimage. Upon returning home, a higher force instructed her to establish her own ashram.

As a jazz fan in the 1970s, Yale Evelev saw Alice Coltrane perform and owned many of her records. As president of Luaka Bop (the New York record label first established by Talking Heads frontman David Byrne), Evelev has overseen recent reissues of lost Nigerian electro-funk pioneer William Onyeabor and outsider San Francisco musician Doug Hream Blunt.

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In 2017, the label released World Spiritual Classics: Volume I: The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitanana, a retrospective compilation of Alice’s devotional music, most of which was released on four cassettes between 1985 and 1995. Evelev knew about these tapes at the time, but only listened to them seriously after Prince Language, a Chicago-born house DJ, remixer, and re-editor with encyclopedic music knowledge and a special touch, prompted him.

Prince Language suggested he play all four releases together and sent him an MP3 folder. “That’s what blew me away,” Evelev admitted. “Fully hearing the music Alice invented, a mixture of the gospel she grew up with, jazz, (the music from) her travelling to India – her entire life and all of what that entails – made me realise what a complete world she had created, and how extraordinary and beautiful that is.”

Alice relocated her family to California in 1972. Three years later, she established the Vedantic Centre at her home in Woodland Hills, north of Los Angeles. Around this time, Purusha Hickson, one of Alice’s early spiritual students and today a Los Angeles-based hatha yoga teacher, discovered Alice’s music while volunteering at the One Mind Temple in San Francisco. The Temple served free hot vegetarian meals and played John’s music. One night, someone placed Alice’s Universal Consciousness LP on the record player. “When I heard it, I knew right away that this person had a higher understanding,” he reflected.

Soon after, she performed in Los Angeles. Hickson arranged travel, attended, and met with Alice. “There was nothing ostentatious about her,” he recalled. “She was about as down to earth in one way as anyone could be, but there was a mystical energy about her that was undeniable.”

A year later, he took initiation with Alice at The Vedantic Centre. “She became Swamini Turiyasangitananda to me,” Hickson continued. “She was a living example of someone I believe was in contact with the Most High. She would say, ‘Look, you have the same capacity. This isn’t something unique to me, but you have to cultivate that awareness within yourself.’ She was my guru, my mentor, my teacher, and an example of where I want to go in consciousness.”

On Sundays, Alice would lead her students in devotional Vedic ceremonies. They would perform solo and group chants, and over time, she began adding synthesisers to the proceedings. “It was like Swamini was this divine conductor,” Hickson enthused. “She would be communicating with this higher force. The music would build… and she would take us to some high devotional places. It was a village sound man. Everyone contributed to the energy we were building, however they chose. It really felt like a spiritual high.”

At the centre of this world sat the one instrument Alice had never used before: her voice. Hickson was amongst the first to hear her sing. “One particular evening, Swamini announced she’d made some cassette tapes for us,” Hickson recalled, speaking in soft Californian tones. “We all had Walkmans back then, so we listened individually on headphones.”

The cassettes in question were copies of 1982’s Turiya Sings, the first of the four extremely rare devotional tapes she released through Avatar Book Institute, an obscure private press label also headquartered at Alice’s Vedantic Centre. “When I heard her sing, there was such a force in her voice. She said, ‘Look, this is god manifesting. This is the divine that has allowed me to do this.’ It was another energy moving through her, and it was wonderful.”

Slowly but surely, Alice’s cassettes began to be heard beyond the ashram. By way of dubbed copies, MP3 folders, and shared YouTube uploads, they connected with not just a new generation of listeners, but a new wave of musicians. “Right away the album sent a chill down my spine and by the time the second song of the album played I was tearing up,” reflected New Orleans-based beatmaker AF THE NAYSAYER, a rising voice in the North American instrumental hip hop underground. “I’d just felt a staggering spiritual connection with the music on Turiya Sings, and I’m by no means a religious practitioner.”

“There does seem to be a point where a life saturated in sound leads someone back to their heart and their own vast, silent beingness,” mused New Zealand-born producer and DJ, Fis. A mercurial force in experimental music circles, Fis drank deeply from Alice’s wellspring of inspiration while expressing unique techno-ecological musical visions through EP and album releases on Tri Angle, Loopy, and Subtext.

“It’s telling to try and imagine the world suddenly deprived of her music, and everyone else’s music for that matter – I get an instant sense of collapsed dimensionality and crushingly tight space. I think Coltrane was a master at offering space through music, particularly prayer space and cosmological expansion. There are things I couldn’t have perceived or felt without her work.”

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In 1982, another tragedy befell Alice’s family. Her oldest son, John Jr., died in a car accident. He was barely 18. Deep sadness often brings deeper introspection, and the experience led to spiritual revelations once again. Finding solace in the Vedantic belief in reincarnation, Alice continued on and, a year later, opened the 48-acre Sai Anantam Ashram in Agoura, California, in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Over time, her spiritual community grew, drawing a diverse mix of African-American, Latin, Caucasian, and Indian members, all of whom gathered for music on Sundays. One of the youngest attendees was her great-nephew Steven Ellison, who now articulates his own widescreen musical visions as Flying Lotus. Another was Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini, who found success in underground hip-hop and later on, pop, as Doja Cat.

Alice Coltrane has been gone for close to two decades now, but in today's global political and social climate, the meditative and healing qualities of her music feel more relevant and sheltering than ever.

In 2017, Hickson and a group of her ashram singers gathered at New York’s Knockdown Centre venue to perform the music they used to share with Alice. The audience greeted them warmly. For Hickson, the reception came with a revelation.

“The best metaphor I have for it is this,” he explained. “Elders plant fruit trees in the backyard and tend to them, knowing that the trees will take a while to mature and they themselves will never eat that fruit. They tend to those trees with love and care, because they know the fruit is going to benefit others with time. That’s how I feel this music is with Swamini. There was an urgency for it to be completed. Somebody understood that all of this would be happening, and did work and effort with this intent, and here we are, part of that. That’s amazing to me.” A year later, Californian wildfires consumed Alice's ashram as they swept through the Santa Monica Mountains of Agoura. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

A decade removed from when I first wrote about Alice Coltrane, I like to think that during those fires, a little bit of her legacy spread everywhere with the winds. These days, I hear her music everywhere. These days, she’s on playlists in coffee shops, in the background of Instagram stories and TikTok videos, and often cited as an influence by the next generation. The children who attended her ashram have grown up, and their influence can be felt everywhere as well.

In my heart, I know Alice knew she wouldn’t live to see all of this come to fruition, but as Hickson pointed out, she still planted those seeds and tended to them anyway. In this life, we never really own anything; we’re just caretakers. The sun rises and sets, waves come in and out, and all winters melt into spring. We are temporary, but at our most blinding and brilliant, we make it count. Truly, her work represents the best of what we can achieve during our days in the sun.

FIN.

Selected Works is a weekly (usually) newsletter by Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand)- based freelance music journalist, broadcaster, copywriter, and sometimes DJ Martyn Pepperell, aka Yours Truly. Most weeks, Selected Works includes a recap of what I’ve been doing lately, along with what I’ve been listening to and reading, paired with film photographs I’ve taken, plus some bonuses. That said, sometimes it takes completely different forms.

Happy Tuesday. How are you all doing out there? Hope your weekend was good, or at least calm, and all that. I’m chasing my tail, catching up on deadlines at the moment. That being said, the second half of the week should be fun.

Allegedly, I’m playing some vinyl at Octo in Wellington from 5-8 PM at their World Music Night with Ben. That sounds nice. I’m also doing b2b with my friend East Larry at Radio Active 88.6 FM’s Rave 2 The Grave fundraiser on Saturday night. We’re playing 9-10 PM on the Underworld Stage. I’m going to bring my MPC Sample. There may be another DJ gig as well, but that’s unconfirmed at this stage.

Anyway, here’s a few listening, reading and watching recommendations. Please enjoy, all good if not.

BEATS:

“Secret Recipe” by Low Flung and DJ Mindleaf is a little-known 2021 gem that deserves more love. Check out that squelchy ambient intro and the wonky man/machine beat that follows. This is that real cybernetic music.

Here’s some gold from 2025: Paris-born electronic music pioneer and 1970s GRM alum Ariel Kalma joins with multinational New York trio Asa Tone (Kaazi, Melati ESP, Tristan Arp) for a series of intergenerational, electro-acoustic studio conversations, exploring elasticity within rhythm and winds… or as one early listener observed, “space and time.”

Forthcoming on October 30th: EPILOGUE is the culmination of more than four decades of music-making by Japanese composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Ken-ichiro Isoda, an album in which environmental sound, electronics, contemporary classical composition and memory converge into a deeply personal late-career statement. Should I write about this record, or attempt to interview Isoda-san? Let me know.

Three effective mixes of an oldie but a goodie.

Habibi Funk’s latest compilation spotlights the vintage soul, disco, and jazz that emerged as a homegrown response to Lebanon’s brutal civil war. Shy Thompson gave this one the once-over (well, the tenth-over) at Pitchfork recently. Worth reading.

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PIECES:

Sounds Good! Parksdale: LOOK!: Sweetman listens to LOOK! by Parksdale and likes what he hears. Brent Park-Tamati — often known by just Parks and now/also Parksdale — is best known as the producer/beat maker and co-creator of the full-experience sound-world of Ladi6’s music. He’s also been there in many vital collaborations with artists like Riki Gooch — often playing a behind-the-scenes role, a producer through and through. Read here.

Mixmag: How Eris Drew and Octo Octa formed a band from a four-day psychedelic trip - Alchemical Sisters is the newest outcome of a powerful partnership between Eris Drew and Octo Octa, who’ve been on a friends to lovers to now-bandmates arc. From their cabin in rural New Hampshire, they tell Delilah Friedler all about it. Read here.

DJ Mag: Recognise 118: Shy One: Rooted in pirate radio, sound system culture, and the sounds of London’s underground, Shy One has become one of the UK’s most trusted selectors. As her warmly-received new album ‘Mali’ cements her status as a tastemaker, the Harrow-born DJ and producer reflects on identity, musical lineage, and protecting the love that drives her craft, and shares a set recorded live from The Berkeley Suite in Glasgow for the Recognise series. Read here.

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BOOKS:

Here’s two books that I’m very keen to read soon. You might be as well?

We Are Rupture: Signals from the Heart of the Rave (Velocity Press): We Are Rupture: Signals from the Heart of the Rave marks two decades of the seminal London club night and record label founded by Double O & Mantra. Rooted in community, Blackness and sound system heritage, Rupture has always centred the people who built it – this book honours their experience.

Gathering stories, poems and reflections from dancers, artists and event producers, it asks a question bigger than any anniversary: why do we rave, and why does it matter now more than ever? From international ravers making the pilgrimage to Corsica Studios, to rave as grief processing and somatic healing, this book captures something that goes far beyond the dance floor. With contributions from Fabio, DJ Storm, Tim Reaper, DJ Flight and many more, this is a living document of 20 years of modern jungle. Here.

Aftershock: The Seismic Impact of Dubstep, Lauren Martin (Velocity Press): In Aftershock: The Seismic Impact of Dubstep, seasoned music writer Lauren Martin charts the origins of one of the 21st-century’s most innovative music genres in an oral-history format. Through the testimonies of its architects and an immersive array of photography, flyers and unseen scene history, Aftershock chronicles the rise of artists like Skream, Mala, Coki, Loefah, Horsepower Productions and Rusko, as well as labels and parties such as Hyperdub, Tempa, DMZ, FWD>> and Skull Disco. Here.

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BLU-RAY:

I ordered this last week. I can’t wait for it to arrive so I can watch ALL OF IT.

ETERNITY’S PILLAR by Alice Coltrane: Available worldwide, this 2 x Blu-ray set contains nearly 9 hours of seldom-seen transmissions from the jazz visionary and spiritual leader Alice Coltrane. In 1985, KTTV Channel 11 (an independent, commercial, Los Angeles-based TV station) began broadcasting Eternity’s Pillar every Sunday after midnight. Seventeen episodes from the Coltrane archive are lovingly presented here, overflowing with devotional wisdom, meditation, and music. Also included is a Black Journal segment from 1970 filmed in Alice Coltrane’s home, and an 80-page book containing an episode guide, remembrances, new essays, and more. Order here.

FIN.

Selected Works is a weekly (usually) newsletter by Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand)- based freelance music journalist, broadcaster, copywriter, and sometimes DJ Martyn Pepperell, aka Yours Truly. Most weeks, Selected Works includes a recap of what I’ve been doing lately, along with what I’ve been listening to and reading, paired with film photographs I’ve taken, plus some bonuses. That said, sometimes it takes completely different forms.

On his first trip to London, the cult American musician Doug Hream Blunt stood in the lobby of Shoreditch’s Ace Hotel. Gazing out the window through his sunglasses, he let out a warm and infectious chuckle before remarking with an ear-to-ear grin, “It’s real great to be here, man. It’s just a great feeling.” Feeling is central to his story: it set things in motion and won him an audience across the globe.

When we met, Blunt was taking time out of rehearsals for two shows at Field Day 2016: one with The Messengers (musicians from the Mungo Charity/Barbican homeless music group) and another with a local band for whom he held online auditions. One of them was a young woman named Klein, who has since become one of the most celebrated avant-garde musicians of her generation. As we spoke, Rodriguez’s psychedelic folk-rock album Cold Fact drifted through the hotel. It was so fitting it felt on the nose.

In the mid-1980s, Blunt, then 35, was working as a nurse’s aide in San Francisco, the city he still calls home. For a time, his days were pretty much the same. Then he had an epiphany. Thinking back, he remembered being struck by the feeling that he could write songs.

Blunt’s memory reminded me of an anecdote the Japanese author Haruki Murakami has told in interviews for decades. In April 1978, he was watching a baseball game between the Yakult Swallows and the Hiroshima Carp when something extraordinary happened. An American player, Dave Hilton, hit the first pitch deep into left field. At that moment, Murakami realised he could write a novel. Later that day, he bought pens and paper and began writing.

What followed for Blunt was different. After recalling playing his cousin’s bongos in his early teens, he signed up for a How To Form A Band evening class held in a small home garage in Golden Gate Park in 1985. Under the guidance of music teacher and home studio owner Victor Flaviani and his wife, Blunt began singing and playing guitar in a highly idiosyncratic style, developing his own hazy, lo-fi funk-rock sound.

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To promote his music, Blunt would play acoustic, solo shows for patients and elderly people at the hospital where he worked. Along the way, he formed a band with his classmates and music teachers.

Eventually, Blunt’s band performed on a local public access television show called City Visions and recorded an album and an EP, Gentle Persuasion and Big Top, both of which languished in record bins for decades. “I’d just got married for the first time. I had money and a budget to do it,” Blunt remembered. “I didn’t really know who I was yet, but I knew a lot about myself.” Later, his focus shifted as he began raising a family. For a time, that was that.

In the late 2000s, Blunt’s music began catching the ears of influential figures like Ariel Pink, Dean Blunt, David Byrne, Devendra Banhart, and DāM-FunK. Dean Blunt’s duo Hype Williams even sampled his song ‘Gentle Persuasion’ for their track ‘Get Choong And Look At The Sky’.

Soon enough, DJs and bloggers began championing his work. I was one of them. After picking up copies of Gentle Persuasion on vinyl and CD in 2011, I contacted Blunt, interviewed him by phone, and published a story on my Tumblr page. At the time, he told me his music was inspired by “The Californian way of life.”

Four years later, Luaka Bop Records, the record label David Byrne founded in New York in the 1980s, released My Name Is Doug Hream Blunt, a compilation album collecting the best of his recordings. They became interested after hearing his song ‘Gentle Persuasion’ on an obscure DJ mix. I got there by googling “Ariel Pink” and “DāM-FunK” when I heard they’d been working together. Instead, the search engine showed me Blunt’s music.

It turned out Ariel Pink eventually covered Blunt’s music. He even invited him on stage at a San Francisco concert. “It’s weird when you meet someone who has a little influence,” he reflected. He also met another person with “a little influence” around then: Dean Blunt, whom he found quite entertaining. “Dean took my last name,” he said. “He really liked it. I think maybe it’s because they smoke weed, and people call it a blunt? All these thoughts come through your mind when you think about these things, but you don’t really know why because you’re not them.”

Born in Arkansas, Blunt moved to San Francisco with his family in 1957, when he was seven. Having grown up poor, he discovered the power of escapism early. “I worked this out when I was very young, too young to escape through music,” he said. “At first, it was through early television shows like Howdy Doody. Music became a big escape when we moved to San Francisco. When you live rough, it’s very easy for music to take you places.”

Blunt loved Elvis Presley, Ricky Nelson, and James Brown, and over time, fell for Jimi Hendrix, Santana, B.B. King and Curtis Mayfield. As the years passed, he also escaped physically by visiting the Philippines, Hawaii, Costa Rica, and Mexico, where he even built a house. Along the way, his perspective on life deepened. He’d always been compassionate, but travel, experiencing the 1960s in San Francisco, and working as a nurse turned that instinct into something more expansive.

“In certain situations all around the world, people don’t like each other,” Blunt said. “God made us the way we are. We speak all these different languages. He did that on purpose. We don’t speak the same languages. These tribes get along; this tribe won’t get along with that tribe. So then you figure out, you start thinking, how could I make it better? And you try to make it better.”

Blunt thought he might be able to make things better through music. “There were things that had happened in my life and things that were part of a big, gigantic fantasy,” he explained. “These little things, I figured I could write about them.”

He pauses, then adds a caveat. “I hate to say it was a big imaginary thing because that makes it sound like it was like a child’s imagination. I don’t want to send a message like that. I’d rather the message was, ‘When you’re downtrodden, pick yourself up.’ It’s like a walk; the music picks you up and gets you walking.”

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The “walk” Blunt described runs through the songs collected on My Name Is Doug Hream Blunt. Expressed through strutting basslines, driving drums and keyboards, his deeply felt, poetically simple vocals, and exploratory, hard-to-place guitar tones, it was rooted in genuine sincerity and care.

From the dreamy boogie of ‘Gentle Persuasion’ to the tropical R&B of ‘Caribbean Queen’ and the hazy funk of ‘Whisky Man’, ‘Love Land’, and beyond, his songs explored aspiration, self-worth, and self-love. “Yes, yes, yes,” he enthused. “These are the things I wanted people to feel.”

Since his music was rediscovered, much has been said about his unique sound and how it seems to anticipate the experimental funk and AM radio pop-influenced indie rock that emerged from California in the late 2000s. On that phone call all those years ago, he told me he was inspired by the Californian way of life, but he remained elusive about it when we hung out in Shoreditch. “I know what you mean, man,” he chuckled. “But I can’t tell you where it comes from. It was just a feeling.”

There’s that word again: feeling. Blunt might not be able to talk about certain aspects of his music, but his recordings and performances show us how it feels. The next day, I watched him take the stage in the UK for the first time and tentatively set that feeling in motion once again.

Afterwards, Blunt performed in Moscow, New York, Los Angeles and New Orleans. ‘Gentle Persuasion’ appeared in season two of Broad City, and the British tastemaker Gilles Peterson spun his tunes in his DJ sets. In New York, David Byrne joined him on vocals at a Brooklyn show. The following year, Blunt performed in Denmark, Portugal, Italy, Spain, and Australia. He even recorded a new song titled ‘Dreamin’ for the French label Tricatel.

Ultimately, the release of My Name Is Doug Hream Blunt didn’t transform Blunt into the superstar his true fans, myself included, believe he could have been. But then again, was that ever the point? Blunt’s music is about feeling something, making friends, and doing music together. It’s a way of living. If you’ve ever been mellow or felt like you needed to be, I’m sure you can relate.

BONUS: AUDIO CULTURE - MAINARD LARKIN

Mainard Larkin, formerly known as Randa or Larz Randa, is a rapper, beatmaker, and singer-songwriter from Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. After getting his start in Aotearoa and Te Waipounamu’s indie-dance, nu-rave, beats and queer music scenes in the early 2010s, he went on to become a genuine pop culture figure before briefly disappearing from view.

Several years ago, Larkin reemerged after signing to Lil Chief Records. This time around, he has turned his hand to country music and storytelling based around professional wrestling, as exemplified by his latest album, Rattlesnake Boy (2026). Fifteen years after he began releasing music, he continues to cut a unique and idiosyncratic figure from our shores to the world. Read here.

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WHAT I’VE BEEN LISTENING TO:

Perfect Dance Music.

Staggeringly smooth deep house grooves.

An oldie but a goodie.

FIN.

Selected Works is a weekly (usually) newsletter by Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand)- based freelance music journalist, broadcaster, copywriter, and sometimes DJ Martyn Pepperell, aka Yours Truly. Most weeks, Selected Works includes a recap of what I’ve been doing lately, along with what I’ve been listening to and reading, paired with film photographs I’ve taken, plus some bonuses. That said, sometimes it takes completely different forms.

How’s everybody doing out there? Have you been having a big week, month, or year? Some might say it’s big life, right?

Last week, I flew up from Wellington to Auckland for a few days. While I was there, I attended the annual APRA Silver Scroll Awards, where I was very pleased to see the Polynesian indie-rock band Leao take home the main songwriting prize for their 2026 single ‘Lalelei’. It’s the first time a song written entirely in Gagana Samoa has won the award. If you haven’t heard it, check it out below.

The next day, I played a two-hour DJ set on TBC Radio on Karangahape Road. They’re a nonprofit internet radio station in the mode of Mouthful or Melbourne’s Skylab Radio. I recommend tuning in sometime; they’ve got loads of cool specialist shows throughout the week. You can listen online here.

Here’s an archival recording of a show AJ Honeysuckle played for them earlier in the year.

Nonprofits always need some donations to keep the wheels greased. If you want to donate, you can do it here.

On Friday night, I dropped by The Civic Theatre with my friend Anthony to see Che Fu and The Krates play a show with Betty-Anne (Ardijah), Aaradhna, and King Kapisi as special guests. They were celebrating the 25th anniversary of Che’s seminal sophomore album Navigator. Earlier in the year, I wrote about this for Rolling Stone AU/NZ here and here.

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Together, they put on one hell of a variety show, sharing the best songs from Navigator, some of Che’s back catalogue, and a few classics from the guests. Che’s voice is sounding really strong at the moment. I could imagine him turning up in musical theatre soon, or even performing the loungier side of jazz standards. It would probably make more sense if he did an evening of Donny Hathaway, Marvin Gaye, etc. covers, but Che marches to his own drum. He always has, and he always will.

By Sunday, I was back in Wellington, getting ready to DJ at Octo, a vinyl bar on Aro Street. The first time I played there earlier in the year, I got a taste of the vibe they’re cooking. Good tunes, a solid sound system, and a yakitori menu paired with drinks. I’ve said Octo is as close as you’ll get to a Lyttleton vibe in Wellington, and that still stands. The place reminds me of a spot I used to visit down there before the early 2010s Canterbury earthquakes: Monster Bar.

While I was playing at Octo, I spun a selection of dub reggae, ethio-jazz, Persian lounge music, and private-press indie, with a strong focus on melody. I love getting to DJ so many different types of music in so many different contexts. After twenty-plus years, I don’t take any of it for granted.

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Here’s a few tracks I’ve been listening to this week:

They come from a playlist called Soundwriters 62 Catalogue, curated by Sekan from Jiwa Jiwa.

The playlist contains all 62 titles in the Soundwriters book catalogue he recently published. Soundwriters uncovers how music carried memory across borders. Through essays and archival research, the book explores Indonesian diaspora communities, while its catalogue of sixty-two recordings focuses on releases mostly from the Netherlands between 1969 and 1989, linking colonial history, migration, lived experience, and record culture to voices long absent from official collections.

More details here.

On Monday, I visited the recently opened Sink Bathhouse, a public sauna located in Miramar, Wellington. Their website calls it “A shared space for heat, water, and rest.” It has a dry cedar sauna, a cold spa pool, a warm spa pool, and a lounge area to relax, read books, and drink tea. One thing I really rate about Sink is that they have a beautiful sound system and are working to include listening parties, DJ sets, and the like in their weekly programming. More details over here.

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Not to be a content repeater, but on Friday, we’re hosting a 4K restoration screening of Hong Kong auteur filmmaker Wong Kar-wai’s cult classic, Days of Being Wild at Penthouse Cinema in Wellington. The screening will be preceded by a DJ set from yours truly at 7 pm, featuring selected songs from Wong Kar-wai films. At 8 pm, we’ll head into the cinema for a preview of Mercury Fèng’s latest music video, a short artist talk exploring how Chinese cinema influences her work and the screening.

Tickets are on sale now here.

FIN.

Selected Works is a weekly (usually) newsletter by Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand)- based freelance music journalist, broadcaster, copywriter, and sometimes DJ Martyn Pepperell, aka Yours Truly. Most weeks, Selected Works includes a recap of what I’ve been doing lately, along with what I’ve been listening to and reading, paired with film photographs I’ve taken, plus some bonuses. That said, sometimes it takes completely different forms.

In 2014, Grant C. Dull received a blindsiding email. It included a download link to Bolivian singer Luzmila Carpio’s Yuyay Jap’Ina Tapes: a collection of 20-year-old songs, reissued by Parisian label Almost Musique.

Set against sun-kissed charango notes, her birdlike falsetto rang out pure and clear. Carpio was singing in Quechua, an electrifying two-thousand-year-old language she learned as a child in a small village on the Altiplano, 10,000 feet above sea level in the Andean Mountains. “There was something magical in her voice, the songs, the charango,” Dull reflected. “It’s hard to explain in tangible words or feelings. It just entered my soul as great music does. Before I had even read about her, I knew she was big time.”

At the time, Dull was a Texan adrift in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He founded ZZK Records and ZZK Club. Over the previous eight years, his artist roster had developed a cult reputation through electronic interpretations of traditional Latin American folk music.

Almost Musique was looking for distribution partners in South America, but Dull had other thoughts. “I proposed collaboration, and that was when the remix idea was born,” he said. In late February 2015, Dull’s idea came to fruition with the release of Luzmila Carpio Meets ZZK: an EP of digital cumbia and folktronica remixes of songs from the Yuyay Jap’Ina Tapes collection.

Luzmila Carpio meets ZZK, a selection of ZZK-affiliated producers including El Buho, Nicola Cruz, Captain Planet, and El Remolon, reframe Carpio’s singular songs. Leaving her vocals intact, they presented them inside programmed rhythms and dreamy synthscapes, accented by live instrumentation. “I called on artists who had all done similar work in the past. Those who were experimenting more with folk music, and could sensitively adapt themselves to such beautiful and delicate sounds,” Dull said. Across the EP, that sensitivity is central, as the new becomes old and the old becomes new.

A month later, I spent time with Luzmila Carpio while she visited New Zealand to perform at the annual WOMAD Arts Festival. Draped in colourful traditional garb, Carpio and her band captivated the audience with birdlike melodies, uplifting storytelling, and a generous energy that belied her petite physical frame.

Afterwards, with a translator, she walked me through her history, the Yuyay Jap’Ina Tapes, and Luzmila Carpio Meets ZZK, holding warm, intense eye contact the whole time.

Born in the village of Qala-Qala in 1949, Carpio grew up within the arid, mountainous landscape the indigenous Quechua people of Potosi call home. Life was hard and slow, winds were icy, good harvests were scarce, and water was even scarcer. Qala-Qala did have some things in abundance, though: bird calls, storytelling, songs, and dances. “There was no radio or electricity in the countryside in those times, so the first music my mother made me aware of was the melodies of birds,” Carpio remembered.

Alongside the birdsong that informed her fledgling development as a vocalist, she was deeply influenced by stories of suffering. The indigenous people of Bolivia make up 62% of the country’s population, and centuries of Spanish colonial domination had been far from kind to them. “My grandmother and mother lived marginalised,” Carpio admitted sadly. “My mother would tell me stories about how she had suffered through her life, sometimes laughing, sometimes crying. I told myself that one day I would tell other people that our culture is good. We are good people, and we are in harmony with nature.”

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At age eleven, Carpio left Qala-Qala for Oruro. There she debuted as a singer on the Universidad de Oruro radio station in 1960. As the frontwoman of the Los Provincianos band, Carpio gave voice to Spanish-language songs underpinned by Andean mountainside melodies. They awoke something in the city-dwelling indigenous population, affording her nationwide popularity.

Inspired, Carpio delved deeper into Andean music and culture and began singing in Quechua and Aymara. With a growing audience, she used music to speak against the injustices and racial segregation long suffered by indigenous people. Carpio also advocated for women’s rights, environmentalism, children’s education, and the preservation of folk traditions.

Her music took her to Paris, where she continued to develop as she performed and recorded with French musicians. In the early 1990s, Carpio created the Yuyay Jap’Ina Tapes (’Reclaim our knowledge’). “At that time I was working with UNICEF in Bolivia,” she recalled. “I was trying to educate our people in numeracy and literacy in our own dialects. On top of that, reading and writing never really reached women.”

To support this effort, Carpio composed a series of songs for the literacy project she worked on with UNICEF. Aesthetically, they showcased the tones, sounds, and instruments inherent to the Potosi region’s musical forms. Conceptually, they aimed to cultivate an awareness of the Aymara and Quechua languages and their rich associated cultures while continuing to tackle the issues she’d long rallied against.

The Yuyay Jap’Ina Tapes were distributed on audio cassettes throughout the 230 communities that took part in the literacy project. The people’s response was joyous, and Carpio earned the nickname “the lady who sings Pacha Mama” (Earth Mother).

Released when Andean spirituality was still outlawed, the Yuyay Jap’Ina Tapes became the soundtrack to a moment of heightened cultural awareness. The project’s impact was felt most amongst female Quechua and Aymara-speaking participants. They learned to read and write in their own languages, while reconnecting with their neglected heritage.

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In 2006, Bolivia elected President Evo Morales, the first president from an indigenous background. It was a watershed moment. “We elected a brother and friend who knows of all the struggles and needs of most of the people in this country,” Carpio said. “He understands what the country truly needs.”

Several months later, Morales appointed Carpio as Bolivia’s ambassador to France in recognition of her cultural and social efforts. “I never knew that singing was going to be the vessel I’d use to bring across this message,” Carpio admitted. “My mother wanted me to be a doctor, but it was a dream that was unlikely to be achieved. We didn’t live in the city. We didn’t have any money, and we didn’t know anyone who could support me through medical school. We were the marginalised indigenous, but it’s not the case anymore.”

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Although she’s long been a recognisable and revered name throughout South America and France, she remained relatively obscure elsewhere. In 2011, that began to change after her music featured on the Ghost Capital blog.

My discovery moment came around the same time, when Jace Clayton, aka DJ/Rupture, wrote about her on his Mudd Up! website. In the entry, he described playing at an outdoor party in Milan sponsored by Domus magazine. After his set, a crew of Chileans said hello, and Clayton and his friend N-ron ended up exploring the nocturnal city streets with them. “At some point, I was passed Luzmila Carpio’s music,” he wrote. “I’ve been in love ever since.”

Below in the comment section, the British guitarist Andy Moor, best known for playing in the post-punk group The Ex, wrote, “wow great to hear first thing in the morning …..she makes kate bush sound like darth vader.” Not long after, Almost Musique came across Carpio’s songs of strength and sorrow. The result was their reissue of the Yuyay Jap’Ina Tapes, followed by Luzmila Carpio Meets ZZK.

When we started discussing the remix EP, Carpio became especially animated. Grinning from ear to ear, she hummed the rhythms and melodies of Nicola Cruz’s strident remix of ‘Ch’uwa yaku kawsaypuni’ (Crystal clear water is life). “With this new collaboration and take on my music, I’m certain we’re going to reach new audiences today,” she said. “I’m very pleased by what they’ve done. The producers have been really respectful to my poetry. Aymara and Quechua are my native tongues, and they must not vanish from this Earth. It’s very important that they are respected, because language contains thoughts and ideas, the wisdom of our ancestors.”

She didn’t give much away, but the remix EP had given Carpio an invigorating new perspective on musical composition. “People who do art must always be open to reinterpreting themselves,” she said. “There are new sounds being born in my heart, but we must not talk about that yet. All ideas must happen at their due times.”

After trading a few emails with El Buho and Nicola Cruz, it became clear that the ZZK producer camp’s process had been equally inspiring and rewarding. In Nicola Cruz’s words, “She lent us this very special material, trusting us without even knowing us. In exchange, we needed to deliver our finest material in a very respectful manner. I feel very happy with the results.”

“Music only evolves when ideas are fused together, where artists strive to push in new directions,” El Buho wrote. As he saw it, all the artists on the EP had great respect for the traditions Carpio represented, but they also had their own visions to explore. “Latin American folk music and traditional music has such depth,” he wrote. “I think we are trying to reinterpret this in the current context. I don’t believe in so-called folk purity, but I believe in music’s power to evolve and mix together around the world. This is why projects like this are so crucial.”

Twelve years later, whenever I revisit Luzmila Carpio Meets ZZK, I feel transported back to the folkloric traditions Carpio’s songs represent and to the visionary Latin club futurism ZZK reached into, in equal measure. At a certain point, the boundaries between the past and the future collapse into a single, never-ending moment. Time is a circle, and so is a loop. It’s all interconnected. It never really begins or ends.

Postscript: In 2023, Carpio released her first full LP in a decade, Inti Watana: El Retorno del Sol. Produced by Leonardo Martinelli (a.k.a. Tremor), a ZZK veteran who’s spent most of his career finding common ground between Latin American folk rhythms and modern electronics, this new album stretches across genres, generations and continents, with Luzmila’s sonorous, occasionally birdsong-inspired vocalisations gracefully gliding amongst ambient textures, programmed beats and (of course) a bevy of traditional instrumentation from around the globe. She’s still got it, and she always will.

FIN.

Selected Works is a weekly (usually) newsletter by Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand)- based freelance music journalist, broadcaster, copywriter, and sometimes DJ Martyn Pepperell, aka Yours Truly. Most weeks, Selected Works includes a recap of what I’ve been doing lately, along with what I’ve been listening to and reading, paired with film photographs I’ve taken, plus some bonuses. That said, sometimes it takes completely different forms.

One busy week deserves another. After flying too close to the sun, melting my wax wings and falling from a great height last week, I’m back at it over the next few months with a plethora of events and activities in Wellington, New Zealand. Today’s newsletter is a general rundown of what’s on the horizon. Thanks for tuning in.

TBC Radio

TBC Radio is a nonprofit broadcast connection run by an open collective of music lovers in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland. The music is the selector’s choice: non-commercial sounds, unexpected gems, and homegrown artists mainstream platforms often overlook. They’re building a growing archive of alternative culture; preserving local stories and sounds, supporting community connection, and making space for shared musical experiences.

From 12-2 PM today, I’ll be hosting a guest show on TBC. You can tune in here.

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Octo, Sunday 18 October:

On Sunday night, I’m playing a 3-hour vinyl DJ set from 5-8 PM at Wellington’s vinyl bar, Octo on Aro Street. I’m planning to dig out some Ethiojazz, Persian psychedelia and some singer-songwriter stuff. It’s free entry. Come along, grab a bite to eat and a drink. Octo is as close as you’ll get to a night out in Lyttleton, in the capital.

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Days of Being Wild, Wellington Screening

On Friday, October 23rd, we’re hosting a 4K restoration screening of Hong Kong auteur filmmaker Wong Kar-wai’s cult classic, Days of Being Wild. The screening will be preceded by a DJ set from yours truly, featuring selected songs from Wong Kar-Wai films, followed by a preview of Mercury Fèng’s latest music video and a short artist talk exploring the influence of Chinese cinema on her work.

Wong Kar Wai’s breakthrough sophomore feature represents the first full flowering of his swooning signature style. The first film in a loosely connected, ongoing cycle that includes In the Mood for Love and 2046, this ravishing existential reverie is a dreamlike drift through the Hong Kong of the 1960s in which a band of wayward twenty-somethings—including a disaffected playboy (Leslie Cheung) searching for his birth mother, a lovelorn woman (Maggie Cheung) hopelessly enamoured with him, and a policeman (Andy Lau) caught in the middle of their turbulent relationship—pull together and push apart in a cycle of frustrated desire. The director’s inaugural collaboration with both cinematographer Christopher Doyle, who lends the film its gorgeously gauzy, hallucinatory texture, and actor Tony Leung, who appears briefly in a tantalising teaser for a never-realised sequel, Days of Being Wild is an exhilarating first expression of Wong’s trademark themes of time, longing, dislocation, and the restless search for human connection.

Neocities night owl Mercury Fèng is the alias of Lucy 小凤 Beeler, an artist and musician based in Wellington, New Zealand. Inspired by the Hong Kong New Wave sensibilities of auteur filmmakers and musicians like Wong Kar-wai and Faye Wong, she uses Mercury Fèng to reconnect with her Chinese heritage while exploring the rich histories of late-20th-century Asian pop culture and its fringes.

Come along and enjoy a night celebrating the intersection of Hong Kong cinema influence and music.

Tickets are on sale now here.

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Radio Active 88.6 FM: Rave 2 The Grave Fundraiser

RAVE 2 THE GRAVE is an all-night Halloween celebration on Saturday, 31 October at The Grand in Wellington. With three unique dance spaces across different levels of, ravers can choose their vibe, from the more chill selections to heavy bass & high-energy tracks.

More than 40 DJs from all your favourite shows will be behind the decks. Including: The Jewel School, Midnight Marauders, The Floor, Homebass, The Session, The Housing Project, Future Funk, Death Til Dawn, Music Without Subtitles, Friday Night Nu Flava, The Breakfast Show, The Late Late Breakfast Show, Behaving Strangely, The Wednesday Night Jam, Africa Is Not A Country, Te Āo Tech, The Flow, Drive, Roots & Culture, Caffeine & Aspirin, The Top 11, Global Pulse, The Jazz Show, Deep and Across the Board.

I’m playing a B2B set with East Larry from 9-10 PM on the Underworld Stage. I’m gonna bring the MPC Sample down, bro. Tickets are on sale here.

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Welcome Space Brothers - The Extraordinary True Story of the Unarius Academy of Science

Fri, 13 Nov, 8 pm - 11 pm NZDT, Vogelmorn Upstairs

WELCOME SPACE BROTHERS is a documentary that dives into the extraordinary true story of the Unarius Academy of Science, an extraterrestrial-channelling spiritual school founded in El Cajon in the 1970s. Led by the dazzlingly outlandish Ruth E. Norman—revered as “Archangel Uriel”—Unarius evolved into a wildly inventive public-access television phenomenon. The group produced films that looked like elaborately campy space epics but were, at their core, sincere therapeutic works.

From The Source Family director Jodi Wille comes another mind-expanding voyage into the wild frontiers of American belief, bringing her singular blend of empathy, humour, and emotional insight to one of the country’s most fascinating outsider communities. Produced by Caryn Capotosto (Won’t You Be My Neighbour) and Jodi Wille. Executive producers include Elijah Wood, Moby, and Oscar-winning filmmakers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.

Please join us for the Wellington screening of WELCOME SPACE BROTHERS - brought to you by Erika Grant and Night Church Cinema. This is a dress-up event - come dressed in your favourite UFO/Cult fit. Prizes will be awarded for best dressed, and DJs Oona Verse and Martyn Pepperell, plus others, will guide us into the wild starry night with space cult-inspired dance tracks.

The bar and restaurant will be open for dinner and drinks. This is a one-off event you won't want to miss. Tickets are on sale here.

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Brooklyn Twilight Festival

On Saturday 14 November, I’m working as the changeover DJ at the annual Brooklyn Twilight Festival. It’s a free-entry, family-friendly event, running from 1-8 PM.

This year’s festival will feature over 50 stalls, including food, crafts, and community groups, as well as local and national performers. Harrison Street and the grounds of Brooklyn Community Centre will once again host the festival. Face painting, bouncy castles, community performances, amazing food, and tasty beers and wines will be just a few of the highlights.

Entertainment includes the Wellington Carnival Street Band, Fun & Funner!, Tegan Nott, Fables, Tahini Bikini, Juna and Vera Ellen.

You can find more details here.

BEATS:

Modern dub roots reggae magic.

She’s done it again. The Nicest Girl.

Capital V vibe music.

File under: Balearic Bliss. This album is unreal. So lush.

Selected Works is a weekly (usually) newsletter by Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand)- based freelance music journalist, broadcaster, copywriter, and sometimes DJ Martyn Pepperell, aka Yours Truly. Most weeks, Selected Works includes a recap of what I’ve been doing lately, along with what I’ve been listening to and reading, paired with film photographs I’ve taken, plus some bonuses. That said, sometimes it takes completely different forms.

In the 1980s, Abidjan’s Jess Sah Bi & Peter One became one of the most popular musical acts not just in the Ivory Coast but across West Africa, eventually performing with a full band to stadium-sized audiences at home and throughout Benin, Burkina Faso, and Togo. Although they’d been popular radio and television performers for several years, their 1985 debut album, Our Garden Needs Its Flowers, propelled them to this new level of stardom.

Unlike the popular West African funk, disco, and reggae sounds of the day, Our Garden Needs Its Flowers was a lush fusion of traditional Ivorian village songs and American and British country and folk-rock music. Die Sah Bi (Jess Sah Bi) and Pierre-Evrard Tra (Peter One) sang in French and English, delivering beautifully harmonised meditations on social injustice and inequality, calls for unity across the African continent, an end to apartheid in South Africa, and occasional romantic songs, all set against lush guitar riffs, rustic harmonica and rollicking feel-good rhythms.

Wrapped up in the sort of pop sensibilities that see YouTube rips of their music littered with nostalgic French-language comments reflecting on a time now some forty-plus years distant, Our Garden Needs Its Flowers memorialised the best intentions of the golden era before the Ivory Coast’s social, cultural and political landscapes underwent radical transformation.

The first time I saw Our Garden Needs Its Flowers’ cover art was through Awesome Tapes From Africa, an mp3 blog maintained by Brian Shimkovitz, an American with gifts for languages and DJing with cassette tapes. Intrigued by the image of an acoustic guitar and sheet music resting on a wooden rocking chair, I downloaded the music. From the first listen, I was captivated by their soothing sound and the image of two West African cowboys playing country and folk songs.

Later on, when Awesome Tapes From Africa became a record label, I encouraged him to reissue the album. I even helped him source a pristine copy of the original vinyl pressing to create new masters with the audio engineer Jessica Thompson. In return, Brian let me write the reissue’s liner notes. Those notes form the basis of this essay.

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As a young man studying at the University of Abidjan, Peter relaxed by playing guitar and singing in his dormitory kitchen. In 1979, his neighbour, Emmanuel Gore Bi Tah, commented that Peter played and sang in a style very similar to his uncle Jess. In Peter’s words, “Jess’s nephew called and said, ‘You guys are doing the same thing.’ We went from there.” “It was a perfect fit,” he said.

In addition to French and English, Jess and Peter spoke Gouro (a Mande language). They shared experiences of loving and drawing inspiration from the traditional and ceremonial songs their mothers sang in their respective hometowns, Barata and Ono.

In addition, hearing imported country and folk-rock music over the radio in the early 1970s was a lightbulb moment for both of them. Jess recalled DJs playing Kenny Rogers, Don Williams, and Dolly Parton on the morning radio. At the same time, Peter noted the significant presence of Simon & Garfunkel, Cat Stevens, Crosby, Stills & Nash, and Creedence Clearwater Revival in his listening life. In those artists’ songs, Jess and Peter heard melodies, harmonies and messages of protest, solidarity and resistance that inspired them to dig deeper.

The two friends were also avid readers of international and local music magazines such as Rolling Stone, Salut Les Copins, Hit Parade, and Podium. With album lists written by hand, they would visit downtown Abidjan music stores Le Studio 33 and Dicotheque de L’Hotel Ivoire to scour the record racks and dig deeper.

As Jess and Peter grew together, their sound blossomed into a blissful fusion of the traditional music from their childhoods and the British and American sounds they wholeheartedly embraced. “This was country music made in the Ivory Coast,” Jess said. “We knew we couldn’t do it just like they do it in the U.S.”

At first, country music and folk-rock weren’t very popular with the general public. But interest grew among students, who connected with the protest sentiments expressed by many British and American artists of the era and loved the sound. “It’s very nice music, with very nice harmonies, and it’s different from what you hear every day,” Peter said. “The language was a big barrier, though. You had to learn English to understand the songs, and the students were the ones learning English.” Their access to education, combined with an awareness of social and political inequality and injustice, made students the perfect audience for folk music in the Ivory Coast.

Peter had only been in Abidjan for a couple of years when they first met. Jess had lived in the Ivory Coast’s sprawling economic capital since his teens, when he moved there for high school. He started singing as a child and picked up the bass guitar during school holidays. The real turning point, however, was when the popular Ivorian singer Wedji Ped visited his high school.

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In the late 1970s, Jess’s passion for music led him to perform on local television and radio shows like Tremplin, where he was well received. “My father was a very popular dancer (traditional Dwa, Gahou, and Bilo styles) in the village, so I had been dancing from a young age,” Jess said. “I liked being on stage, and being seen.”

Jess’s progress as a songwriter and entertainer dovetailed with another childhood passion: cartoons. He became the first political cartoonist in the Ivory Coast and later drew for more than 30 newspapers and magazines across West Africa and France. By the time he met Peter, he was very well connected in the local media landscape. As Jess progressed professionally, Peter graduated and, in 1980, became a high school history teacher.

“Jess was already very accustomed to playing on television and radio when we met,” Peter said. “Once we started playing together, he went back to see those guys. They started recording our songs, having us play, and broadcasting us over the radio and television for a few years.” With the support of prominent radio broadcasters Tony Kouassi, Doh Ouattara, Balliet Bleziri Camille and Assi Akawa, along with television directors Koffi Abdul Karim and Anoh N’gouan Steve, and television hosts Georges Tai Benson and Roger Fulgence Kassi, Jess and Peter began to grow a receptive audience across the country beyond the student demographic.

Well-travelled Ivorians were shocked to see a local duo playing country and folk-rock with international flair. People often told Jess and Peter they should head to England or the U.S. In part, they credit this to the late Don Bosco Beaufort, a singer and guitarist who sold Peter his first guitar when he was 17 and taught him the basics in Grand Bassam. “He was a great singer and guitar player, and very comfortable with rock and roll, jazz, blues, folk, and pop,” Peter said. “He was already in the mood of English and American singers. I think he got that from his father who travelled the world and had a huge music collection.”

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In 1985, Jess and Peter were offered a record deal. They headed into Frenchman Jacques Bizollom’s legendary JBZ Recording Studio in Abidjan, the top recording facility in the Ivory Coast. Over two months, they worked with arranger Hugh N’guessan Santa, engineers Emile Valognes and Pamphille De Souza, and a band of session musicians who eventually became their touring band to record the eight songs on Our Garden Needs Its Flowers. “We knew that we were doing something special,” Jess said. “Because of the television and radio, people were waiting for our album, and they really liked what we did.” “We expected the album to be a big success, but we could not have imagined how far it would go,” Peter added.

After the release of Our Garden Needs Its Flowers, Jess and Peter’s profile rose rapidly, leading to stadium performances across West Africa. Their ascent was accompanied by critical acclaim from the local press, and appearances at galas organised by Marie-Thérèse Houphouët-Boigny, the wife of the late Félix Houphouët-Boigny, the first president of the Ivory Coast. They even performed during the 1988 ECOWAS (Economic Coalition of West African States) summit in Yamoussoukro at President Houphouët-Boigny’s request. Jess and Peter’s run lasted until the early 1990s, capped off with the BBC using their song “African Chant” as theme music the day Nelson Mandela was released from prison.

In the early 1990s, Peter grew increasingly uncomfortable with the shifting political landscape in the Ivory Coast. After helping launch the region’s first musicians union—focused on fighting music piracy—in 1995, he headed to New York to get the equipment and experience needed to launch his own recording studio and record label. As the situation back home continued to deteriorate, he decided to stay on, moved to Delaware for a nursing job, and then moved to Nashville. In 1996, Jess also headed to the U.S. He worked odd jobs in New York, Orlando, Philadelphia, Washington, North Carolina, and Baltimore before settling in San Francisco.

In 2018, Peter worked in nursing and played music in his spare time. He also set up a home studio, recorded several unreleased albums, and helped local young musicians develop their songs. “Everyone in Nashville has a guitar, and everyone is a singer or songwriter,” he said. “I love it.”

Jess was working as an instructor, teaching African musical styles to children, and often performed at public events and private functions. “These days, I mostly do gospel music,” he said. “I’m working on three different versions of my gospel album in English, French, and Gouro, and an acoustic album.”

Thirty-three years after its original release, Our Garden Needs Its Flowers returned to a world finally ready for it, as reviews by Pitchfork and Rolling Stone attested. After the reissue, Jess and Peter began performing together again across America. The reissue also marked a new phase for me as a liner notes writer. Over the eight years since, I’ve worked on projects for labels in Japan, Australia, Europe, and America, helping shed new light on overlooked street soul, techno, jazz-funk, and ambient artists.

In 2023, Peter released his second solo album, Come Back To Me, through the prestigious Verve Records. Afterwards, The Guardian, The Bitter Southerner, and The Nashville Scene profiled him, and he appeared on NPR, PBS, and CNN. He also toured with The Mountain Goats, Rodrigo Y Gabriela, Jason Isbell, and The Gypsy Kings, performing throughout the US, Europe and the UK.

Peter isn’t the only one of the duo enjoying renewed interest, either. In 2025, Awesome Tapes From Africa reissued Jess’s long-out-of-print solo album, Jesus-Christ Ne Déçoit Pas, originally released in 1991. It revisits the country, folk and afro-pop sensibilities of Our Garden Needs Its Flowers, filtered through a hazy, lo-fi gospel lens. Jess recorded it after recovering from a mystery illness. The songs testify to his faith in Jesus Christ, his Lord and Saviour, who, in his moment of weakness, did not disappoint.

After Verve released Come Back To Me, I started checking in on Peter again. In October 2025, he posted on Instagram about performing at the Newport Folk Festival. In the photos, he looked happy and fulfilled. I thought it was incredible to reflect on the decades-long sequence of events that led him to that moment.

For me, Peter is an exemplar: the rare individual who lands the second act they’d spent their adult life dreaming about. I often think about how he not only made it to Nashville but also made his mark on the American country music industry. Although we were born worlds and decades apart, we found common ground in country and folk music. More than that, in a pivotal moment, we played a role in each other’s lives. I’m forever grateful to be part of his story, and to know the inalienable truth that he’s part of mine as well.

FIN.

Selected Works is a weekly (usually) newsletter by Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand)- based freelance music journalist, broadcaster, copywriter, and sometimes DJ Martyn Pepperell, aka Yours Truly. Most weeks, Selected Works includes a recap of what I’ve been doing lately, along with what I’ve been listening to and reading, paired with film photographs I’ve taken, plus some bonuses. That said, sometimes it takes completely different forms.

In my books, one of life's great pleasures is listening to music. Sometimes it’s about pure pleasure. Other times, it’s about an experience that helps you understand something you didn’t fully comprehend before, a Rosetta Stone, if you will. It’s even better with a high-end sound system or a set of equally fancy headphones. I’ve had many significant moments like this while listening to music alone, but I also really cherish shared listening experiences.

Last night, I hosted a listening party for the New Zealand soul singer, multi-instrumentalist and producer Louis Baker at Vogelmorn Hall in Wellington. The photo above should give you a sense of what we were working with. We listened to his new album, Trouble, out now, and talked about various topics between tracks.

I really love running listening parties, especially with a live conversation element. If you’re a musician, label, or manager reading this and you’re ever looking to work with someone to organise one when you’re putting a record out, don’t be shy. Drop me a line.

My favourite track on Trouble is a silky smooth boogie/yacht rock number titled ‘Night Dance’. I can’t wait to spin it in a DJ set soon.

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Dazed: 10 great albums you may have missed in the last three months

Four times a year, I write a new music column for Dazed & Confused in the UK. In 2027, I will have been doing this for ten years, which feels crazy. The latest edition of my column is live on the site now.

A note for publicists: This column is the only way I contribute to Dazed. They haven’t commissioned me to write interviews or features in several years, so please stop pitching me for Dazed interviews. It’s a dead end and an absolute waste of your time—sorry!

Recently on Dazed, we’ve explored the secret history of Ibiza’s wildest 90s club night, looked at the 5 best features on Turnstile’s massive new remix album, and published the first major interview with TR Gobrazy. We’ve also documented Tems meeting Kate Nash, published a complete guide to solo gigging, and hosted a Dazed Mix from Tsatsamis.

Nine months into the year, and we’re strapped in for the rollercoaster ride. Despite the uncertainties that colour many people’s day-to-day realities, music still offers shared communal spaces and serves as a source of collective solace. The global music community still faces economic challenges around touring, releasing and promoting music, but the heart wants what the heart wants. Expert difficulty level settings be damned, new and under-discussed underground talents will always use connection and craft to find their way.

For the third edition of our 2026 quarterly roundup, we continue to highlight musicians, artists, producers, and DJs from around the globe, each with strong communities, clear visions, and important statements to make. Here are ten essential Q3 releases, all available on Bandcamp. Read the full feature here.

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Mixmag ANZ - Venue Spotlight: Cuba Street Tavern

In my latest for Mixmag ANZ, I wrote about Cuba Street Tavern on Cuba Street, home to open-air dance parties for late-afternoon and early-evening sets.

There’s something special about dancing in an open-air courtyard, especially during a balmy summer night. When it’s done right, the music just sounds and feels different. The result is an experience somewhere between an outdoor dance party and a sweaty nightclub. In Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa, courtyards, live music and DJing have been intertwined for decades, especially on Cuba Street, in the heart of the city’s creative quarter. Surrounded by cafes, record stores, boutiques, musical instrument stores and ethnic eateries, the street’s bars and live venues have played a crucial role in several waves of local music and arts culture.

Read the full feature here.

On Sunday, 18 October, I’m DJing from 5-8 pm at the Octo listening bar on Aro Street. Octo has a vinyl-only policy, so I’ll be bringing out the records—Ethiojazz, Persian lounge, whatever I can fit in my bag, bro.

On Saturday, October 31, I’m playing a B2B DJ set with my good friend East Larry at Radio Active 88.6 FM’s Rave 2 The Grave fundraiser party at The Grand. It’s a Halloween party, so we’re planning a spooky set. You can buy tickets here.

FIN.

Selected Works is a weekly (usually) newsletter by Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand)- based freelance music journalist, broadcaster, copywriter, and sometimes DJ Martyn Pepperell, aka Yours Truly. Most weeks, Selected Works includes a recap of what I’ve been doing lately, along with what I’ve been listening to and reading, paired with film photographs I’ve taken, plus some bonuses. That said, sometimes it takes completely different forms.

When I first wrote about Japanese composer and percussionist Midori Takada in 2017, I imagined an alternative timeline in which her debut solo album, Through the Looking Glass, was greeted with rapturous praise in 1983. In it, critics who had already marvelled at Takada-san’s percussion group, Mkwaju Ensemble, would marvel again at the evocative, atmospheric textures and intertwined rhythmic structures depicted in her singular musical vision.

In this looking-glass timeline, Takada-san was anointed a logical successor to Terry Riley, John Cage, and Brian Eno; her work corrected the male-dominated hierarchy that defined the early development of minimalism and ambient music. Beyond this redress, her seamless integration of traditional African and Asian music disrupted the Western bias of these pivotal musical movements. I was imagining a world where Through the Looking Glass was the coin that cracked the fountain’s floor.

In our reality, the album sank without a trace.

In the decades that followed, however, Through The Looking Glass began to find a small but steadily growing audience, and, with time, it came to be considered one of the rarest artefacts of early 1980s Japanese music. Copies sold online for up to $750. With every purchase, discovery, and listen – whether on crackly vinyl or dubbed tape – the myth and legend grew.

Then, in early 2013, musician and blogger Jackamo Brown uploaded the full album to YouTube, where it benefited from a peculiar feature of the platform. When left idle, YouTube’s ‘play next’ algorithm automatically selects and plays a new video. Although the inner workings remain closely guarded, the system began to prioritise Through the Looking Glass as a recommendation for YouTube users interested in minimalism and unconventional electronica.

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Like proto-vaporwave projects Seaside Lovers and Software’s Memories in Beach House (1983) and Digital Dance (1987) albums, the record built a new online following. Before Jackamo Brown’s upload was deleted for copyright infringement, it had clocked up over one and a half million views on YouTube, a remarkable number for a forgotten record from the fringes of an already fringe scene.

Despite this unlikely resurgence and the accolades long awarded by collectors and experimental music devotees, the story behind Through the Looking Glass, and, by extension, Takada-san’s own story, remained largely obscured until the late 2010s.

That changed in 2017, when a reissue series began with Through the Looking Glass, released jointly by New York’s Palto Flats and Geneva’s WRWTFWW Records. Subsequent reissues of her Mkwaju Ensemble and Lunar Cruise recordings followed, bringing her work to a wider audience. “Only a few things tend to stay with you,” enthused Palto Flats’ Jacob Gorchov at the time. “This album had a presence that was completely unique, and I was drawn to it – it’s something I’ve always returned to.”

When I wrote about Takada-san and Through the Looking Glass, I interviewed her via email. “Music is reality and unreality,” she stated. ”Common sense and anti-common sense. Something that has meaning and no meaning. What was recorded once is now an illusion. An image of a mere moment in the past. Isn’t a mirror like an endeavour of layering an illusion upon an illusion?”

Born in Tokyo in 1951, Takada-san’s journey into illusion began in the 1970s, a decade when the postwar economic growth of the 1950s and 1960s gave way to a new focus on quality of life in Japan. As the Vietnam War ended, Japanese youth took cues from American hippie culture. They strove for a freer society and an escape from the conservative values of the past. Takada-san was part of this generation.

Like many, she was captivated by the playful pop psychedelia of The Beatles. From there, she moved through progressive rock and free jazz before journeying deeper into minimalism, ambient, and early experimental music while studying Western classical music at the Tokyo National University of the Arts.

Takada-san played the piano from an early age and took up percussion at 13. Given her background, pursuing a career as a professional musician made sense. In 1978, she made her debut as a percussionist with the Berlin RIAS Symphonie Orchestra at the Berlin Philharmonic. “Up until this point, my life was quite normal,” she recalled. ”Afterwards, I started to become fond of other styles of music apart from classical.”

In Berlin, Takada-san’s growing love of minimalism and increasing scepticism towards Western classical music led her towards the possibilities of free jazz and traditional African and Asian music. She also began collaborating with other fine artists in dance and theatre, created a performance piece with female bodybuilder Lisa Lyon, and travelled to Bali to study Gamelan.

“Music does not evolve by itself,” she wrote. “It is always under the influence of many things. So, as such, at the time I was also heading towards being active in other fields of arts as well.”

At the time, information about African music was scarce in Japan. Takada-san attempted to notate rhythms and melodies from field recordings and play them back. When Ghanaian master gyil (xylophone) player Kakraba Lobi and Senegalese griot Lamine Konte came to Japan, Takada-san collaborated with both of them. Thanks to Korean musician Chi Soung-ja, she discovered the feel and depth of traditional Korean music.

“These experiences were quite valuable to me,” she explained. “I don’t think there will ever be other musicians like them to emerge again. What I obtained from them was quite immense.”

Within the structure of traditional Korean rhythm, she discovered a yin-yang that profoundly affected her. “When I realised this way of being, I was also made aware of the importance of achieving balance as a person,” she admitted. As a result, I felt that I wanted to be equal to all of the sounds that exist in this world.’

Mkwaju Ensemble gave Takada-san a platform to integrate minimalism and traditional African drumming. In 1981, they released two remarkable records through the Better Days label, Mkwaju and Ki-Motion, before disbanding due to economic pressures. “We had members who got jobs outside of Tokyo, and it became difficult to remain active as a group,” Takada-san wrote. “I remember thinking of ways to perform solo.”

She took that step in early 1983. At 32, she spent two intensive days recording at Victor Aoyama Studio in Tokyo’s Shibuya ward. Working with a recording engineer and a palette including percussion, chimes, recorders, reed organ, and piano, she created the four-piece suite that became Through the Looking Glass.

“A huge amount of concentration and energy was necessary,” she explained. “Each composition existed in my head, but the notation of it was next to impossible. Similar to painting, I layered each sound one by one. I did not lose my initial image, even until the very end of the recording. I think the people around me at the time did not initially know what I was trying to create… I was astonished when I started to receive reissue offers from abroad.”

Although Through the Looking Glass’ conceptual investigations of the physicality and colour of sound, time, and perspective resonated with only a few at the time, it wouldn’t be that way forever. WRWTFWW Records co-founder Olivier Ducret first heard part of the album in the early 90s during a weekend listening session. “These are shady memories, nearly dreamlike, as that period was,” he recalled. “Listening to it was a unique and memorable moment.”

In 2014, Ducret met Takada-san while touring Japan. The following year, Palto Flats reissued underground Japanese post-punk and new wave icons Mariah’s final album, Utakata No Hibi, which had long held a cult following in Japan. After the influential Scottish DJ duo Optimo shared a song from it online in 2008, it became a crate digger’s favourite, but it was the Palto Flats reissue that put it in the spotlight it deserved.

Emboldened, Gorchov started reaching out to other Japanese artists on his wishlist. “I reached out to Ms Takada, who was very kind in response,” he recalled. Soon afterwards, he had a conversation with Ducret. Given their mutual interest in her work, it made sense for the two labels to team up on a joint reissue. “I don’t normally use the internet… (so) I was astonished when I started getting reissue offers from abroad,” Takada-san admitted. “The cutting of the vinyl (for this reissue) was done superbly, and the music and the artwork has been revitalised as well.”

Gorchov discovered Through the Looking Glass while listening to a lot of minimalist music that was, by nature, academic. “I wouldn’t say soulless, but it wasn’t breathtaking in the same way,” he explained. Fed up with dry Western conceptual processes, he found that Through the Looking Glass appealed on an immediate level. “One can’t really dismiss how organic the record is,” Gorchov continued. “She had such a clear focus and perspective going in, layering and building sounds with a deftness of touch, pinpoint focus, and warmth. It’s truly remarkable.”

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Roger Bong, the owner of Honolulu-based Hawaiian music reissue label Aloha Got Soul and a huge ambient music fan, discovered Through the Looking Glass on YouTube while compiling a Hawaiian and New Age mixtape. He agreed with Gorchov’s assessment of the importance of its organic nature: “The music is at times almost primitive in the way that it draws the listener back to our beginnings on this planet Earth,” he enthused. “It’s extremely grounding. It feels nourishing to listen to.”

From his perspective, the beauty of Palto Flats and WRWTFWW Records reissuing Through the Looking Glass was in giving the music new opportunities to leap across generations and borders. “Everything we do leaves an impression on others, like ripples in water,” he continued. “That’s why it’s important to do this kind of work: to recognise the things that move us and to create more chances to influence others today and in the future positively. This is how we grow as individuals, as artists, and as a society.”

Following Through the Looking Glass, Takada-san continued to record, perform, and release music in solo and group settings with musician friends from across Africa and Asia. In 1990, she released the Lunar Cruise album with Masahiko Satoh, and in 1999, she released her second solo album, Tree of Life.

In the 2000s and 2010s, Takada-san composed and performed live music for theatre with Tadashi Suzuki and his Suzuki Company of Toga as part of their adaptations of Electra and King Lear. It’s a logical continuation of her early desire to explore the relationship between theatre, dance and music. “There, it was necessary for me to be not only a musician but also an actress who goes on stage,” she wrote. “It was there that I discovered a vehicle where it is possible to create a musical space where ‘music, body, and space’ can unite, which was necessary for me to help elevate my artistry.” Takada-san loves the social nature of theatre and the power, possibility and potential of organised group work. “I found it to be a great opportunity to think about the primordial form of art.”

Four decades into her career, Takada-san framed her relationship with and role within music in simple, fittingly minimalist terms. “My assignment is to furnish the essence of the sound material in the best condition to the listener or space. While focusing on this endeavour, I transcend my sense of self,” she explained. “In my own way, I create sounds, and by myself, I emit them. It’s that simple. So to speak, it’s like living off the land.”

Not long after, I had the opportunity to see Takada-san perform in Helsinki during a European tour. On stage, she rose from the ashes, captivating a small but dedicated audience with her magnetic stage presence, complex, ambient rhythms, and incantatory vocal phrases. The performance felt like a scene from Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain.

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In 2017, Pitchfork awarded Through the Looking Glass a Best New Reissue status. The record was the second-best-selling release on Discogs that year. As far as reissues go, it hit like a tsunami. Since then, Takada-san has continued to tour and record, including collaborations with Lafawndah and Kang Tae Hwan, and composing an original score for Otto Bell’s documentary short, The Toxic Pigs of Fukushima.

Five years later, I saw her again, this time at the Forum Theatre in Melbourne, Australia. Like a vision from the sublime, Takada-san appeared transformed. Poised, clad in expensive designer clothing, and commanding the stage, she was the avant-garde legend she always should have been. Takada-san seemed newly burnished, remade as gold. In that moment, it felt like the timeline we live in and the looking-glass timeline I’d imagined for her had converged.

Prestigious critics now recognised the depth of her work. She stood alongside the canonical figures she had long been compared to. Her music had helped rebalance a history shaped by exclusion, and in doing so, helped redraw the boundaries of minimalism and ambient music. She was the coin that cracked the fountain floor, the rest of the kingdom flooding in her wake. Takada-san had taken us through the looking glass. We were on the other side now.

FIN.

Selected Works is a weekly (usually) newsletter by Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand)- based freelance music journalist, broadcaster, copywriter, and sometimes DJ Martyn Pepperell, aka Yours Truly. Most weeks, Selected Works includes a recap of what I’ve been doing lately, along with what I’ve been listening to and reading, paired with film photographs I’ve taken, plus some bonuses. That said, sometimes it takes completely different forms.

It’s hard to imagine it now, but in the early 1990s, Auckland’s High Street precinct was the epicentre for a new wave of jazz nightlife in the inner city. Coloured by coffee culture, affordable warehouse flats, apartment living, and the influence of a Polynesian cultural renaissance, musicians entertained well-dressed audiences in bars, venues and cafes throughout Lorne Street, High Street, Vulcan Lane, and Queen Street, notably Deschlers, Cause Celebre, and Manifesto.

One of the best records of the era is Raw: Live at Cause Celebre by the acid jazz band Freebass, originally released on CD by Deepgrooves Entertainment in 1993. Led by brothers Steve and Ben Harrop, Freebass were among the most popular draws at Cause Celebre. They’d take the stage at midnight, then entertain the enthusiastic crowd until dawn. As the decade unfolded, Cause Celebre and its nightclub next door, The Box, became crucial to the development of a restless Antipodean scene where rappers and turntablists performed with jazz bands, and drum machines and samplers took centre stage.

During Freebass’s reign, two members, brothers Joel and Nathan Haines, formed a new group, The Enforcers. When Nathan recorded his breakout album, Shift Left, they served as his backing band. Released in 1995, it quickly became New Zealand’s best-selling jazz album, catapulting him into a global journey through sound that continues to this day. Like Raw, it captured the zeitgeist of the scene, with local hip-hop luminaries like Sani Sagala (aka Dei Hamo), Hamey Hame and Pauly “OMC” Fuemana rapping effortlessly over Nathan’s blend of smooth jazz, boombap beats and turntablism, provided by the grandmaster of taste, DJ Manuel Bundy.

Throughout the second half of the 90s, the keyboardist Mark de Clive-Lowe became another celebrated figure in the High Street precinct milieu. Fascinated by technology, he brought an Akai MPC on stage and began to explore jazz hybridity with house, jungle, and broken beat music. This all culminated in his cult debut, Six Degrees, and a move to the UK, where he spent a decade ensconced in the West London scene.

While Nathan and Mark were blazing trails overseas, Auckland kept on exploring jazz in new ways. In the 2000s and 2010s, Opensouls carried the torch for the city’s ongoing love affair with hip-hop jazz, clearing the way for Tom Scott’s masterful Avantdale Bowling Club project. Along the way, Julien Dyne and Cameron Allen grew their group The Circling Sun from playing obscure jazz covers in Ponsonby to recording two towering spiritual jazz albums for Soundway Records.

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These days, if you want to listen to jazz on a Wednesday night in Auckland, Joe Kaptein’s Upside Down Lounge at Goblin in Grey Lynn is the place to be. Head to the brick building on the corner of Ponsonby and Richmond Road, and make your way up the pale blue staircase. Follow the music and the murmurs.

A composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer with a cheeky grin and a zoned-out gaze when he’s in the throes of it, Joe really knows his way around the piano. He can also get some absolute magic out of a vintage keyboard. When he isn’t doing his own stuff, including his swamp-jazz group Pool Sharks, power trio AIGHT, or Bikes In Space with the maestro Jonathan Crayford, you might find him on stage with Princess Chelsea’s Dream Warriors, Crystal Chen, Nathan Haines, The Circling Sun, or any number of acts.

On Wednesday, 27 May, the Joe Kaptein quartet recorded Live In The Upside Down Lounge Vol. 1 for an intimate audience at Goblin with audio engineer Thomas Healy. The idea was to capture the spirit of classic live jazz LPs recorded for labels like Blue Note, CTI, and Chess/Cadet Records and present it in an antipodean context. By luck of the draw, I was there on the night.

After the assembled crowd of DJs, musicians, heads and lounge lizards quietened, they opened with a sedate, spacious tune titled ‘Lonnie’ from Joe’s Eternal Afternoon album (2024). With George Brajkovich tapping the drums gently, Joe added in flickers and flutters of keys and synths, before Hank Trenton snuck a gentle bassline into the mix and Ruby Fainaa added percussion with a subtle, lyrical voice. The vibes were immaculate.

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A well-listened musician who doesn’t take himself too seriously, Joe has an affinity for everything from avant-garde jazz to Burt Bacharach, with pit stops in the baroque soul and yacht rock sensibilities of Charles Stepney or The Doobie Brothers. He’s continuing to uphold local legacies while adding his own unique compositional voice to the story.

Joe’s prowess as an instrumental composer is front and centre on the next live recording captured on Live In The Upside Down Lounge Vol. 1, a live version of a retrofuturistic classic from his 2024 album Pool Sharks, ‘Sleepy Space Cadet’. Draped in cosmic ‘70s jazz sensibilities, it opens with a flurry of space-age synthesisers and percussion, all pads, squelches, and cymbals that crash like a galaxy of stars twinkling in the dark. After marinating in the ambience for several minutes, the song unfolds into a suitably somnolent parlour stroll that stretches into the eternal evermore.

The endless groove running through the middle of ‘Sleepy Space Cadet’ is a spot-on example of why Live In The Upside Down Lounge Vol. 1 is a perfect fit for a collaboration between Holiday Records, Music First and Joe’s label Jandal Records. It’s simple, really. The music just sounds and feels right. When the vibe locks in like that, nothing else matters. Later, Joe shows off his synthesiser technique with a series of flourishes, riffs, and figures full of possibility, excitement, and potential. It’s sci-fi, but it’s also just sound exploration in all its thrilling glory.

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On ‘Intergalactic Love Song’, Joe and his quartet are joined by Nathan Haines. As we know, Nathan is a genuine New Zealand jazz legend. He changed the game here in the ‘90s, then went on to make his mark in the UK and US. Nowadays, he’s back where he started. Once, he was the young upstart. Now he’s the wise owl mentoring the young upstarts and keeping them on their toes. Blowing expressively on the woodwind, his saxophone lines soar over the band’s celestially minded backbeat and Joe’s shimmering synthesisers. The music isn’t quite broken beat, but it’s a melange of styles: jazz, bossa, ambient, soul. Twelve minutes pass in a gloriously contemplative manner.

Breaking the meditative trance, the quartet switches gears, opening ‘On My Mind’ with an uptempo Latin shuffle. Soon enough, Joe’s signature mid-to-late 20th-century sci-fi B-movie sonics are snaking through the soundscape as well. The feel is sedate, but it could also move a dance floor, especially when George starts really riding the drums. Four minutes pass by quickly. They pass by slowly as well. When the music is right, time can really dilate.

From there, Live In The Upside Down Lounge Vol. 1 ends with ‘Listen Here’. The song begins with a recording of crowd applause and a strutting, funked-up bass line. Drums, percussion and keys wrap around it, forming a rich, southern-fried groove. By this point in the evening, Joe and his quartet had really won the room over. Point made, they give themselves the grace to really stretch out, giving us feelings, moods, flavours for days, and another impressive entry in New Zealand’s canon of live jazz albums.

To complement the release of Live at The Upside Down Lounge Vol. 1, Music First commissioned the American electronic music producer and DJ Byron the Aquarius to record an uptempo jazz house remix of ‘Intergalactic Love Song’. He produced a version with Nathan Haines’s saxophone solo and a version without. I played the sax version on the dancefloor on Saturday night. It went off. BUY NOW.

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BEATS:

A new entry in the Tāmaki Noir canon.

I fear the Australians are getting rather good at making downbeat and trip-hop.

New Bullion. Oh, we’re eating good.

MUSIC & THE CITY:

Thanks again to NZIA, NZILA, SEGD, Cuba Street Tavern and RadioActive.FM for hosting us for the Music & The City panel discussion on Saturday. It was a pleasure to talk about music, architecture, cities and cultures with Rahine, Reuben, Zack and Marie. I’m always available to yap. So if you need me for a panel, live Q&A or talk, just hit me up.

FIN.

Selected Works is a weekly (usually) newsletter by Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand)- based freelance music journalist, broadcaster, copywriter, and sometimes DJ Martyn Pepperell, aka Yours Truly. Most weeks, Selected Works includes a recap of what I’ve been doing lately, along with what I’ve been listening to and reading, paired with film photographs I’ve taken, plus some bonuses. That said, sometimes it takes completely different forms.

In 2026, song premieres feel like a throwback to the glory days of the blog era. Almost no one runs them anymore, but Mixmag ANZ are still open to them as a promotional channel for New Zealand and Australian artists. Today, I’ve written up one for Mānuka Recordings artist Eo.

Eo is a New Zealand-American visual artist and vocalist who explores the convergence of South Pacific and Black culture through mixed-media work. In 2023, he appeared on Mānuka Recordings’ second release, ‘Tell Me / What You Need’, produced by the label’s co-founders, Kenny Sterling & Dylan Biscuit. Three years later, Eo is back and sounding better than ever.

‘Algo-Rhythm’ is the second single off his forthcoming new EP, Battery Pack, due for release on 15 October 2026. Today, we’re premiering ‘Algo-Rhythm (Surly’s Vocal Dub)’, produced by Tāmaki Makaurau producer and DJ Surly from the Juke Bounce Werk collective. Although he’s best known for his cult juke and footwork productions, Surly can effortlessly turn his hand to an array of adjacent genres, including jungle, 2-step, R&B, dubstep, and dub techno.

Opening with a shuffling, uptempo machine beat, ‘Algo-Rhythm (Surly’s Vocal Dub)’ quickly expands into an evocative, swirling soundscape, providing a perfectly poised, haunting backdrop for a fragmented re-imagining of Eo’s spoken/rapped reflections on life in the time of algorithms. Building toward sung choruses structured around a simple, repeated refrain of “algorithm,” the dub cycles through rhythmic patterns underscored by serious, low-end bass weight. After six minutes and fourteen seconds, it fades away with a squelch.

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Across the Battery Pack EP, Eo also teams up with another of Aotearoa’s most low-key but deadly electronic music producers, Hiki. On the title track, Hiki builds a broken-beat riddim for Eo to tell it like it is, surveying life’s contradictions and challenges over syncopated drums, a laidback bass line, and lush chords. Later on the EP, Eo reconvenes with Hiki for ‘2Cleva’, a heavy, jazz-funk-fueled number where breakbeat drums, glossy synths and hard boom-bap raps come together for a tough workout.

Mānuka Recordings is a boutique record label from Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa (Auckland, New Zealand), established by Dylan Biscuit and Kenny Sterling in 2022. As a collective, they focused on supporting and collaborating with musicians in their immediate community, pushing artists’ boundaries, and searching for the magic within spontaneity and imperfection. Since forming, they’ve released music by Summer Vee, Eo, Romi Wrights, Julian Lubin, Kenny Sterling, The Hong Slicker and Tyran in a range of 7”, 10”, LP and digital formats.

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Summer Vee, Let Go (Tuku)

Thanks to Summer Vee and Kenny Sterling for inviting me to write the sales notes for their new single ‘Let Go (Tuku)’, created with support from Waiata Anthems.

‘Let Go (Tuku)’ by Tāmaki Makaurau singer-songwriter Summer Vee explores the transformative power of letting go and making space in your heart and life for new blessings. Singing breezily in te reo Māori and English over a gentle, jazzy neo-soul instrumental, Summer celebrates forgiveness, gratitude, whānau and friendship in her affecting, signature style.

Developed at Tom Broome’s Avondale recording studio, Broome Recordings, ‘Let Go (Tuku)’ was written by Summer, with te reo translation assistance from fellow songwriter and kaitiaki reo Leah Te Whata. “Leah was able to understand my concept and make it Māori,” Summer explains. “The song is about forgiveness. When you’re holding onto things and closed off, you can’t make room for something new. You have to make space and appreciate the good in your life.”

While Summer and Leah were writing, her producer Kenny Sterling worked on the instrumental with Tom Broome (drums), Elijah Wilson (upright piano, Rhodes electric piano, synthesiser, backing vocals), and Jong-Yun JY Lee (flute). Playing alongside them on acoustic guitar, bass, synthesiser, percussion, and congas, Kenny led and shaped a calming, expansive backdrop, drawing on a similar musical lineage to artists such as Solange, Blood Orange, and Aaradhna. When they brought everything together, Summer’s message and the groove were a perfect marriage.

Recorded by Tom Broome, mixed by Kenny Sterling, and mastered by Josh Llewellyn at Downbeat Mastering, the song was created with support from Waiata Anthems, which financed the recording and provided translation assistance.

‘Let Go (Tuku)’ is available on Bandcamp and all streaming services.

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BEATS:

Listening electronica for your living room. Bonus points if you have a conversation pit.

An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, inside a mystery. At the same time, however, it doesn’t have to be that deep. Or does it?

Winning synthesiser music from New Zealand’s Hoofschool.

Soundtrack for a haunted future… Descendants Book Tour

Here are the very hot-off-the-press details for Lee Hana’s forthcoming Descendants book tour. For those unfamiliar, Hana was the mastermind behind the amazing Psy-Fi event I DJed earlier this year.

This October-November, Pōneke writer Lee Hana and electronic musician Ludus, with help from musical outsider visionaries, are touring an immersive soundworld for the new book Descendants, a collection of haunting science fiction stories that unfold across a future Asia Pacific.

On Saturday, October 24, Lee Hana and Ludus appear at The Pyramid Club in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington, joined by deep-space sound explorer Erika Grant and techno romantic Junus Orca. On Friday, November 27, they are at The Audio Foundation in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland, with the amazing electronica of Kraus and ghuzheng dreampunk duo 花溪 Flowerstream. Tickets will be available via Under The Radar soon.

‘As eerily prescient as it is deeply satisfying.’—Artsub Australia.

Descendants was launched in May 2026 by the spectacular PSY FI event in Pōneke, a showcase of future-focused artists from Aotearoa.

‘Incredible production. Def the most ambitious local show I’ve been to. Very special.’—Ian Jorgensen, A Low Hum.

FIN.

Selected Works is a weekly (usually) newsletter by Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand)- based freelance music journalist, broadcaster, copywriter, and sometimes DJ Martyn Pepperell, aka Yours Truly. Most weeks, Selected Works includes a recap of what I’ve been doing lately, along with what I’ve been listening to and reading, paired with film photographs I’ve taken, plus some bonuses. That said, sometimes it takes completely different forms.

This week’s newsletter covers a podcast I recently appeared on, a few events I’m DJing and speaking at, and the latest release from my friends at Mānuka Recordings, amongst others beats + pieces.

METHOD #6 WITH MARTYN PEPPERELL

Earlier in the year, my new friend Alex Henkin invited me to appear on her new music podcast, Method Music. Our conversation is available to watch on YouTube above. Considering how many people have let me interview them over the last twenty years, I always try to say yes if someone asks to interview me. It just feels right.

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MĀNUKA RECORDINGS: EO, BATTERY PACK

Thanks to Mānuka Recordings for inviting me to write the sales notes for their latest release, Battery Pack by Eo.

For their 11th release, Mānuka Recordings is proud to present Battery Pack, the latest EP from Ethan Oliver King, aka Eo.

Eo is a New Zealand-American visual artist and vocalist who explores the convergence of South Pacific and Black culture through mixed-media work. In 2023, he appeared on their second release, ‘Tell Me / What You Need’. Three years later, he’s sounding better than ever.

Across Battery Pack, Eo teams up with two of Aotearoa’s most low-key but deadly electronic music producers, Hiki and Surly. On the title track, Hiki builds a broken-beat riddim for Eo to tell it like it is, surveying life's contradictions and challenges over syncopated drums, a laidback bass line, and lush chords. Up next on ‘Algo Rhythm’, Eo switches between singing and rapping over an understated future jazz backdrop produced by Surly. His subject matter is our algorithms and their impact on us.

From there, Eo reconvenes with Hiki for ‘2Cleva’, a heavy, jazz-funk-fueled workout where breakbeat drums, glossy synths and hard boombap raps come together on one of the toughest tracks we’ve released yet. Rounding out the Battery Pack EP, Surly jumps back in the mix with a stripped-back ambient dub remix of ‘Algo Rhythm’ straight out of the early 2000s playbook.

Produced by Hiki and Surly, all four tracks on Battery Pack received additional mixing support from Kenny Sterling before Josh Llewellyn mastered them at Downbeat Mastering. Eo created the EP cover as an original piece of art.

Battery Pack releases on 15th October on Bandcamp and streaming platforms.

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MEOW’S 18TH BIRTHDAY:

On Saturday the 3rd of October, Te Whanganui-a-Tara venue Meow is celebrating its 18th birthday with an evening of dub, soul, and funk-forward entertainment provided by Rhombus Sound System, Louis TM, Wallace, yours truly, and some special guests.

Here’s the event blurb: In October 2008, Meow opened its doors. Eighteen years later, we’re still here doing what we love: bringing people together through music. To celebrate, we’re putting together a night that reflects what Meow has always been about: exceptional musicians, adventurous sounds, a packed dancefloor and a room full of people who care about live music.

Headlining the night is Rhombus Sound System, one of Aotearoa’s most distinctive electronic collectives, bringing more than two decades of dub, reggae, hip-hop, soul and bass-heavy dance music to the stage. They’re joined by acclaimed vocalist, pianist and songwriter Louis TM, a rising force in contemporary soul and R&B; singer-songwriter Wallace, whose rich blend of jazz, blues, hip-hop and soul has seen her collaborate with Kraak & Smaak, Thundamentals, Sampa The Great and Sola Rosa; and DJ, writer and broadcaster Martyn Pepperell, a trusted selector known for adventurous, genre-spanning sets and a sharp ear for forward-thinking music. Plus, some very special guests will join us along the way.

For 18 years, Meow has been a place where established artists, emerging talent, local legends and international visitors have shared the same stage, and this night brings that spirit together in one room. Come raise a glass, hit the dance floor and celebrate the music, the musicians and the community that have made Meow what it is.

Tickets are on sale here.

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MUSIC & THE CITY AT CUBA ST TAVERN IN COLLABORATION WITH RADIOACTIVE.FM

Earlier on Saturday, October 3rd, I’ll be taking part in another event, Music & The City at Cuba Street Tavern, this time in both DJ and public speaker capacities. Entry is free, but it’s a limited-capacity space, so get there early.

Hosted by NZIA, NZILA, and SEGD, Music & the City is an event series designed to dive into a hot topic with city shaping voices.

The next iteration, Music & the City, will explore the spaces where music happens: town halls, old churches, basements, parks, beaches, street corners, recording studios, record stores, radio stations, and asks how people make those spaces special, and what architects, landscape architects, and experiential designers can add for the future of music and the city.

We’ll be marking the final weekend of Aotearoa Festival of Architecture 2026 at Cuba Street Tavern, with a live broadcast of the Late Late Breakfast show, followed by a panel discussion and Q&A about how we best design spaces for music in our city, and kick-ons with RadioActive DJs to see you deep into the night.

Cuba St Tavern, Saturday 3rd October

1 pm-1 am Free Entry

Timings for the day:

1-4 pm: The Late Late Breakfast Show LIVE!

Featuring: Mish Waugh, Martyn Pepperell, PocketLipps, Jen Kyle & Coda

4-5pm: Music & The City panel talk + Audience Q&A

Featuring: Rahine O’Rielly - (Owner/Operator of Meow & Meow Nui), Reuben Romanos aka Flatmate - (DJ, Event Promoter & Label Owner of Dance Therapy Records), Martyn Pepperell - (DJ & Music Journalist), Zac Athfield - (Principal, Athfield Architects)

5 pm-1 am: RadioActive.FM DJs bringing the vibes!

Featuring: Fras Left, M.Cap, Oaf, Seini, Claire-voyant, Ryan C B2B K-otiK, Malibu.

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BEATS:

Another set of downbeat bangers from one of Australia’s top dream-pop/trip-hop artists, Now Always Fades. Due for release September 18th through Naarm’s Northern Underground Records.

If it’s good enough for Daria from Herbert Music, it’s good enough for me.

I’ve had Hosono-san’s latest one on loop lately. I still can’t believe I got to meet him in Tokyo in the mid-2010s.

FIN.

Selected Works is a weekly (usually) newsletter by the Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand) based freelance music journalist, broadcaster, copywriter and sometimes DJ Martyn Pepperell, aka Yours Truly. Most weeks, Selected Works consists of a recap of what I’ve been doing lately, along with some of what I’ve been listening to and reading, paired with film photographs I’ve taken, plus some bonuses. That said, sometimes it takes completely different forms.

Kia ora friends. This week’s newsletter is a quick summary of nine new and forthcoming releases from around the world, the soundcloud premiere of ‘Honey’ by Paddy Fred, and a quick reminder about a couple of DJ gigs I have on this weekend. As always, thank you for tapping in with me.

Here’s the music video for ‘Misanthrope’, taken from the new album by Alphabethead, My Name Is David. For those unfamiliar, Alphabethead is the musical project of David Morrison, a producer and turntablist based in Whanganui, Aotearoa. Sitting somewhere between hip-hop, electronica and experimental/avant-garde rock music, Alphabethead has been a fixture of the scene down here for decades. Animated by Dr D Foothead, the video depicts a hunk of organic matter lying dormant in a Cronenberg-esque laboratory. As this undulating subject is fed aural and visual stimulation, we witness evolution and mutation in real time.

As the story goes, Saint Abdullah and Eomac is a long-distance, ongoing collaboration between Mohammad and Mehdi Mehrabani, New York-based Iranian-Canadian brothers who make up Saint Abdullah and Eomac, aka Ian McDonnell, a producer from Wicklow, Ireland, who previously released the Cracks LP on Planet Mu. Due for release on October 16th, their next project, When The Sandbox Has No Edge, might very well be their best release yet. Expect hip-hop conventions reimagined through a textural, sound-design lens.

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“Mano in the air, mano in the air.” Sydney-based producer and Trackwork label founder UTILITY has just shared ‘ORA SIAMO NOI,’ the opening single from his highly anticipated debut album FUTURES, due out 21st October. The track brings together Australian-Italian avant-garde artist DoloRRes (Cherry Chola, JUPiTA) and French Atlanta-trap-via-EDM pioneer Brodinski (Yeezus, 21 Savage) for a haunting, apocalyptic electronic rap release. Built through long-form exchanges between artists across Sydney, Kampala, Durban, Paris, Rome and Los Angeles, UTILITY’s work moves between deconstructed rap forms, ambient collage and low-end sound-system structures.

Elegantly described by Jon Bywater as evoking “worlds in which nature is miniature and intimate, technology soft and fluid, and the uncanny gentle rather than frightening. In this enchanted ecology, solitude becomes a habitat for creativity and folklore bleeds into domestic life,” Water Music is one of the most remarkable releases in longstanding experimental Tāmaki Makaurau musician Kraus’ equally remarkable catalogue. For me, it’s a set of songs that recall the absolute best qualities I associate with the 16-bit VGM soundtrack era, while heading deep into the innovative world of Elektron synthesisers. ESSENTIAL.

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After the high-gloss art-pop of their Clementine Valentine project, New Zealand sister duo Purple Pilgrims dial things back towards the watery, pastoral sensibilities of the second act of their career with a nocturnally minded new cut, ‘Innocence Lost’. It points the way towards their next album, Given to the Night, due for release through AD93 / Flying Nun later this year.

Nothing Ever Was is the next compilation due for release through Naarm’s Efficient Space label, artfully compiled by the man himself, DJ Sundae. Expect, as they put it, “an immaculate compendium of phantom independent melancholia spanning ’60s/’70s village green folk, outsider shoegaze and new millennium domestic pop. Each recording an emotional exorcism, Sundae breathes oxygen into music that was barely there in its own time, made in quiet places and crawl spaces, shared only with a precious few via private presses, hobby labels and now-decaying CD-Rs.” Long story short, this is the good stuff. November 27 2026 can’t come soon enough. ESSENTIAL.

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H/T to Chris Cudby from Under The Radar (NZ) for putting me onto this sensational suite of dungeon synth from Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa. As Cudby put it, “[Fox Moss] bind[s] together elements of ambient, new age, electronica, kosmische musik and haunting avant-folk into an enchanting, deeply immersive eight-track journey.” “Illuminated by magelight, a maiden stirs from a deep sleep. Reunited with her sword and noble steed, she must navigate an ancient and abandoned realm. Cast into shadow, the veil that covers all is eternal.” - Fox Moss. Available on CD as well!

If I were going to give this record a subtitle, it would be “Now That’s What I Call Sleep Music Vol.1” fountain is a brilliant ambient/new age record from Actual B, which may or may not be the alias of an artist I’ve written about a lot in the past here. There’s some absolutely gorgeous synthesiser work going on across this record. The textures and atmospheres go crazy. Give it a go when you need some Emotional Regulation.

This one has finally been reissued. Modern trip-hop heads know.

MIXMAG PREMIERE: PADDY FRED, HONEY

Paddy Fred is a guitarist, beatmaker, singer-songwriter and producer based on Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington’s rugged south coast in Aotearoa/New Zealand. A longstanding live musician, he turned his hand towards beatmaking after a trip to Los Angeles, where he crossed paths with Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder collective at the storied Low End Theory party.

‘Honey’ is the second single from his forthcoming debut album, ‘Changes’, due for release this Friday through the London-based record label and collective Extra Soul Perception, which has also released music by Setwun, Mara TK, Lynda Dawn and Faizal Mostrixx.

Opening with a choppy guitar lick, sunset synths and an unhurried, shuffling drum machine, Paddy takes his time letting ‘Honey’ build before adding his own wavy, washed-out vocal into the mix. It’s one of those tracks that sounds like how life on the coast feels, while consciously recalling the days when Paddy and his partner were starting a family.

In his words, “There’s an idea that there are all these spirits floating around, and when someone gets pregnant, one of those spirits chooses its parents. Honey is my pitch to the spirit of my first child. It’s me saying, ‘Hey, come pick me and Melody. Choose us.’ The song is basically a promise to them: ‘When you fall over, I’ll help you through. Lie down and look at the sky all blue. Come home with me.’”

This Mixmag ANZ premiere of ‘Honey’ points the way towards Paddy’s forthcoming new album, Changes. Over ten vivid tracks, he reflects on parenting, the shared life he’s built with his partner, and his search for balance amid chaos. Written with guitars, keyboards, recording hardware, and software, the album traverses joy, loss, gratitude, and grief, understanding emotion as a healing force, rendered through a mix of analogue warmth and digital clarity.

Fitting, despite being an electronica project, ‘Changes’ brought his relationship with his guitar full circle. “Before this album there wasn’t much guitar or any singing in my beatmaking,” he says. “Beatmaking started as an escape from the live bands I was playing in. Here I reconnected with the guitar—the instrument I know best—and started singing for the first time. It felt like a mainline to my subconscious. Changes was a very therapeutic process. It gave me perspective, helped me see what I was grateful for and what I was missing.”

DJ REMINDER:

I’ve got two DJ gigs this weekend in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa. On Friday night, I’ll be spinning actual records from 7-10 PM at Octo on Aro Street. On Saturday night, I’ll be playing MP3s on CDJS at Peg Gallery from 5.30-7.00 PM as part of Enrolathon. Drop by. Come along! etc.

FIN.

Selected Works is a weekly (usually) newsletter by the Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand) based freelance music journalist, broadcaster, copywriter and sometimes DJ Martyn Pepperell, aka Yours Truly. Most weeks, Selected Works consists of a recap of what I’ve been doing lately, along with some of what I’ve been listening to and reading, paired with film photographs I’ve taken, plus some bonuses. All of that said, sometimes it takes completely different forms.

Over the last twenty-plus years, Brent Park, aka Parksdale, has been one of the more understated but valued contributors to modern music from Aotearoa and Te Waipounamu (New Zealand). He’s produced for Ladi6, sung with Eru Dangerspiel, Julien Dyne and the Otautahi All-Stars, and handled beats and pieces for Avantdale Bowling Club, From Scratch, Tom Scott and more, all without making much fuss. Now, it’s time for him to show us what he can do as a solo artist.

Clocking in at 35 minutes, Look! is the debut album from Parksdale, a composer, synthesist and producer based in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa. Over thirteen cinematic dreamscapes, he maps out an interior soundworld shaped by early electronic compositions, library music, modular synthesis, and the curated listening practices that have grown out of hip-hop and sample-based production in the mode of RZA and Madlib.

The album’s starting point exists within the mind’s eye: the feeling of remembering something that never happened, or visualising a location that doesn’t actually exist. As a musician, Parksdale’s inspiration encompasses 1960s holiday brochures, vintage Rolex advertisements, and obscure religious propaganda. Although their messages vary, they share an overlapping promise: luxury, technology and spirituality presented as a paradisical vision of a better tomorrow.

That same sense of rose-tinted idealism flows through the early electronic music Parksdale draws from, particularly the works of pioneers like Raymond Scott, Delia Derbyshire, Isao Tomita, Piero Umiliani and Mort Garson. These were uncodified, genuinely new sounds from a brilliant moment when modular synthesis and state-of-the-art studio equipment belonged to a brighter future: sleek chrome steel, unfamiliar frontiers and endless possibilities.

Look! reassesses that legacy through the ears of a beatmaker raised on hip-hop and sample-based production. Sampling provided Parksdale with an asymmetrical musical education, leading him down corridors of history he might have never explored otherwise. In his ears, Italian film soundtrack music, Brazilian music, jazz, library music and early electronics became a constellation linked by the heightened emotional intensity of the loops his favourite producers chose to lift.

“The common thread in the things that people sample in the music I grew up on is usually an emotional quality rather than a specific genre or sound. This music belongs to that lineage” - Parksdale

Before recording Look!, Parksdale explored his fascination with sample packs and music written specifically for sampling while completing a Master of Arts. Across Look!, he plays with the idea of expanding handmade samples into complete pieces of music. In his hands, what could be a twenty-second loop becomes a fully realised composition full of moments to be cut, chopped and looped.

By Parksdale’s exacting standards, the album was made quickly. Most of it was composed over a month, with further material developed in studio sessions with his longtime collaborators Brandon Haru, Toby Laing, Riki Pirihi and Michael August aka Lord Echo. Having previously completed a multi-year production project, he wanted Look! to feel natural and unaffected.

“I just wanted this to be fun and natural. Whatever happened while I was in that mode became the final product.” - Parksdale

Although modular synthesis is the album’s primary melodic voice, Parksdale found himself renewing his relationship with guitar, the first instrument he ever learned, while composing and recording Look! Song by song, it served as a compositional intermediary, a way to build arrangements before transposing them through synthesis. The results represent a rare opportunity to step inside Parksdale’s singular soundworld and explore his memories of the future through the looking-glass mirrors of retrofuturist visions and utopian ideals of the past.

About Parksdale

Parksdale is a New Zealand composer, synthesist and producer who works in electronic music, production and contemporary sample culture. His practice is underscored by hip-hop beatmaking, early electronic music, guitar, and modular synthesis, as well as extensive experience producing for Ladi6.

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OCTO: Friday 11 September, Wellington

On Friday, I’m dusting off the records and heading down to Octo at 102 Aro Street in Wellington to play a three-hour all-vinyl DJ set from 7-10 PM. Expect a bit of everything. It’s free entry, but the place fills up fast. Get in early if you want to come along and enjoy the vibes.

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Enrolathon: Saturday 12 September, Wellington

On Saturday, I’m one of a bevy of DJs and live performers who will be playing music and getting up to other shenanigans at PEG Gallery, 230 Cuba Street, between 10 am and 10 pm. If you’re wondering about your enrolment status, drop through, check out your situation on the spot, and enjoy some tunes with us.

If you check your enrolment, you go in the draw to win goodies from @decoy_knitwear @turumeke @bakergramercy @coffee_supreme @15minutebottles @currentartmagazine and PEG

Radioactive DJs on the decks all day: DJ Poets, Manakin, Seini, Jasmine, Martyn Pepperell, Subtle Grape, Club Medder & Maximillian, plus local performers Rens and Blip the Siren.

See you there?

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Paddy Fred, Changes:

Thanks to Paddy Fred for inviting me to write the sales notes for his forthcoming new album, Changes. We hosted a great listening party over the weekend. Thanks to everyone who came along to 113 on Friday.

Changes is the long-awaited debut album from Paddy Fred, a guitarist, beatmaker, singer-songwriter, and producer based on Wellington’s rugged south coast in Aotearoa New Zealand. Entirely self-produced, it shares the same spirit as his cult 2022 EP Spells, blending shuffling programmed beats with the lush textures and hazy guitars of chillwave, dream-pop, and experimental rock.

A longstanding musician, Paddy began in rock, soul and funk bands in the 2000s. He turned his hand towards beatmaking after visiting Los Angeles, crossing paths with Flying Lotus’s Brainfeeder collective, and attending the storied Low End Theory party. In 2013, he produced his debut EP, Laminate, and became a father. “Before having kids I was so wrapped up in my own stuff,” he says. “The first few years of parenting were honestly the happiest. My priorities were so clear.”

After settling into parenting, a feeling of sadness and depression crept in from the periphery. “It basically came down to the fact I’d disconnected from music, which had been my lifeline since I was a teenager,” he continues. Once he started spending time in his home studio again and created ‘Found You’, the penny dropped. In his words, “It felt like a big, warm hug. I was so grateful I cried. Music was there all along waiting for me to come back.”

Over ten vivid tracks, he reflects on parenting, the shared life he’s built with his partner, and his search for balance amid chaos. Written with guitars, keyboards, recording hardware and software, the album traverses joy, loss, gratitude and grief, understanding emotion as a healing force, as rendered through a mixture of analogue warmth and digital clarity. On Changes’ lead single, ‘Together’, Paddy leans all the way into unconditional love, reminding his children he’ll be there in the good times and bad, while giving himself grace in every moment.

Fittingly, Changes brought Paddy full circle while opening new doors. “Before this album there wasn’t much guitar or any singing in my beatmaking,” he says. “Beatmaking started as an escape from the live bands I was playing in. Here I reconnected with the guitar—the instrument I know best—and started singing for the first time. It felt like a mainline to my subconscious. Changes was a very therapeutic process. It gave me perspective, helped me see what I was grateful for and what I was missing.”

Changes is due for release through Extra Soul Perception/First Word Records on 09/11/2026 UK time.

FIN.

Selected Works is a weekly (usually) newsletter by the Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand) based freelance music journalist, broadcaster, copywriter and sometimes DJ Martyn Pepperell, aka Yours Truly. Most weeks, Selected Works consists of a recap of what I’ve been doing lately, along with some of what I’ve been listening to and reading, paired with film photographs I’ve taken, plus some bonuses. All of that said, sometimes it takes completely different forms.

Greetings from Tāmaki Makaurau, the largest city in Aotearoa. I’m still here for a couple more. Later on today, I’ll be DJing on Karangahape Road’s TBC Radio from 12-2 pm. Expect a whole bunch of classic 90s NZ street soul, swingbeat and R&B tunes. If you want to listen, you can tune in here. Tomorrow night, I’ll be at First Thursdays for real. See some of you around.

MOKOMOKAI & TROY KINGI: THE MARINE BLUE SOCIAL CLUB

Big thanks to Mokomokai & Troy Kingi, who recently invited me to write the sales notes for their new collaborative EP, The Marine Blue Social Club. They have a few music videos up on YouTube now. Check them out below.

You can stream the full EP on YouTube Music here.

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95BFM: ARCADE RADIO AOTEAROA

Last week, I put together a 30-minute drum & bliss set (shoegaze jungle/breakbeat) for 95bFM’s Arcade Radio. Thanks to Dylan Biscuit for inviting me along for the ride. We even had Surly in the cut for another short mix, which was fire.

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GENERAL RECAP:

While I’ve been up here, I’ve gotten to do a few cool things. I started the trip on Wednesday night by DJing at a free entry show Fables threw at Whammy Bar, with Finn Johnanssen playing support. It’s always cool to see Fables keep on going from strength to strength. Sometimes when the stars align properly, it feels like there’s no ceiling on where her songs could go.

After Fables and her band wrapped up, I DJed 100% Dolly Parton songs until close. Obviously we had to get the classics like ‘9 to 5’ and ‘Jolene’ out of the way early, but there was still plenty of space for cuts like ‘Potential New Boyfriend’ and ‘My Tennessee Mountain Home’. Real Dolly Patron heads already know, but if you only dipped your toes in, it’s easy to gloss over how much variation she had over her career. I think she was probably a pretty important precursor to this whole disco-meets-country aesthetic that seems to have become so commonplace in the modern country chart landscape.

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A couple of days later, I was invited to moderate a panel at the Going Global Music Summit & Festival. I was paired up with a collection of Australians and Brits for the Dance All Around The World discussion.

Here’s the pitch: Electronic music is entering a new global growth phase - with global revenues hitting $15 billion, up 7% last year alone, and a deeply engaged fanbase, the appetite for dance music has never been stronger. For New Zealand artists, labels and producers, that growth represents real opportunity - our panel will discuss breaking into international markets, understanding where the demand is, and who you need on your side to go global in the world of electronic music.

When you’ve got fifty minutes, five speakers and one moderator, these sorts of things are always a bit of a high-wire act. Nevertheless, I thought the guests, Ashley Gay (XELON – AU), Jamie Raeburn (Sweat It Out/Central Station – AU), Jannah Beth (Offbeat Collective – AU), Romy Harber (BELIEVE/B-ELECTRONIC – UK), and Jane Slingo (VibeLab Asia Pacific/ECM – AU) shared some interesting stories and anecdotes. Ten years ago, I found doing this sort of thing pretty tough. These days, it’s mostly a lot of fun. Thanks to everyone who attended.

The next day, I DJed at the Auckland Central Library with a few friends, including Julian Lubin and Brent Giblin, for AFTERPARTY, a combination record market and daytime DJ gig held to celebrate the closure of the ENCORE! exhibition, which celebrated the stories of live music in Tāmaki Makaurau. It’s been a real pleasure to be involved in this project all year.

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Here’s an interesting podcast that Emma Jean Kelly created as part of Encore!

Revisit Auckland in the 1990s and early 2000s, when dance music culture in Aotearoa was finding its pulse. Warehouses, nightclubs, bush parties and late-night radio built a scene that was energetic, resourceful and distinctly local. Interviewed by Emma Jean Kelly, five DJs and producers reflect on their experiences of a formative period in the evolution of dance music in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland.

Hear the voices of Tiopira McDowell (Miso / Mokotron), Grant Marshall, Chris Chetland, Tim Checkley (Jizmatron / Go Nuclear) and Matt Mariu.

ODDS & ENDS:

Music Feature: Deep dive into REM’s 10th studio album: In which Simon Sweetman and Jesse Mulligan valiantly battle through a deep dive into New Adventures in Hi-Fi while the studio team absolutely butcher the backing music. I have nightmares about this sort of thing happening, so it’s always great to see people rise to the challenge in the midst of chaos.

Flawless modern electro rap from one of Aotearoa’s 21st-century greats, Coco Solid.

It’s a real testament to the restless nature of George Henderson’s creative spirit that you can use him as a throughline to trace the development of music in Aotearoa from post-punk and jangle all the way through to trap and hyperpop. I can only pray I can continue to stay as interested in new things as he still is.

I actually think Tom Hardy aka Frankie Pulitzer (yes, that Tom Hardy) sounds pretty good on this, but also, what is Tom Hardy doing rapping in a fake American accent alongside Czarface and Method Man? Much to ponder here.

FIN.

Selected Works is a weekly (usually) newsletter by the Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand) based freelance music journalist, broadcaster, copywriter and sometimes DJ Martyn Pepperell, aka Yours Truly. Most weeks, Selected Works consists of a recap of what I’ve been doing lately, along with some of what I’ve been listening to and reading, paired with film photographs I’ve taken, plus some bonuses. All of that said, sometimes it takes completely different forms.

Tomorrow afternoon, I’m headed to Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland for nine days. While I’m there, I’ll be playing a few DJ gigs, appearing on a radio show or two (maybe hosting one), and moderating a panel discussion, amongst other activities. As always, I’m excited to get a decent stint up in the city of Tāmaki Noir. See some of you around, I guess?

FABLES AND HER VERY SPECIAL BAND, LIVE AT WHAMMY BAR:

On Wednesday 26 August, I’ll be DJing at Whammy Bar alongside two key figures from Auckland’s modern alt-country, folk and indie rock scenes, Fables (and her very special band) and Finn Johansson. I figure I’ll be playing a mix of dream-pop, shoegaze, indie and some alternative bits and pieces, maybe some trip-hop even. It’s a free show, which seems insane in this economy, but here we are.

Here’s an example of the type of DJ set I’ll probably play.

In April, Fables released a remarkable album called Change Is A Slow Moving Beast. You can listen to it above. If you’re a completist, Lume is offering a digital version that includes prose written by Jess Fables, live recordings, photos, music videos and demos/voice notes. Check that out here.

Here’s Finn Johansson’s 2022 EP, What A Way To Make A Living.

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95BFM: ARCADE RADIO

Arcade Radio is Auckland’s leading skate brand affiliated radio show - tune in for a huge range of sweet music, classic bantz, the hottest of takes, and advice on how to cuff your pants. Lock-in for Arcade Radio every Thursday night from 7PM to 9PM, with your hosts Dylan and Leon Aoki, plus a rotating cast of special guests.

This week, I’ll be filling in for Leon with Dylan on Thursday night. I think Leon is in Europe on holiday? I’ll be playing more of a soul/beats-driven spectrum of sounds. Can’t imagine there will be much crossover with my set at the Fables show.

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GOING GLOBAL: DANCE ALL AROUND THE WORLD

For two days, Going Global brings together some of the world’s most influential figures in A&R, booking, festival programming, label management, and artist development, and places them in the same room as Aotearoa’s artists and industry. Doors open in both directions.

On Friday at 11:55 am, I’ll be hosting Going Global’s Dance All Around The World panel. Here’s their blurb for it: “Electronic music is entering a new global growth phase - with global revenues hitting $15 billion, up 7% last year alone, and a deeply engaged fanbase, the appetite for dance music has never been stronger. For New Zealand artists, labels and producers, that growth represents real opportunity - our panel will discuss breaking into international markets, understanding where the demand is, and who you need on your side to go global in the world of electronic music.”

Ashley Gay (XELON – AU), Jamie Raeburn (Sweat It Out/Central Station – AU), Jannah Beth (Offbeat Collective – AU) and Romy Harber (BELIEVE/B-ELECTRONIC – UK), Jane Slingo (VibeLab Asia Pacific/ECM – AU) with Martyn Pepperell (DJ/Journalist – NZ)

More details here.

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ENCORE! RECORD FAIR AFTERPARTY

Your final opportunity to see the Encore! music exhibition. Come get exclusive access to the Afterparty DJ’s and Record Fair. Dig through vinyl from 11 am with six handpicked Record Fair vendors, bringing the best in punk, pop, soul, jazz, and new and used vinyl. Then enjoy live DJ sets and take the soundtrack home with you. Come for the music, leave with the memories.

My big plan for this one is to play a ‘90s Urban Pasifika street soul/swingbeat DJ set. It’s gonna be so good to hear those tunes pumping loud near High Street.

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FIN.

Selected Works is a weekly (usually) newsletter by the Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand) based freelance music journalist, broadcaster, copywriter and sometimes DJ Martyn Pepperell, aka Yours Truly. Most weeks, Selected Works consists of a recap of what I’ve been doing lately, along with some of what I’ve been listening to and reading, paired with film photographs I’ve taken, plus some bonuses. All of that said, sometimes it takes completely different forms.

Over the last year, Reuben Romanos, aka yourFlatmate, has emerged as one of the most active figures in the Te Whanganui-a-tara dance music scene. He’s accomplished this through several activities: playing floaty full-spectrum DJ sets at the free outdoor parties that sprung up across the city over summer, producing as yourFlatmate, and running Dance Therapy, a party, record label and mix series defined by a warm feeling that runs through his favourite trance, prog, disco, house, dub techno, acid, jungle, dubstep and drum & bass 12”s.

At Dance Therapy, a single selector plays a five-hour set. Romanos sees it as an opportunity to allow his guests and the dancefloor to embark on epic musical journeys. As an outgrowth of the momentum he’s built, Dance Therapy has also expanded to encompass a record label, Dance Therapy Records and a SoundCloud mix series, Dance Therapy’s Chronic Happiness.

In May, he launched the label with Fort Ballance, a 12” EP of progressive house and trance by his actual flatmate, Te Whanganui-a-tara producer Yendor. Over three expansive tracks, iridescent synthesiser pads, psychedelic melodies, rolling percussion, and otherworldly voices curl around driving machine beats and bouncy bass stabs. It’s confident, slowly-smouldering and deeply hypnotic.

Later this month, the Dance Therapy story continues with the label’s first Various Artists compilation, Kanikani Therapy, due on August 19 in CD and digital formats. Across pre-release tracks like ‘Nunuk’ by cellphii, ‘In Your Body’ by Yendor, and ‘David’s Fundamentals’ by Jamie Doesn’t Like Salad, a playful and dreamy sensibility emerges that effortlessly cuts across genre and style lines. Similarly, the rest of the compilation is an abundance of riches.

In this Q&A, Romanos talks about his background and the origins of the Dance Therapy party and label. He also explains why, rather than a commercial project, it made more sense to release Kanikani Therapy as a fundraiser for two conservation charities, Trees That Count and Forest & Bird.

You can read the full story here.

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BeeHype: Sheep, Dog & Wolf, Ceiling Waves

In my latest for BeeHype, I wrote about Sheep, Dog & Wolf’s new album, Ceiling Waves.

“Ceiling Waves” trades in intricate compositional arrangements and unashamed emotional depth. An album for the good times, the bad, and everything in between.

Daniel McBride aka Sheep, Dog & Wolf is a New Zealand multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and composer who lives and works in London.

In August this year, they unveiled their third album “Ceiling Waves”. It’s a fitting title for a set of songs that rise and fall, often moving from maximal to minimal within a single movement. When beehype’s founder, Mariusz Herma, enthusiastically emailed about the album, he cited the art-rock and progressive folk figures Robert Wyatt, David Sylvian, and Joanna Newsom as reference points – comparisons that, perhaps unsurprisingly, all hold water.

You can read the full feature here.

What I’ve Been Listening To:

Any good shoegaze binge inevitably leads to spending some time with Malchicks.

I don’t Tik or Tok, but I love how TikTok and YouTube gave Duster a second life.

A Big Surprise indeed. Hi Hannah!

One for the Cyberpunk heads.

FIN.

Selected Works is a weekly (usually) newsletter by the Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand) based freelance music journalist, broadcaster, copywriter and sometimes DJ Martyn Pepperell, aka Yours Truly. Most weeks, Selected Works consists of a recap of what I’ve been doing lately, along with some of what I’ve been listening to and reading, paired with film photographs I’ve taken, plus some bonuses. All of that said, sometimes it takes completely different forms.

RAIZA BIZA: PANGEA

Last week, the Rwandan New Zealand rapper Raiza Biza released his latest album, Pangea. I just want to extend some thanks to Biza for inviting me to write the sales notes for Pangea. I’ve reproduced them below.

During Earth’s early geological history, Pangea was a supercontinent encompassing almost all of the planet’s landmasses. It’s shorthand for a time when everything was connected, and a metaphor for the idea that we were all once one. Over hundreds of millions of years, the supercontinent fractured and drifted apart, eventually forming the world as we know it today.

Today, the fractures aren’t only geographic. We’re socially, culturally, and philosophically splintered across a multiverse of competing realities. In his lifetime, Raiza Biza, a celebrated Rwandan hip-hop artist who grew up in Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, and New Zealand, has used music to navigate and connect these realms. He’s a unifying force who helps disparate people find common ground.

Over the past thirteen years, Raiza has released at least one project annually, culminating in his forthcoming album, also titled Pangea. Along the way, he has collaborated with a global cast of underground and forward-thinking artists, including Oddisee, Black Milk, Sampa The Great, REMI, Melodownz, and JessB, playing a key role in the emergence of a new generation of African hip-hop voices across New Zealand and Australia. Fittingly, his work has taken him to stages across Europe and Asia, where he has built an international audience.

In 2021, Raiza returned to Rwanda, reconnecting with the Land of a Thousand Hills while immersing himself in the East African republic’s rapidly evolving hip-hop, R&B, and afrobeats scenes. At the same time, he has continued to refine a songwriting approach that balances philosophical introspection with the energy of the dancefloor.

Created during this period of transition, Pangea brings together collaborators from New Zealand, Australia, and Rwanda, including JDRO, Achai, TK Paradza, JessB, Rubi Du, Blaze The Emperor, Romeo Rapstar, UNVRSS, and Mazbou Q, for a wide-ranging exploration of home, identity, connection, dislocation, nightlife, and the questions that linger in the morning light.

The album is supported by a production team spanning New Zealand, Zimbabwe, and Rwanda, Swissberry, TK Paradza, Skinni, Jeje Pro, Dr Ngangi, and Mazbou Q, who provide a backdrop of hip-hop, afrobeats, and neo-soul. Together, they draw on both the gloss of Y2K-era rap and the forward-facing club sounds shaping contemporary African music.

If singles like ‘Get Money’, ‘Diaspora’, ‘Chapati’, and ‘Mocha’ have offered glimpses into Raiza’s recent work, Pangea offers a widescreen vision. Now based in the homeland he spent much of his life dreaming about, he steps forward with a project that brings his story, and community, into sharp focus. The prodigal son has returned home, but he remains tied to many places.

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HERBERT MUSIC:

In general, I’ve never been that captivated by talk-to-camera social media accounts. Fair play to anyone trying to make that paradigm work; it’s just not my thing. That all being said, I recently came across an account that made me start wondering if I might be about to change my tune—@herbert.music.

The owner of the account, Daria Challah, describes herself as a classical music writer, presenter and digital storyteller driven by a mission to bring classical music to new and younger audiences. Recently, she uploaded a video about an album that the oud player Anouar Brahem recorded for ECM in 2009, The Astounding Eyes of Rita. You can watch it below.

In the video, Challah speaks with extraordinary passion and conviction about the story behind The Astounding Eyes of Rita, Brahem’s lifelong relationship with the oud, and how two forces can be simultaneously drawn together and pushed apart. Her pitch absolutely landed with me. I’ve listened to the album several times since.

ECM describe The Astounding Eyes of Rita as “A dance of dark, warm sounds, urged onward by the darbouka and frame drum of Lebanese percussionist Khaled Yassine,” while also noting the album is dedicated to the memory of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.

In the early 1960s, in Haifa, Israel, Darwish fell in love with Tamar Ben Ami, a Jewish Israeli dancer. Their romance was intense but brief. From this forbidden love, the writer composed a poignant poem, ‘Rita and the Rifle,’ which is still sung throughout the Arab world. When ECM say The Astounding Eyes of Rita is dedicated to the memory of Darwish, it’s shorthand for the fact that the album was inspired by the poem. You can read an article about ‘Rita and the Rifle’ over at Le Monde here.

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FIVE TAKEAWAYS FROM MY RECENT INTERVIEW WITH CHE FU:

Despite what you might think, Ché Fu never saw himself as a leader. However, in the wake of the success of his debut solo album 2b S.Pacific in 1998, the celebrated Māori Niuean singer-songwriter, producer, and DJ realised he would have to become one if he wanted to fully realise the music that lived inside his head. The process that followed was hard work, but it paid off.

Last month, I interviewed him for Rolling Stone to promote the 20th anniversary of his second album, Navigator, and the accompanying tour he’s going on to support that soon. You can check out the details over here.

GEOFF MURPHY TAUGHT CHE HOW TO DIRECT MUSIC VIDEOS

Geoff Murphy was a central figure in the New Zealand film new wave that emerged in the 1970s. His movie Goodbye Pork Pie became the first local blockbuster of the era. He completed a hat-trick with Utu and sci-fi classic The Quiet Earth. Skilled at action, knockabout comedy, and melding genres, Murphy spent ten years in Hollywood before returning home for further screen adventures.

“Geoff Murphy taught me a lot about directing. He was very helpful when I was trying to direct my own music videos.” - Che Fu

GEOFF MURPHY’S SOUND GUY, DICK READE, SHOWED CHE THE BASICS OF AUDIO ENGINEERING

Sound recordist Dick Reade’s list of awards includes gongs for his work on The Navigator, Mt Zion, After the Waterfall and When Love Comes — and an Emmy nomination for TV’s Buggin’ with Ruud. In 2007 he was named SPADA/Onfilm industry champion. After more than a decade with state television, Reade went freelance in the early 80s. These days he runs his own studio in West Auckland.

“A super OG also guided us by the name of Dick Reade, a super-master film, television, and music soundman who worked with Blerta… Dick Reade is from that same world. He worked as a sound engineer on a lot of Geoff’s films. One of the coolest things Dick ever did, in my opinion, was working on Mad Max. He got to be a part of one of the highest-grossing B-movies known to man.” - Che Fu

WHEN HE WAS RECORDING NAVIGATOR, CHE WORKED WITH A SOUND TECH WHO TOOK HIP-HOP VERY SERIOUSLY

“One of the cool things that happened was working with the engineer and producer Neil Baldock. When we were laying the drums, I showed him this article from a graffiti magazine. It was about a series of compilation albums that the DJ Breakbeat Lou compiled called Ultimate Breaks and Beats.

In the article, they talked to the engineer who recorded a lot of the funk, soul and rock 7”s that ended up on those compilations. Turntablists used to use them when they were juggling beats. Neil took the article home. The next day, he started applying some of the techniques when we were recording the drums for ‘Misty Frequencies’. It was so awesome to have that freedom.” - Che Fu

CHE THINKS THA FEELSTYLE DESERVES MORE CREDIT

The Samoan-born MC Kas aka Tha Feelstyle has long been celebrated amongst Aotearoa’s hip hop elite for his ability to craft music in both his native Samoan and English. The rapper earned a place in the history books, under the name RIQ, when he edged out Upper Hutt Posse to win the country’s first-ever MC battle in 1987. He’s been in demand since, working closely with a list of Kiwi music’s who’s who and dominating the 2005 Pacific Music Awards with debut album Break It To Pieces.

“Kas needs to get more flowers as well. I never spoke about it much, but he was hugely influential on me. Kas taught me about abstract rhymes. I remember he had a rhyme book with lines written in it like “hibiscus milk falling from the tree of eternity.” He blew my mind.” - Che Fu

SOME OF NAVIGATOR’S FANS BLEW CHE’S MIND

“I got this letter from [the late Māori rights activist and politician] Tariana Turia. The reason why I say that is it freaked me out how well she knew my tunes. She broke them down to me. As a songwriter, it’s really beautiful and interesting when people tell me about the impact my music has had on them. To know my tunes go beyond just having a jiggle means a lot. It’s the best feeling.” - Che Fu

FIN.

Selected Works is a weekly (usually) newsletter by the Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand) based freelance music journalist, broadcaster, copywriter and sometimes DJ Martyn Pepperell, aka Yours Truly. Most weeks, Selected Works consists of a recap of what I’ve been doing lately, along with some of what I’ve been listening to and reading, paired with film photographs I’ve taken, plus some bonuses. All of that said, sometimes it takes completely different forms.

In my latest for Rolling Stone, I profiled Lisa Wright aka Romi Wrights. Her debut album Andy is out now via Mānuka Recordings.

Five years ago, Lisa Wright, the big-voiced singer-songwriter better known as Romi Wrights, packed up her life in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland and moved her young family home to Upper Hutt, 26 km north-east of Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. She began studying carpentry at a community polytechnic in nearby Porirua to help renovate her parents’ home and took a job as a cleaner at an early childcare centre.

“That was one of the most depressing points in my life,” she admits on a phone call. Having previously run a vibrant multi-purpose studio called After Ours, being back in Upper Hutt was jarring. “I’d come off the high of running this space and being surrounded by a community, but I was broke and really struggling,” she continues.

While she was working in the evenings, Wright would often listen to the Tāmaki Makaurau student radio station 95bFM online. “One night, I was mopping the floor and my song ‘Bring It Back’ came on,” she recalls. As the song’s retro orchestral soul sound poured through the speakers, something locked into place. “I remember tearing up and thinking it was a sign that this wasn’t the end,” she says with a warm tone. “It was like the universe was reminding me things were going to be alright.”

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Read the full article here.