2015 to 2025: A decade in international music journalism
Some personal reflections on ten year spent writing overseas and abroad while figuring things out in real time.
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 and some of what I’ve been listening to and reading, paired with film photographs I’ve taken + some bonuses. All of that said, sometimes it takes completely different forms
Ten years ago, I was at an existential crossroads of sorts. After spending the previous seven years cobbling together a “career” and “income” as a freelance music journalist and radio broadcaster in New Zealand, it felt like something had to give. Thinking, writing and talking about music makers, their motivations, and the cultures surrounding them lit up my mind, but I couldn’t shake the sensation that I was running out of road.
After spending my early twenties DJing, throwing gigs, touring overseas, selling CDs and merch out of my backpack and working in cafes and call centres, I took a punt on myself as a writer. Between 2007 and 2011, I built up a decent number of regular writing gigs with a bunch of music, arts and culture magazines while hosting a fortnightly radio show on my local student radio station, Wellington’s Radio Active 88.6 FM. Unsurprisingly, none of these publications - Groove Guide, Rip It Up, Back 2 Basics, Pulp, Cafe Culture, Volume, Fishhead, etc - exist anymore.
Alongside these ventures, I prioritised spending a percentage of my earnings travelling around the country to investigate the national music scene and pursue further writing and broadcast opportunities. Through regular trips to Auckland, Christchurch, and Dunedin, I became involved in North & South, 95 bFM, Kiwi FM, RDU 98.5 FM, Radio One 91 FM, and later, the state broadcaster, Radio New Zealand.
During these years, my main strategy for networking was to get drunk with editors at industry parties, often thrown by MTV, Red Bull, Bacardi and the like, or backstage at music festivals. On reflection, this worked better than it should have. If you could get your copy in on time (spoiler: I could) and graciously accept feedback, even better. Weirdly, although I got my start during the global financial crisis, things felt pretty good. In a sense, the ramifications from that event didn’t really kick in until 2009, and even then, the music media sector held up pretty well until 2011, or perhaps even 2012.
In three short years, I went from cobbling together album reviews for free and penning short band profiles to writing sprawling scene feature articles and magazine cover stories. I’m not gonna lie though, I had the distinct sensation I’d arrived at the party several years to late. Later on, I’d felt the echo of that feeling return as I made the shift from print to digital media.
When I think back, I’m happy with how I balanced covering popular New Zealand acts of the era, Shapeshifter, Ladi6, Electric Wire Hustle, Kora, etc, with writing about emerging overseas movements like the LA beats scene and London’s drum & bass, dubstep, and UK Funky communities. It was also exciting to escape genre as a writing beat. I became a traveller in many worlds and amassed quite the CD collection - Hip-hop, folk, country, indie, rock, jazz, ambient, experimental, electronic, quote unquote world music. Along the way, music, arts, and culture writing opened doors for me to do hospitality, tourism, and travel writing in magazines and on local government web platforms. Once my world started changing, it never really stopped.
I worked hard, undoubtedly. I got lucky as well, undoubtedly. People of varying agendas looked out for me and gave me opportunities for varying reasons. Sometimes, it was because they recognised something in me. Other times, it was because they saw me as a relatable conduit to scenes they couldn’t or didn’t want to, access themselves. I always want to acknowledge my early editors, Kerryanne Brett, Leonie Hayden, Richard Thorne, and Karl Puschmann, who all gave me more time and care than they were obliged to.
A DJ friend invited me to move into a cheap warehouse flat in Wellington. I settled into a working relationship with New Zealand Musician magazine where instead of money, they paid me in accommodation in inner city Auckland when I was visiting. These connections were invaluable. Yes, there were elements of privilege at work. Even in my best years, however, the earnings were never anything to brag about. I can’t say it’s been the most sensible career decision (lol), but I loved music, broadcasting and writing, and I still do.
In the early 2010s, the ground beneath my feet began to turn into quicksand. Almost overnight, the magazines I was writing for began shuttering one by one. Advertising spending was shifting from IRL to URL. The shift from print to digital was here. Later, I learned this had begun five to ten years earlier in the UK, US, and Europe. It was a confronting moment that marked the end of the line for a generation of New Zealand music journalists.
In the reshuffle, a wave of online music websites and magazines emerged in New Zealand. In reality, though, we were way behind the Americans and Brits. So far behind, we weren’t ever going to catch up, but I didn’t know that then. During this shift, there was a rise in digital creative agencies. Soon enough, the focus was almost fully shifting towards advertorials, brand partnerships and social media promotion. Eventually, it would almost all filter towards businesses making advertising spends with Meta. Still, while the new reality was shaking out, we enjoyed a few decent years trying things out in the new terrain.
A significant turning point was when I was offered monthly retainers by two different websites, The Audience and Vanguard Red, which I accepted while continuing to explore the world of freelance writing work as a journalist and increasingly as a brand copywriter. For a moment, I found myself editing a short-lived iPad tablet magazine. No one I knew could even afford a tablet or the data required to download a tablet magazine, but the product was proof of concept, and that was all the agency needed.
Contemporaneously, the music businessman and historian Simon Grigg asked me to contribute to the then-nascent New Zealand music history website, Audio Culture. I spent a feverish summer typing up stub profile blurbs and later expanded into writing larger, longer profiles. In truth, Audio Culture got me interested in local music history. It introduced me to the work of a generation of New Zealand music journalists I only really knew about by reputation. I can’t fudge it. I didn’t read the local music press in my late teens and early 20s, but not really. I can’t cite an older New Zealander who inspired me to write about music, and I have no expectation that anyone younger would ever cite me.
I learned about music journalism by reading specialist American, British and Middle Eastern magazines like The Fader, The Wire, and Bidoun. I don’t have heroes in the traditional sense, but if I did, names like Andrew Nosnitsky, Lisa Blanning, Hua Hsu, Jace Clayton, Jennifer Lucy Allan, Edwin “STATS” Houghton, Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, Greg Tate, Fatima Al-Qadiri, and Sophia Al-Maria would rank highly. My exposure to music journalism was contemporary and globally minded. I wanted to know about Egyptian shaabi music, digital cumbia from South America, southern rap, auto-tuned Algerian rai, UK grime, and emerging African dance music styles like Kudoro. The future was out there. It was exciting, and more often than not, I read about it on blogs.
As a result, I always had aspirations to write overseas, but for years, I couldn’t figure it out. When I started, I used to mail photocopied portfolios to prospective clients with a cover letter attached. Most times I did this, someone would get back in touch. It was a slow but rewarding process. Trying to make it work with Australian, American and UK magazines was a nightmare. It cost so much money, and no one ever replied. By the early 2010s, however, I was clicking that the game had shifted almost completely online - perhaps emails would suffice?
In 2014, I started to get a sense of what a ladder might look like due to a few random chance events. The first involved the online music broadcaster and club brand Boiler Room TV, a New York-based record label called Mexican Summer, and a weirdo-pop artist from New Zealand, Connan Mockasin, who was signed to them. Shea Bermingham, a fellow New Zealander who was working at Mexican Summer, sent me an email asking if I’d like to write a backgrounder on Connan to accompany a live performance he’d be making on Boiler Room.
Having followed Connan since he started performing in the mid-2000s in Connan & The Mockasins, I was rapt. Would I like to do that? Sure thing. Suddenly, I was an internationally published writer with a byline on Boiler Room TV. The thing about these moments is they’re never as meaningful as you imagine, but they can also do more for you than you expect. Over time, all the pieces have a way of adding up.
Later that year, I was invited to attend the Red Bull Music Academy in Tokyo and write a series of accompanying articles and live concert reviews for Red Bull New Zealand and Red Bull Global’s The Red Bulletin magazine. The story I wrote for The Red Bulletin, a snapshot of life at the academy, was one of the best-paying writing gigs of my life. Spending time in Tokyo was musically and culturally transformative. I met The Tom Tom Club, saw them play live, and attended an academy talk with the Japanese music legend Haruomi Hosono, the leader of Yellow Magic Orchestra. When it was all said and done, I walked away fascinated by Japanese music from the ‘70s, ‘80s and later, the ‘90s. City-pop, Kankyo Ongaku, Japanese ambient techno, etc. At the time, they were fledgling interests, but they quickly became increasingly important during the next phase of my “career.”
Between the work I’d done for Boiler Room TV and Red Bull, I managed to jerry-rig myself a portfolio to email overseas to music websites I wanted to write for, like The Fader, Fact Mag, and XLR8R. Ironically, many of the outlets I aspired to work with no longer exist or have been reduced to ghosts of their former selves. Things move fast on the internet, and online, nothing is forever.
The first place to reply favourably was a now-shuttered UK site called The 405. The first piece I wrote for them was a profile of the Berlin-based New Zealand techno abstractionist/3D digital artist Jeremy Coughbrough, aka Tlaotlon. As 2015 drew to a close, I was contributing to the site most weeks, writing for another UK music website, Dummy, and typing up interviews and features for Vice Magazine and its music verticals, Noisey and Thumpy.
The former Dummy editor, Selim Bulut, was a great influence on me. He greenlit some meaningful ideas, handed out tough editorial feedback, and took me with him when he became the music editor at Dazed & Confused. Under Selim’s watch, I wrote about Luzmila Carpio, Midori Takada, Alice Coltrane and Mort Garson, absolute dream commissions. Selim also allowed me the grace to create my quarterly “10 great albums you may have missed in the last three months” column for the site, which endures to this day. It’s weird to think about now, but if I hadn’t started looking further abroad, I doubt I’d still be writing about music. It’s a real sliding doors moment for me.
During the mid-2010s, I started going on yearly networking trips through Asia, the UK, Europe and the US. I’d attend summer music festivals and broker meetings, conduct interviews, and write stories. By the end of 2019, I was writing overseas for Dazed, Bandcamp Daily, The Wire, Resident Advisor, The Vinyl Factory, Test Pressing, Noisey, and Vice, and recording DJ mixes for the prestigious London and LA-based internet radio stations, NTS and Dublab.
All this overseas work helped me out at home as well. Suddenly, there was a new wave of New Zealand-based music media marketing platforms with budgets. My DJing bookings picked up again, and I even spent a few years promoting concerts and nightclub gigs at home in Wellington.
On reflection, 2016 to 2019 were far better years for me than they had any real business being - especially 2018, the year my father died. At the start of 2020, the pandemic hit, and everything shifted again. Since then, I’ve stayed closer to home, balancing the odd big overseas feature for outlets like Mixmag, Wax Poetics, Rolling Stone and DJ Mag with New Zealand music history writing for Audio Culture and broadcasting opportunities here and abroad. There’s also been an awful lot of DJing, copywriting, liner notes and speaking appearances at seminars. I’d love to write a book for a publishing house, but I’m not holding my breath.
As sit on the precipice of the Gregorian Calendar ticking over to 2025, I’m not even sure “music journalist” is the correct term anymore. These days, I spend a lot of time helping people package, present and release albums (new and old). I’ve DJed on and off for over twenty years, but last year, I played a sold-out stadium football game with over thirty thousand people in attendance. I never saw that coming. Ten years on, I’m at the crossroads again, but this time it’s less existential. Yes, I’m changing. I’m not entirely sure how yet - but I can feel it happening all around me and I know it will ultimately lead to good good things.
Here are ten crucial articles I’ve written for overseas music websites and magazines over the last decade.
Dummy: Luzmila Carpio meets ZZK
In 2014, Grant C. Dull received a blindsiding email. Inside it was a download link to Bolivian singer Luzmila Carpio's 'Yuyay Jap'Ina Tapes': a collection of 20-year-old songs recently reissued by Parisian label Almost Musique. Set against sun-kissed charango lute notes, her birdlike falsetto rang out pure and clear. Carpio was singing in Quechuan, an electrifying two-thousand-year-old language she learned as a child in a small village on the Altiplano, 10,000 feet high in the Andean Mountains. Read here.
Dazed: How YouTube autoplay gave a lost Japanese classic new life
Midori Takada’s Through The Looking Glass almost vanished when released in 1983, but thanks to a quirk of the video streaming platform, it’s been hailed as an ambient masterpiece. Read here.
Dazed: The strange story of Mort Garson’s magical album Plantasia
Garson’s warm electronic music was designed to help plants grow – we trace its journey from the legendary Mother Earth Plant Boutique in 1976 to the cult classic it is today. Read here.
The Vinyl Factory: The insouciant dream pop of cult photographer and musician Steve Hiett
In 1983, fashion photographer, graphic designer and guitarist Steve Hiett released Down On The Road By The Beach, a collection of guitar-led panoramas, oceanic instrumentals, and dreamlike cover versions. In the intervening thirty-seven years, the album became a cult classic, coveted by collectors around the world. Read here.
Bandcamp Daily: Australia’s Efficient Space Label is a Home for Adventurous Listeners
Growing up as a teenager in Melbourne in the early 2000s, record collector, broadcaster, DJ, and label owner Michael Kucyk lived by what was, at the time, Australia’s only record pressing plant, Zenith Records. “I come from a really sleepy suburb, and the fact that this place was a five-minute drive from my house was kind of a fantasy,” he says. Read here.
Mixmag: My own way: Why Scratcha DVA is a linchpin of UK dance music innovation
Martyn Pepperell goes deep with Scratcha DVA, exploring his career so far, being outspoken, and how South African influence 'brought the bounce back' to UK music. Read here.
Mixmag: Cyclic Revolution: Debit’s radical new album reconstructs Mayan musical history
Martyn Pepperell speaks to Mexican-American artist Debit about indigenous resistance, revolutionary art and the path to her new album 'The Long Count'. Read here.
Wax Poetics: After The Cherry Blossoms Fall - Susumu Yokota Left Behind A Rich Music Diary of Deeply Personal Music
Nine years ago, the Japanese composer, producer, and DJ Susumu Yokota passed from this world to the next. When he died on March 27, 2015, at the age of fifty-four, Yokota left behind an impressive legacy of albums, EPs, singles, and remixes released under his birth name and eleven aliases: 246, Anima Mundi, Ebi, Frankfurt-Tokyo-Connection, Prism, Ringo, Stevia, Tenshin, Tokyo Cult House, Y, and Yin & Yang. Read here.
Rolling Stone: A Renowned Japanese-New Zealand Composer Charts His Journey to 50: ‘I’ve Always Had This Feeling That I Have to Leave and See What’s Next’
If you look through the liner notes of late 20th/early 21st century musical history, you’ll find Mark de Clive-Lowe everywhere. On the edge of turning 50, the pianist, composer, beatmaker, producer and DJ reflected on a lifetime in music. Read here.
DJ Mag: Sublime Records and the dawn of Japanese techno
Born on the basement dancefloor of Tokyo’s Maniac Love club in 1994, Sublime Records quickly became a definitive label for Japan’s nascent techno scene, furthering the international profiles of emerging visionaries like Ken Ishii and Susumu Yokota and building connections with artists in North America and the UK. In celebration of its 30th anniversary and the recent reissue of two of its iconic albums, Martyn Pepperell speaks to its founders, affiliates and devoted fans to learn its story, and understand its enduring influence at home and abroad. Read here.
FIN.
I really enjoyed reading this, a nice insight into something I only saw dribs and drabs of in the social media firehouse over the years.