2021 WRAPPED
See You Next Year
This has been my 2021, and for all intents and purposes, it is now wrapped. Please enjoy this sprawling list of features, interviews and columns I wrote this year + loads of mixes, various odds & ends and some photos. Happy Holidays ya’ll. See you next year.
FEATURES:
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. Unsurprisingly, Zenith Records had an in-house music library. Kucyk got friendly with the staff and started going around to the plant to borrow records. “They did live-to-acetate recordings,” he says. “Sonic Youth did a two-hour jam direct to vinyl on a Tuesday night. I’d be able to go down there with 10 people and watch it happen.” [Read here]
Mixmag: How New Zealand Beat Covid And Got Back To Raving
“I say this to so many people, for the first time in my life, I don't feel F.O.M.O for being in New Zealand,” says the house and techno DJ, promoter and venue owner Cameron Morris. “New Zealand has typically been a place where young people feel like, what if I was to go over to New York or London? Could I make it? But because of how we’ve handled things here, it’s cool to be in New Zealand, and it’s a great time to be a young artist here.” [Read here]
Note: I was never over the moon about the title or marketing framing for this piece, but the opportunity to promote my home country’s dance music scenes was too good to turn down.
Bandcamp Daily: The Trailblazing Disco-Reggae-Rap of The Pearls
“Music started for me early,” explains singer, songwriter, and producer Norman Watson, one-half of The Pearls, the late ‘70s/early ’80s Jamaican duo he was in with Stanley Shaw. “After I left senior school, I used to move with Ken Boothe and all of those singers.” Speaking from his sunny home near Linstead in Jamaica’s St. Catherine parish, Watson is thinking back to his youth in Fletchers Land, a neighborhood in downtown Kingston. As he tells it, he couldn’t go outside without bumping into a future legend. “I grew up with Gregory Isaacs, Errol Dunkley, and Derrick Harriott,” Watson says. [Read here]
Test Pressing: Scribble Was The Cloak I Surrounded Myself In – The Johanna Pigott interview
In 1983, the Australian musician, singer-songwriter, and screenwriter Johanna Pigott was living in Sydney with her then-partner, Todd Hunter. After spending the late seventies and very early eighties singing and playing bass in the indie-punk band XL Capris and the post-punk group Sardine V, Johanna was ready for something more internal. Todd, a New Zealand musician and record producer - best known for his membership in the art-rock band Dragon - met Johanna through producing recordings for XL Capris. Home studios interested both of them, so they invested in equipment and started exploring the experimental possibilities of electronic songwriting. [Read here]
Bandcamp Daily: How Futurist Philosophy Inspired Yumiko Morioka’s Ambient Masterpiece
In the late ‘80s, the classically trained Japanese pianist, composer, and songwriter Yumiko Morioka spent an afternoon at an exhibition honoring the life and work of the American futurist architect and philosopher R. Buckminster Fuller. “He had this concept called synergetics,” she recalls, speaking from her home in Tokyo. “It was about how individuals can come together to create something greater than the sum of the parts.” [Read here]
Test Pressing: Sentimental moods - A Guy Maxwell interview
“My music is not at all involved in political or philosophical matters,” says the golden-voiced French-Irish singer-songwriter, guitarist and visual artist Guy Maxwell. “Instead, it serves a romantic purpose,” he continues. “I’ve never sought very far within the intellectual fields. It’s simply about moods, sentimental moods, sensual moods.” Speaking to me from his home in Geneva, Switzerland, Guy is explaining the mindset that hung around Outside My Window, an album he recorded for the Dutch record label Bubble forty-one years ago. [Read here]
Audio Culture: Disasteradio
Luke Rowell is best known for the high-energy synthesised pop and luxurious vaporwave music he has created under his Disasteradio and Eyeliner aliases. Disasteradio’s ‘Gravy Rainbow’ was a synth-pop hit, and the Eyeliner releases are regarded as seminal examples of vaporwave. [Read here]
Mixmag: My Own Way - Why Scratcha Dva Is A Linchpin Of Uk Dance Music Innovation
“Am I doing a life story here? Cause I’m about to go on,” says Scratchclart, the London-based producer and DJ also known as Scratcha DVA. It's around 9:PM, and we're talking through Zoom, both sitting in the dark with hoodies pulled up. Ostensibly, the reason for our conversation is the release of his recent ‘Afrotek’ EP through Kode9’s long-standing Hyperdub record label. However, having involved in several waves of UK dance music since the garage/2-step days of the late '90s, a life story feels appropriate. [Read here]
Wax Poetics: After The Cherry Blossoms Fall - Susumu Yokota
Six 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. Beginning with acid house in the early 1990s, Yokota spent the next twenty years exploring the possibilities of trance, deep house, Detroit-influenced techno, breakbeat, drum & bass, ambient, and beyond. In the process, he cultivated an oeuvre that runs as wide and deep as central Tokyo’s storied Sumida river. [Read more]
Test Pressing: Ayane Shino - Sakura [The Timbre Of Guitars #1: Susumu Yokota 横田 進]
“I didn’t know about ambient music before I started studying at university,” explains the Japanese classical guitar virtuoso Ayane Shino. “Once I got to know it, I was blown away that it exists, and I realised it was something I could play with within the context of classical guitar music.” Last year, Shino delivered on the promise and potential of reframing ambient music through her specific musical lens with Sakura. Recorded for Music Mine is Tokyo and fully titled Sakura [The Timbre Of Guitars #1: Susumu Yokota 横田 進], Sakura is an EP of acoustic guitar covers of songs from the deceased Japanese electronic music legend Susumu Yokota’s 1999 masterwork of the same name. [Read more]
Audio Culture: DJ Tee Pee
In the 1980s, a young Māori DJ who worked under the alias “Tee Pee” was the shining star of Wellington’s nightclub scene. An open-format selector with an early passion for hip hop, Tee Pee would mix, scratch and rap his way through nightclub sets and mix shows on student radio station Radio Active 88.6 FM (then 89 FM). By the time he left the capital in 1989 to move to America, he had shown off his skills on commercials and television shows and trained the next generation of Wellington DJs. [Read more]
Audio Culture: Jeremy Toomata
In the late 1980s and 90s, the Samoan beatboxer, DJ, rapper and producer Jeremy Toomata left an indelible mark on the history of New Zealand hip hop through his membership in three crucial groups, Double J & Twice The T, Radio Backstab & DJ Payback, and Overdose. Across this trilogy, he scaled the heights of commercial music industry success and inspired a new generation of raw, underground hip hop artists before going through a profound personal transformation in the early 2000s and moving to Australia. [Read more]
Audio Culture: Emcee Lucia
Near the end of 2003, the Samoan-Australian poet, rapper and singer Lucia Ablett, aka Emcee Lucia, became the first woman in Aotearoa New Zealand to release a full-length hip hop album, On The Cusp. At the time, amid marquee releases from Mareko and Scribe, the significance of her accomplishment flew under the radar. Eighteen years on, Ablett’s music and story are both richly deserving of reillumination and critical reappraisal. [Read more]
Audio Culture: Semi MCs
In the late 1980s, Semi MCs from Manurewa were one of the most important groups in the first wave of hip hop in Aotearoa. However, as the new decade dawned, they embraced the sounds of New Jack Swing and Swingbeat before recording ‘Set Your Body Free’ and ‘Trust Me’, both of which are now highly prized DJ deep cuts. Although the group went their separate ways in the mid-90s, their legacy and influence endure to this day. [Read more]
DAZED DIGITAL:
The Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4 2021 editions of my new music column for Dazed Digital are all live on the site at the links above.
PODCAST:
Aotearoa Hip-Hop: The Music, The History, The People is live here.
LINER NOTES:
Carousel II, Glad To Be Alive (Frederiksberg Records)
A yearningly romantic suite of lushly arranged lounge music, Glad To Be Alive is the first and only album from the long-forgotten premier Detroit wedding band, Carousel II. Originally self-released in 1978, the album arrived on the back of twelve years of hard graft. Underappreciated at the time, in the forty-three years since it was first released, Glad To Be Alive has aged like a fine wine, revealing a startling emotional depth and resonance within the band’s rose-tinted reflections on love. [More here]
Brooklyn Bunch, Self-Titled (Frederiksberg Records)
Originally released as a 12” single in 1983, ‘Esmerelda / Slide Over (To The Real Slide)’ is the sole release from New York-based production duo Brooklyn Bunch. On the A-side, squelchy p-funk synths and Oberheim DX drum loops set the scene for a soulful tribute to Civil Rights Attorney Esmeralda Simmons. Over on the flip, the Brooklyn Bunch teams up with songwriters Bill Easely and Henry Williamson for a slice of glossy, pumped-up machine funk. Thirty-eight years later, Frederiksberg Records is proud to present the first official reissue of these deep cuts from the golden years of The Big Apple’s post-disco/boogie era. [More here]
INTERVIEWS:
Test Pressing: You've Gone - The Bassline Interview
In 1989, Bassline, the studio project of South east London-raised musician Tony Henry, not to be confused with Tony Henry from Manchester jazz-funk/R&B band 52nd Street, released a single 12” titled “You’ve Gone” featuring Lorraine Chambers. In the decades since “You’ve Gone” has earned its place in the canon as a crucial slice of UK street soul. As Lorraine’s heartsick vocal levitates over sunrise synths, dusty drums loops, elegant electric piano and a reggae bassline, “You’ve Gone” captures the optimism and strength of the late 80s with perfect poise. [Read here]
A step above chic: An interview with Panaché’s Freddie Thompson
Originally released as a 12” single in 1982, ‘Every Brother Ain’t A Brother’ was the final record from Brooklyn multi-instrumentalist and producer Freddie Thompson’s Panaché band. Built around a fully-cleared bassline sample from ‘The Message’ by Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, ‘Every Brother Ain’t A Brother’ plays out like a summertime stroll through New York in the early 80s. The streets are full of excitement, but as the lyrics, written by vocalist Denise Williams (not to be confused with Deniece Williams of ‘Let’s Hear It For The Boy’ fame) make it clear, they’re dangerous as well. [Read here]
Test Pressing: Fine Anyway - An interview with Rogér Fakhr
“Any Lebanese person who lived in Lebanon or grew up here will always have the sadness, you know, or this melancholy or nostalgia to something,” says the cult Lebanese singer-songwriter, guitarist and producer Rogér Fakhr. “This is something you carry with you when you're born there. It has a culture to it, and it has a feeling or an emotion that's very different from anywhere else.” This feeling or emotion runs rampant throughout Fine Anyway, a new compilation album of material Fakhr wrote and recorded in Beirut and Paris during the 1970s. [Read here]
A Dennis Young Interview: On always trying to find new ways to make music.
In the late 1970s, New Jersey musician and producer Dennis Young started jamming with some friends while studying at Rutgers University. They called themselves Idiot Orchestra and later Liquid Idiot before settling on the name Liquid Liquid, before becoming one of the most important bands in New York's storied 1980s downtown scene. As Dennis told me in an interview for Bandcamp Daily in early 2020, "There was a sound in the air... It was an era of heavy beat music, ESG, Defunkt, Pigbag and us—but people didn’t know what to make of us." [Read here]
MIXES:
NTS: Peoples - 90s Hip-Hop from Aotearoa New Zealand w/ Martyn Pepperell
Martyn Pepperell picks out an hour of cuts from the 90s New Zealand hip hop scene in a special deep dive session… [Listen here]
Mixcloud: Where Has The Love Gone: A Street Soul Story w/ Martyn Pepperell
A mix of street soul, street beat and street soul adjacent songs from the UK, Canada, Aotearoa (New Zealand) and Japan. Ashaye, Bassline, Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Hiroshi Satoh & Wendy Matthews, Fuemana, Special Touch, Maureen Mason, etc. [Listen here]
Dublab: Martyn Pepperell — Summer In The Winter
Freelance music journalist, broadcaster and DJ Martyn Pepperell explores the soulful sounds of 90s/early 2000s hip-hop, rap and neo soul from Aotearoa New Zealand. Featuring groups and solo artists such as Ermehn, Che Fe, Teremoana Rapley, King Kapisi, Sisters Underground, Lost Tribe, Dam Native, Rough Opinion and Sheelaroc, Summer In The Winter is a 60-minute celebration of the era when a generation of local rappers, DJs, producers and musicians found a sound that rang out through the South Pacific. [Listen here]
Radio Alhara: It's Over w/Martyn Pepperell
Aotearoa New Zealand-based journalist, broadcaster and DJ Martyn Pepperell presents sixty-minutes of recent releases and reissues from This Person, Howie Lee, Height-Dismay, Nubuck, Scribble, YL Hooi, Joanna Law, Sjunne Fergers Exit, Ichiko Hashimoto, The Frenzied Bricks, Irena and Vojtěch Havlovi, and Cy Timmons. Rhythmic ambient, batida Americana, drum machine bossa, neo city pop and beyond, they all have a place in the lounge you only go to when it’s over. Originally broadcast through Palestine's Radio Alhara from 8-9pm Bethlehem Time on Saturday the 3rd of April. [Listen here]
REA Global #47 w/ Martyn Pepperell
REA Global es el segmento semanal en el que recibimos diferentes djs invitados que residen en el exterior del país. [Listen here]
Skylab Radio: That's The Beat w/ Martyn Pepperell
Music journalist, broadcaster and DJ Martyn Pepperell presents a mix of synth-pop, post-disco, boogie and electro recorded in Aotearoa New Zealand between 1983 and 2019. [Listen here]
Radio Alhara: A Strange World w/ Martyn Pepperell
Sixty minutes of indie-pop, ambient, soul, psychedelia, minimalism, South Pacific fusion and other sounds from the reflected worlds. Originally broadcast through Palestine's Radio Alhara from 7-8pm Bethlehem Time on 5 July 2021. [Listen here]
Mouthful Radio: Parables w/ Martyn Pepperell
Poneke Journalist, broadcaster and DJ, Martyn Pepperell joins us for an hour of ambient gorgeousness and downtempo beats. [Listen here]
Skylab Radio: Just Another Day w/ Martyn Pepperell
Beaming to you from Aotearoa, New Zealand, Martyn Pepperell is back with sixty minutes of 90's street soul, swingbeat and RnB. [Listen here]
XIII COLLECTIVE: GLOBALOCAL MIXTAPE 011 w/Martyn Pepperell (NZ)
Sit back and enjoy this wide ranging mix of psychedelic folk music, post-rock, noise, post-disco, jazz rock, boogie and, ambient and lounge music recorded in Aotearoa (AKA New Zealand)during the final decades of the 20th century. [Listen here]
Radio Alhara: Glad To Be Alive w/ Martyn Pepperell
Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa freelance music journalist, broadcaster and DJ Martyn Pepperell presents Glad To Be Alive, a sixty minute mix of AOR, dream pop, folk, lounge and ambient music. Artists featured include Guy Maxwell, Blerta, Carousel II, Rainbow Chan, The Five Stars, Synergetic Voice Orchestra, Cindy, Cassandra Jenkins, Helado Negro, HTRK, Arthur Lyman, Pacific Eardrum, Grouper and more. Originally broadcast on Palestine's Radio Al Hara on the 29 Oct 2021. [Listen here]
Skylab Radio: New Jack Feeling w/ Martyn Pepperell
Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa-based music journalist, broadcaster and DJ Martyn Pepperell presents an hour of New Jack Swing songs recorded in various parts of the world during the eighties and nineties. [Listen here]
Mixcloud: It’s A Global New Jack Feeling w/ Martyn Pepperell
A fun Saturday afternoon mix of New Jack Swing/Swingbeat records recorded around the world in the eighties and nineties. Mixed in one take on a Numark Mixstream Pro. [Listen here]
ME, MYSELF & I:
Stuff: A few of my favourite things: Broadcaster and DJ Martyn Pepperell
Martyn Pepperell is a freelance writer, broadcaster and DJ from Wellington, New Zealand. Over the last two years, he worked closely with Phil Bell, aka DJ Sir-Vere and the team at Rova to create the Aotearoa Hip-Hop: The Music, The People, The History podcast, out now. [Read here]
Radio New Zealand: How are cassettes still a thing?
Do you still listen to cassette tapes? Have you bought one recently? Tony Stamp was intrigued by recent stories on the rise in cassette sales, so he talked to music retailers, label owners, and visited a tape duplication facility, to find out: how are cassettes still a thing? [Listen here]
1News: Kiwi teen becomes youngest New Zealander to feature on US Billboard charts
A Kiwi teen has made music history after becoming the youngest New Zealander to feature on the US Billboard charts. [Watch here]