2022 WRAPPED

Thank you for reading and listening. I'll be back next year.

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.

This has been my 2022, and for all intents and purposes, it is now wrapped. Please enjoy this sprawling list of features, interviews and columns I wrote this year + mixes, various odds & ends and some photos. Happy Holidays all. See you next year!

FEATURES:

Bandcamp Daily: Ros Bandt’s Experimental “Soft & Fragile” Is Still Relevant 40 Years Later

“I just wanted sound to have more clout, and I did everything in my whole life to achieve that,” explains award-winning Australian sound artist, composer, musician, researcher, and scholar Dr. Ros Bandt. Over the last four decades, Bandt’s interest in improvisation; collaboration; sound installations and sculptures; custom-made instruments; and acoustic ecology has taken her around the world. Her diverse engagement with sound has positioned her at the vanguard of Australian music and served as the bedrock of her academic career. [Read here]

Mixmag: Cyclic Revolution - Debit’s Radical New Album Reconstructs Mayan Musical History

In the late 2000s, the Mexican-American producer, DJ, and audio engineer Delia Beatriz aka Debit, divided her time between Providence, Rhode Island, where she was studying at Brown University, and Chiapas, Mexico's southernmost state. There, she spent her days within Mayan communities, building solidarity with The Zapatista Army of National Liberation, a decentralised indigenous resistance group.

I spoke with Mexican-American artist Debit about indigenous resistance, revolutionary art and the path to her new album 'The Long Count'. [Read here]

Thattu Pattu: Between Worlds

A young Sri Lankan man stands behind a table covered with electronic music performance equipment, his face obscured by shadows. In the foreground of the screen, he’s framed by the lush foliage of potted plants. As his hands move nimbly across a Roland TR-8S Rhythm Performer, a half-time kick and abstracted field recording snippets drift out of the speakers. A spotlight illuminates the performer’s face, syncopated percussion unfolds around the kick, and the song explodes into full-flight, complex 2-step/garage house rhythms accentuated by sampledelic textures. Welcome to the world of Sweetie, an emerging 22-year-old electronic musician from Colombo, Sri Lanka. [Read here]

Norient: Under Clear Starry Nights

Earlier this year, after a period of coronavirus restrictions, I attended a free daytime park party in Auckland, the largest city in New Zealand. Enveloped by smooth house music, sunshine, and the deep blue skies above us, I spent the afternoon dancing in the crowd. As I looked around, I saw a new generation fall in love with the same experience that first captivated me over two decades ago in Cobb Valley, Upper Tākaka, the site of The Gathering, a short-lived but legendary New Zealand outdoor party. [Read here]

Test Pressing: Picture Music - A Soundtrack To Our Nighttime Lives

In late January 2020, amid muggy Southern hemisphere summer heat, Melbourne’s Left Ear Records label made an Instagram post. They’d acquired some deadstock of an obscure Australian ambient cassette tape titled Picture Music, originally recorded three decades earlier. Intrigued by the artwork and the backstory, I ordered a copy. Several weeks later, I received a pristinely preserved copy in the mail. Haunting from the very first notes, Picture Music was an embarrassment of riches. That summer, I thrashed the tape on the stereo in the mornings and late at night, constantly in awe of the pictorial elegance of its dimly lit but richly atmospheric instrumental evocations. [Read here]

Selected Works: On Living With Tinnitus

I first experienced tinnitus after an all-ages concert at the TSB arena on Wellington's waterfront. It was the mid-90s, alternative was mainstream, and grunge and Britpop music videos were in high rotation on MTV. I don’t remember who performed, but I do recall leaving the venue with a high-pitched buzz in my ears. I didn’t think about it too much at the time, though. [Read here]

Bandcamp: “America Dream Reserve” Celebrates Unsung Artists

“The idea was this dusty hotel lounge vibe, with a lot of covers and small town USA groups that were one-man-band type situations,” says Henry Jones, the founder of the Santa Cruz, California reissue label and archival project Smiling C, of their latest release America Dream Reserve. [Read here]

Bandcamp: New Zealand’s Daring Jazz Scene

In 1990, two New Zealand businessmen, Simon Grigg and Tom Sampson opened a two-room nightclub space The Box & Cause Célèbre on High Street in inner-city Auckland. Inspired by experiences they’d had in New York at the downtown Manhattan nightclub Nell’s, the concept for their new venue was a jazz lounge on one side (Cause Célèbre) and an underground dance music club on the other (The Box). Over the following years, Cause Célèbre became crucial to the development of an open-eared local scene where rappers and turntablists performed with jazz bands, and drum machines and samplers took center stage. [Read here]

Audio Culture: Jordan Rakei

Raised in Brisbane and based in London, Tokoroa-born Jordan Rakei is a talented songwriter, vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and producer. Over the last decade, he has toured his soulful groove-based sound extensively through Europe, the UK, North America, Australia, and South Africa. [Read here]

Audio Culture: Crash Hot

Between 1990 and 1992, former 95bFM staffers Dom Nola and Robert Southon produced three iterations of Crash Hot, a magazine-style New Zealand music radio programme. Syndicated nationally through the student radio network, Crash Hot was distributed internationally to college radio stations across America, Canada, and Europe. In the process, it helped introduce a new generation of New Zealand musicians and record labels to audiences locally and overseas. It also laid the foundations for future projects from the next generation of New Zealand broadcasters and music journalists. [Read here]

Selected Works: In Conversation - Kapil Seshasayee

Kapil Seshasayee is a Scottish-Indian musician and visual artist from Glasgow. I was first introduced to his work in 2020 through Chalo, a South Asian music compilation album assembled by the journalist Dhruva Balram and the musician Jitwam for The Jazz Diaries. After that, Seshasayee popped back up on my radar in 2021 when he recorded a song about the Indian caste system with the eccentric American internet rapper Lil B. Fast forward things to the present day, and Seshasayee has just released his second album, Laal. I spent an hour on Zoom with him. [Read here]

Audio Culture: Jay Monds aka Bulletproof

You can’t talk about drum and bass music in New Zealand without talking about Jay Monds, who sadly passed away on 29 September 2022, aged 46. Also known as DJ Pots or Jay Bulletproof, Jay was a product of the early 90s warehouse rave scene. He put the hard yards in behind the turntables and running events, along the way becoming a crucial figure on the national scene. [Read here]

UNO: Life in Harmony

On 22 November 2009, a 19-year-old Stan Walker took to the stage at Australia’s storied Sydney Opera House for the grand final of Australian Idol. That night, Stan was crowned the show’s ultimate winner, his debut pop single “Black Box” became available for purchase online, and a star was born. Over a decade later, Stan Walker is all grown up – and learning to find the balance between his music and his expanding whānau. [Read here]

Audio Culture: Raiza Biza

Over the last decade, Hamilton-based Rwandan New Zealand rapper Raiza Biza has been one of the most prolific performers and recording artists to emerge from the Aotearoa hip-hop scene. [Read here]

INTERVIEWS:

Test Pressing: Disco Arabesquo on "Sharayet el Disco"

On June 3 2022, the French reissue label Wewantsounds released a new LP compilation album titled “Sharayet el Disco”. Compiled by the Amsterdam-based Egyptian vinyl & cassette collector, blogger and DJ Moataz Rageb, aka Disco Arabesquo, “Sharayet el Disco” brings together nine vivid disco-not-disco, boogie-not-boogie deep cuts from Egypt’s eighties cabaret and cassette tape scenes. Mostly never released before on vinyl, the songs included chart a life-affirmingly funky pathway through Rageb’s deep - in a sense lifelong - investigation of the music of his childhood. Even better, the compilation comes packaged with beautifully detailed liner notes and artwork from the young Egyptian graphic designer Heba Tarek. I spoke with Rageb via Zoom to learn a bit more about “Sharayet el Disco” and the context it emerged within. [Read here]

Test Pressing: "We had our own vision and needed our own pace” An Interview With Andrew Withycombe / Hydroplane

“In some ways, I sort of feel like we peaked not much longer after that and sold less and less records,” says the Australian songwriter, bassist and producer Andrew Withycombe. Speaking to me from Melbourne, he’s wryly reflecting on the self-titled debut album from Hydroplane, originally released in 1997 through the US label Drive-In Records. An understated classic within the Australian underground music canon, Hydroplane’s debut is a nocturnal melange of breakbeat drum loops, ambient guitar experimentation, haunting keyboards and ghostly, dreamy vocals delivered by Kerrie Bolton. Call it ambient pop, perhaps? [Read here]

Mixmag: Vibrant Fusions - Jitwam’s Diverse References Inspire His Celebratory Musical Tapestries

When Jitwam was writing and recording his third album, aptly titled 'Third', he drew from the rich diversity of music and culture he experienced living in New York and London. Over ten celebratory tracks, Jitwam weaves a rich tapestry of disco-funk, bossa nova, psychedelic folk, dusty soul, house, jazz, and Bollywood, finding common ground between ostensibly disparate cultural signifiers. Featuring guest appearances from Melanie Charles and Akhtari, 'Third' is a joyful and uplifting statement of intent from an artist experiencing a profound creative rebirth.

Jitwam shares a mix paying tribute to New York loft parties and spoke to me about his mindset, approach, and aspirations [Read here]

Selected Works: Ghost Riders

Described as a North American road trip of coming of age garage soul mapped by Ivan Liechti, Melbourne label Efficient Space’s forthcoming narrative compilation Ghost Riders, hoves in a liminal emotional ravine between moonlight melancholy, teenage heartache and unchecked, unrealised ambition. Across 17 open-hearted ballads recorded between 1965 and 1974, the double LP, CD, and digital release collects and connects dots between British Invasion fanatics, child prodigies, the loners and the luckless. In a sense, it’s a trans-continental survey of those swept up in rock’n’roll mania and buoyed by local newspaper ads promising fame and gold records during the era. [Read here]

LINER NOTES:

Over the course of the pandemic, I’ve found myself taking on more jobs writing press releases and album liner notes for some great record labels, including, but not limited to Isle of Jura, Frederiksberg Records, Glossy Mistakes, Lo Recordings, and Mānuka Recordings. I find it very gratifying to do this work. Hopefully, the opportunities continue in 2023.

Susumu Yokota aka Stevia, Fruits of The Room/Greenpeace

In 1997 and 1998, the late great Japanese composer, producer, and DJ Susumu Yokota released two of the most eclectic albums of his decades-long career, Fruits of The Room and Greenpeace. Recorded under his Stevia alias for Tokyo Techno pioneer DJ Miku’s Newstage Records/NS-COM, they were Yokota-san’s homage to the foundational days of club music in Japan.

The Kyoto Connection, The Flower, the Bird and the Mountain

During the late 2010s, music lovers around the world began obsessively listening to increasingly esoteric albums on Youtube. More often than not, they’d leave the browser on autoplay. This was how Facundo Arena, the composer and producer behind The Kyoto Connection, discovered the technonaturalistic pleasures of Kankyō Ongaku (environmental music), a distinctly Japanese interpretation of European, British and American minimalist composition and ambient music. “It was a kind of algorithmic magic,” he says.

Danny Scott Lane, Wave To Mikey

Wave to Mikey, the fourth album from the Los Angeles-based actor, musician and photographer Danny Lane is a nocturnal, neon-lit ode to the friendships that shape us. “I made this album for my friend Mikey from back home,” Danny explains. “We were pretty much inseparable for a large part of our lives, and our musical and social minds were always in sync in a special way. Then with age, we drifted apart, especially since I moved to Los Angeles. This album is just a little wave hello to an old friend and a kindred spirit.”

Ole Knudsen, Det Handler Om K​æ​rlighed

In 1992, the Danish guitarist, singer- songwriter, composer, percussionist, and music teacher Ole Knudsen self-released his second and final album, Det Handler Om Kærlighed (It’s about Love). Culminating in the infectious melodies of ‘Slingrevejen’ which has become a bit of a cult classic among Danish record collectors.

Instant House, Lost Horizons

Before he co-founded the legendary Sunday afternoon event Body & Soul with fellow New York DJs Danny Krivit and Francois Kevorkian in 1996, Joaquin "Joe" Claussell was the driving force behind Instant House, an eclectic production outfit who released a series of uplifting deep house records, several of which were spun by David Mancuso at the 90s iteration of his influential Loft parties.

Summer Vee, Key To All Your Love

Mānuka Recordings is a new boutique record label from Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa (Auckland, New Zealand). Led by Dylan Biscuit and Kenny Sterling, we are inspired by the rich histories of seventies and eighties dance music, ranging from soul and R&B to disco-funk, boogie, vocal house and beyond. As a collective, we’re focused on supporting and collaborating with musicians in our immediate community, pushing artists’ boundaries, and searching for the magic within spontaneity and imperfection.

Natalie Yorke, Chutney Boy

An unsung gem, ‘Chutney Boy’ by Natalie Yorke is an intoxicating example of chutney soca, as reimagined from a London Soundsystem music perspective. Driven by a galloping groove, a bubbling bassline, and hypnotic synths, the song sees Yorke effortlessly delivering a catchy folkloric chant and nimble verses that evoke the influence of Trinidad’s Indo-Caribbean population. Fittingly, the story behind the song is just as intriguing. However, before we get into it, let’s start with the voice that breathed life into the music. [Read here]

Gert Thrue, Sound Painted Pictures Of Cosmic Love

Originally released in 1977, Gert Thrue’s Sound Painted Pictures Of Cosmic Love is a cult classic from the early Danish cosmic music scene. Across four evocatively titled pieces of varying lengths, Thrue and his collaborators, the drummers Jan Preus and Per Høyer, take the listener on an expressive journey through a celestial constellation of organs, keyboards, synthesisers and drums. In the process, they reach into the infinite while pursuing the lofty spiritual goals Thrue articulated in the album’s bilingual liner notes.

In other liner notes-related news, I recently started conducting reissue research interviews for Soundway Records. This has been a very cool development for me. Expect more news around this area next year.

DAZED DIGITAL:

The Q1, Q2, and Q3 editions of my new music column for Dazed Digital are all live on the site at the links above.

MIXES:

Dublab: Martyn Pepperell and Ken Hidaka — A Susumu Yokota Tribute

In 2021, Ken Hidaka and I wrote an extensive feature story about the life and times of the late great Japanese composer, producer, DJ and visual artist Susumu Yokota for Wax Poetics. This sound piece combines voice notes from Yokota-san’s close friends Alex from Tokyo, Ayako Kataoka and DJ Toby with a forty-minute selection of his music recorded under his own name and his Ebi and Stevia aliases. Arranged, mixed and mastered at Organik Muzik Workz. [Listen here]

Skylab Radio: Ain’t It True

Wellington, New Zealand-based DJ Martyn Pepperell presents a mix of homespun Street Soul, Swingbeat, New Jack Swing and Uptempo R&B recorded around the world during the nineties. [Listen here]

ME, MYSELF & I:

Club Management: New Zealand Raves + Hidden Gems With Martyn Pepperell

Shannon chats with writer, DJ and Dub Lab radio host Martyn Pepperell about New Zealand’s incredible music scene, what it's like to rave at 14 in his city, and Martyn finally settles the opening DJ debate.

Basketball: Legendary player, coach and mentor Kenny McFadden dies

American-Kiwi basketball legend Kenny McFadden has lost his battle with polycystic kidney disease. Well-known as the mentor and manager of Kiwi basketballer Steven Adams, McFadden, 61, was a former professional basketball player who became instrumental in developing and coaching New Zealand's young basketball players over the past 40 years.

It was incredibly sad when Kenny passed away in March, but I appreciated that The Herald took the time to quote some of my writing about the impact he had on the development of hip-hop in New Zealand. Kenny had a well-rounded influence on this country and deserves to be remembered in multitudes. [Read here]

To and From, Home towns tend to be missed, then scorned — and finally rediscovered. By Tess Nichol

When ordering a book online, I would venture to guess that not many of us think it necessary to check the listed dimensions before purchase. It certainly didn’t cross my mind, which is how I ended up with a 21.5 centimetres wide, 25 centimetres high copy of Swann’s Way — the first volume of Marcel Proust’s seven-part novel In Search of Lost Time — sitting on my book case. Strangely square and very thin, my edition of the famous text looks at first glance like a picture book for the world’s most intellectual baby. Inside the typeface is tiny, like a Bible’s, and formatted with two columns per oddly wide page. It is, unfortunately, unreadable. [Read here]

I was very appreciative when Tess asked me to provide her with some photography for the above personal essay on Home Towns. It might seem silly, but getting published as a photographer in a magazine meant a lot to me.

Other notable moments from 2022: Interviewing Elijah (Butterz) and Tiny Ruins at You’re The Future of Music. Hosting the keynote conversation with Che Pope at Going Global. DJing at Hope Street Radio and Skylab Radio in Melbourne. Seeing Midori Takada and Ana Roxanne perform. The Avantdale Bowling Club show at Saint James Theatre. Hiatus Kaioyte live at The Opera House. Open air dancing at Flux. The Kush Jones tour. Dylan, AJ and Tina going from strength to strength. Womb at Vogeltown Hall. Shabazz Palaces live. Weddings. Beaches. The list goes on.

A note on DJing: Although I didn’t DJ nearly as much as I usually do this year (which was by choice), I’d like to thank Mabels, Damascus, Clear Path Ensemble, Laundry and Fresh Concept for continuing to book me. Every gig is appreciated.

FIN.