2023 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 2023, and for all intents and purposes, it is now wrapped. Please enjoy this sprawling list of features, interviews, columns and liner notes I wrote this year + mixes, various odds & ends and some photos. Happy Holidays all. See you next year!
FEATURES:
Clash: Seaming To’s Quest For Collaboration
Across her second album ‘Dust Gatherers’, the London-born composer, multi-instrumentalist, and vocalist Seaming To draws from her roots in classical composition and jazz improvisation. Equal parts magical realism and mythological pop, she describes it as “a collection of stories that have been gathering dust inside myself for some time,” hence the title. Summoning up a psychedelic wonderland of alluring songs draped in pastoral string arrangements and playful synthesisers, Seaming sings with a siren’s call, inviting us to explore the visions, secrets and dreamscapes that lurk just beyond our view in the mirror. [Read here]
Bandcamp Daily: The Stylish Boogie of Mogwaa
South Korean multi-instrumentalist, producer, and DJ Seungyoung Lee, aka Mogwaa, regularly posts videos of himself preparing coffee on his Instagram story. Between his choice of equipment and technique, a loving and respectful level of care is apparent. These same qualities are evident within the stylish boogie, electro, deep house, ambient, and Balearic beat projects he’s released over the last six years. Mogwaa is a master craftsman who values form and function in equal measure. [Read here]
Mixmag: Get To Know Gayance
Gayance produces and DJs music that emphasises shared joy, community and cultural connectivity across borders. Since 2013, she’s cultivated an open-hearted sensibility informed by hip hop, R&B, the late 2000s beat scene, London’s broken beat and garage movements, Detroit techno, Chicago house and an equally rich mélange of sunkissed sounds from across Latin America and West Africa. [Read here]
Audio Culture: Hip Hop Aotearoa, Year 2013
Looking back with over a decade of hindsight, the early 2010s represented a crucial turning point in the history of hip-hop music in Aotearoa. In the wake of the launch of Spotify in New Zealand in 2012, the local music industry was reorganising itself to adapt to the challenges and changes of the app-based music era. As market trends shifted, music magazines were being replaced by blogs and websites, and online social media-based marketing rapidly began to supersede offline music promotion. [Read here]
Rolling Stone Australia: ‘Funny Things Happen During the Worst Times of Your Life’: Hollie Fullbrook on Tiny Ruins’ New Album
“I think a theme in a lot of my work is the difference between how you feel internally and how you’re perceived or how the world is externally,” says the Auckland singer-songwriter, guitarist and cellist Hollie Fullbrook as we sit in a verdant inner-city park in Auckland. [Read here]
Flying Nun: Unleashing Musical Freedom - How Mouthfull Radio Revives Independent Music And Community Spirit
Broadcasting online from Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington, Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland, Mangawhai, Melbourne, and more recently, Berlin, Mouthfull Radio is an independent non-profit online radio station and community collective. Similarly to more established overseas platforms, the station serves as a digital third space for an ever growing community of open-eared show hosts and listeners who often congregate together in the station’s website’s chatroom. [Read here]
Audio Culture: Lisa Tomlins
Over the last three and a half decades, Lisa Tomlins (Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Toa) has established herself as one of the most versatile vocalists in the local music scene. [Read here]
Audio Culture: Deva Mahal
Born and raised in Kauaʻi, Hawaii, when Deva Mahal arrived in Aotearoa in the early 2000s, she quickly became part of a generation of local musicians who used their love of jazz, soul, funk, reggae, dub, hip-hop, house and techno to ascend from the underground into our country’s mainstream consciousness. [Read here]
Audio Culture: Ermehn
An Ōtara original, Herman Lealaiauloto, aka Ermehn, got his start in the New Zealand hip-hop scene as one half of Radio Backstab & DJ Payback, the duo he shared with Jeremy Toomata. From there, he became one of the original members of the Otara Millionaires Club before going solo and releasing his debut album, Samoans: Part 2, in 1998. The hip-hop community was shocked by his death in July 2023. [Read here]
Rolling Stone Australia: Remember the Old, Embrace the New: Clementine Valentine on the Timelessness of Their Debut Album
During the early months of 2020, Clementine and Valentine Nixon, the cult New Zealand sister duo then known as Purple Pilgrims, embarked on an extensive tour through Europe and the United Kingdom before returning home to play several concert hall performances alongside the acclaimed psychedelic folk singer-songwriters Weyes Blood and Aldous Harding. Ostensibly, it was a triumph. However, with the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping the globe simultaneously, everything was about to change. [Read here]
Audio Culture: Myele Manzanza
When he emerged from the Wellington music scene in the mid-to-late 2000s, Myele Manzanza was keeping the groove flowing with Olmecha Supreme, Electric Wire Hustle, The Recloose Live Band, and numerous other projects. A decade and a half later, the now veteran drummer, producer, DJ, and composer is based in London, where he has spent the last few years finding his place within the UK and Europe’s vibrant modern jazz, soul, hip-hop, house, techno, and experimental music scenes. [Read here]
The Sunday Feature: Dallas Tamaira
Throughout February and March of 1994, the late great Phil Fuemana - the founder of Urban Pacifika Records - led a litany of South Auckland hip-hop, RnB and new jack swing groups across New Zealand to promote the release of the classic album Proud: An Urban-Pacific Streetsoul Compilation. When the tour arrived in Christchurch (the largest city in the South Island), a then-teenage Dallas Tamaira, aka Joe Dukie, who went on to find global underground fame as the smooth soul voice of the hi-tek soul big band Fat Freddy’s Drop, was in the audience. [Read here]
Audio Culture: Dubhead
If you spent any time in some of Auckland’s more fringe and subcultural bars, nightclubs and live music venues over the last 40 years, chances are you’ve been part of a late-night dancefloor with Patrick Waller. Better known as DJ Dubhead, Waller delivers a surefooted soundtrack of vintage ska, rocksteady, roots reggae, dub, dancehall, funk, and hip-hop on the turntables, perhaps in combination with his long-time MC and close friend, Jamaican dancehall vocalist Tuffy Culture. [Read here]
Rolling Stone Australia: Right Place, Right Time - How Mary Lattimore Embraces Collaboration to Create Something Personal
For the celebrated American experimental harpist and composer Mary Lattimore, being in the right place at the right time is the gift that keeps on giving. “I can name so many instances where if I hadn’t met someone at the same party or the same festival, the music we’ve made together wouldn’t have come to fruition,” she said. “I think these meetings are kind of destiny.” [Read here]
Audio Culture: Clementine Valentine
New Zealand sister duo Clementine and Valentine Nixon, formerly known as Purple Pilgrims, have made an art out of using ancient mythology and folk songs as the foundation for an increasingly ornate cycle of critically lauded albums. [Read here]
Thattu Pattu: Perception Swing
In the live performance video for ‘Entry 01’ — the debut track from their new collaborative alias — Asvajit and Nigel stand behind a table covered in samplers, drum machines, keyboards, and mixing desks. With a spotlight above them and the camera alternating viewpoints, they dream up an intoxicating blend of futuristic synthesizers, syncopated percussion, skipping machine beats, and squelchy basslines. [Read here]
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.
Q&A:
In Conversation: Dominic Hoey of Dead Bird Books
Dominic Hoey is a poet, author and playwright based in Auckland, New Zealand. When I first met him in the late 2000s, however, all of this was still on the horizon, and he was spending his days recording and performing hip-hop under the alias Tourettes while working an endless succession of dead-end jobs. [Read here]
Selected Works: The Teddy Bryant Interview
In 2021, my good friend Andreas Vingaard from Frederiksberg Records sent me a link to a red-hot modern soul album called In The Beginning. I was floored over by the songs on it and decided to tentatively start looking into the story behind its creator, the South Carolinian singer, composer, songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Teddy Bryant. He’s one of those guys who sings like he’s a soul artist from the seventies but was born in the eighties and incorporates loads of touches from the nineties, two-thousands and twenty-tens into his work. Long story short, his music sounds fantastic. [Read here]
Test Pressing: I Always Had Faith In My Music - An Interview With Ahmed Ben Ali
In February 2020, Jannis Stürtz's excellently curated Habibi Funk label released a 4-track 12" EP of early 2000s Libyan reggae from a musician named Ahmed Ben Ali. At the time, I was floored over by how effortlessly Ahmed blended the conventions and codes of reggae, dub and dancehall ragga with his own North African sensibility. Going off the EP's sales notes, it looked like Ahmed had had a rather colourful life. I made a mental note to try and find out more, but life got in the way. [Read here]
Q&A: Charlie Hill
A trained jazz drummer, Charlie Hill got his start in the Meanjin (Brisbane) live music scene in 2015 while studying at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music. After completing his degree in 2019, he spent several months losing himself on nightclub dancefloors across Europe before returning home on the eve of the global pandemic. [Read here]
A conversation with Ina Arii George (Rest In Peace)
In 2020, when I was deep in the reeds of working on the Aotearoa HipHop: The Music, The People, The History podcast with DJ Sirvere, I managed to snag a dodgy Zoom interview with a very good man named Ina Arii George. In the late eighties and early nineties, Ina worked in a variety of roles at the Ōtara Music Arts Centre (OMAC), a true South Auckland community hub and ground zero for several generations of New Zealand hip-hop, RnB and soul talent. [Read more]
REVIEWS:
Resident Advisor: Kate NV, WOW
In a recent interview with MusicRadar, the Russian singer, songwriter, producer and artist Kate Shilonosova said, "I have no problem listening to Stockhausen followed by Christina Aguilera. Being snobbish about stuff closes a lot of doors, yet being open to music is the key to being open-minded." For the last decade, she's explored the possibilities afforded by pop and the avant-garde through a series of intricate releases for Arctic Pacific Records, Orange Milk, Plancha and RVNG Intl. [Read here]
Test Pressing: Yasushi Ide, A Place In The Sun (Kaoru Inoue Remix) b/w Dub Version
Barbie Bertisch and Paul Raffaele's Brooklyn, NYC-based Love Injection project has been getting some good runs on the board lately, like the successful crowdfunding of "Dope From Hope", their new book that compiles Paul W. Klipsch's cult audio newsletters. Over on their record label side of things, however, I can't get through today without talking about their label's forthcoming new release, Yasushi Ide's "A Place In The Sun (Kaoru Inoue Remix) b/w Dub Version". [Read here]
Resident Advisor: Mary Lattimore, Goodbye, Hotel Arkada
In recent years, Stari Grad, a historic seaside town on the northern side of the Croatian island of Hvar, has served as a wellspring of inspiration for Mary Lattimore. On 2020's Silver Ladders, the celebrated American harpist and composer pulled from memories of silver ladders descending into azure waters, rendering them as impressionistic dreamscapes. During the afterglow of the album, she embarked on a two-year process of recording and editing that led to her spellbinding new LP, Goodbye, Hotel Arkada, a collection of six immersive pieces that feel mournful and celebratory in equal measure. [Read here]
Test Pressing: Mogwaa, Translucent
Over the last year, I've found myself having a lot of conversations with friends about getting back to doing things offline and exchanging digital ephemera for something more tactile. In a sense, it's a bit of a logic fallacy because, as we know, all things turn to dust eventually, regardless. Still, recently, it led to me self-publishing my first film photography book, which was, all things considered, a very rewarding experience. [Read here]
Test Pressing: Pel Mel, Late, Late Show
During the early 1980s, the Newcastle post-punk band Pel Mel were accorded the distinction of being the only domestic act signed to GAP Records, the Sydney-based label that licensed Manchester’s storied Factory Records into Australia. Formed in 1979, they took their cues from The Cure, Wire, Joy Division, The Fall and Gang of Four, playing music that blurred the boundaries between post-punk, new wave and electro to audiences of students, underage music lovers and other misfits who didn’t quite fit into Newcastle’s steelworks and surf town culture. [Read here]
PODCAST:
Selected Works Podcast: A Journey of Giraffes, Empress Nouveau
John Lane is a Baltimore, Maryland-based composer, instrumentalist and producer who records ambient, modern classical and electronica as A Journey of Giraffes. For the first-ever edition of the Selected Works Podcast, John talked to me about Empress Nouveau, his sixth album with the Shelbyville, Kentucky label Somewherecold Records. We discussed film soundtracks, the late great Japanese composer, producer and DJ Susumu Yokota, half-remembered childhood memories and more. [Listen here]
DJ MIXES:
Mouthfull Radio: Broken Swing w/ Martyn Pepperell - February 28th 2023
For broken swing, a one-off special, I assembled a mix of two parts: Half an hour of West London broken beat followed by thirty minutes of obscure new jack swing/swingbeats records from across Europe and the Caribbean. [Listen here]
Radio Al Hara: Neo Jack Feeling w/ Martyn Pepperell
For Palestine’s Radio Al Hara, I presented a sixty-minute exploration of uptempo New Jack Swing, Swingbeat and Street Soul from France, Finland, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Aotearoa, the UK and the US. Originally presented from 12-1 pm Bethlehem Time on Friday, March 10 2023. [Listen here]
HKCR: Around The World (global 90s street soul and swingbeat special) w/ Martyn Pepperell [Listen here]
Skylab Radio: J'ai Pas Sommeil (I Can't Sleep)
For Skylab Radio, I presented a one-hour mix of 90s Street Soul and Swingbeat from the UK, France, Brazil and New Zealand. White labels, CD singles, album cuts and obscure downloads. [Listen here]
Let Groove Come: A West London Broken Beat Excursion
Sixty minutes of classic late 90s/early 2000s Broken Beat/Bruk tunes with a heavy West London influence. Lovingly selected and mixed by yours truly, DJ Martyn Pepperell. [Listen here]
Dublab: Sensitive - New Jack Swing, RnB and Neo Soul from France
Taking its name from the 1994 compilation album of the same name, Sensitive is a wide-ranging survey of New Jack Swing, RnB, and Neo Soul recorded in France during the final decade of the 20th century. [Listen here]
There For You
A quick 60-minute mix of UK street soul, RnB and late-stage boogie tracks I've collected over the last few months. If you ever listen to me DJ on Radio Active 88.6 FM, you may have heard some of these tracks before. Please enjoy the vibes. [Listen here]
Street Soul 2
Another sixty minutes of 80s and 90s street soul, R&B and boogie records from the UK (with a couple of Polynesian street soul records crammed in as well), selected, mixed and blended by yours truly. Recorded in one take on Sunday, the 15th of October, 2023. [Listen here]
LINER NOTES:
Martin Glass, Magic Mountain (Glossy Mistakes)
Magic Mountain is the third full-length album from the itinerant American businessman, composer, and producer Martin Glass. Inspired by German electronic music pioneer Edgar Froese, Vangelis, early Warp Records releases, The Orb and The Future Sound of London, the album is a Fellinian memory maze of new age wellness culture, mid-20th century Hollywood glitz, exhaustion, dreams, fantasy, desire and listless ennui. The less sense it makes, the more we can't stop listening to it.
Romi Wrights, Bring It Back/Without You (Mānuka Recordings)
Inspired by vintage orchestral soul, 1970s dub reggae and some analog drum machine experimentation, ‘Bring It Back’ sees Romi in scorching soul diva mode, singing about empty-hearted excuses, toxic relationship dynamics and the bittersweet afterglow of tainted love against a spellbinding instrumental. On the flip side, Romi and Kenny team up with Dublin’s Fiachra Kinder (drums), JY Lee (horns and flute) and Cory Champion (vibraphone). The result, ‘Without You’, is another slice of vintage reggae-influenced soul and funk-drenched in yearning, loss, love and polaroid-perfect optimism.
M'BA Gary Thomasos, Self-Titled (Frederiksberg Records)
Originally self-released in 1982 through Thomasos’s MBA Productions label, this double-single shows off Thomasos’s range as a calypsonian. With nimble grace, he pairs animated storytelling and romantic melodies with up-tempo soul, R&B, and dance-tinged instrumentation straight out of the late-70s/early-80s discothèque scene.
Shinsuke Honda, Silence (Studio Mule)
Originally released in 1983 through Apollon Music industrial corp’s alty sublabel, Mule Musiq sub-label Studio Mule presents the first official digital reissue of Shinsuke Honda 本多信介’s rare silence = サイレンス (夕映え) album. recorded as part of alty’s resort mind music series, Honda-san’s contemplative guitar instrumentals tint the air with nostalgia, longing and a gentle sadness at the impermanence of all things, transporting the listener to an eternal sunset of the mind.
Kvinder for Fred, Self-Titled (Frederiksberg Records)
Forty-three years ago, the late great Danish singer and actress Lone Kellermann headed into Werner Studios with a group of prominent musicians and peace activists from the local 1970s protest music scene. This included singer-songwriters and guitarists Eva Langkow and Birte Zander, drummer Marianne Rottbøll, pianist/ harmonicist Nina Frederiksen, bassist Marianne Hall Christensen and guitarist Pia Nyrup Boudigaard.
Eo, Tell Me/What You Need (Mānuka Recordings)
In contrast to the classic soul, funk and boogie of Key To All My Love/Judas, Tell Me sees Mānuka Recordings founders Dylan Biscuit and Kenny Sterling search for the Balearic beat through an Antipodean lens. Starting with an improvised drum machine and synthesiser jam inspired by Dylan’s experiences partying across Europe in 2019, they brought in the in-demand woodwind player JY Lee and Eo, who helped them shape their ideas into a dreamy flute house track draped in a series of emotionally conflicted half-sung, half-rapped refrains.
MoonDoctoR & Surly, 10 Days in San Antonio (Freshmoon Records)
Resurrected from a set of previously thought-lost session files from the late 2010s, Ten Days In San Antonio is the first collaborative album from two friends from different sides of the globe, Surly (New Zealand) and MoonDoctoR (USA). Over ten dynamic club tracks, they imagine a neon-tinged late-night synthesis of the regional sounds of Chicago footwork and UK garage where euphoric rave stabs, laidback g-funk whistle synths, and perfectly placed hip-hop vocal chops float across rumbling bass and syncopated machine beats. Landing in a high-tech dancefloor interzone, the results are something neither of them could have envisioned alone.
Unknown Mortal Orchestra, V (Jagjaguwar)
Created between the dry freeways of Palm Springs, California and lush coastlines and Hilo, Hawai’i, V is the definitive Unknown Mortal Orchestra record. Led by Hawaiian-New Zealand artist Ruban Nielson, V draws from the rich traditions of West Coast AOR, classic hits, weirdo pop and Hawaiian Hapa-haole music. With his sharpest-ever ear for “making it UMO”, Ruban evokes blue skies, beachside cocktail bars and hotel pools without ever turning a blind eye to the darkness that lurks below perfect, pristine surfaces.
Ambient Warrior, 2 (Isle of Jura)
Following the success of the 2021 reissue of Ambient Warrior’s cult classic Dub Journey's (1995), Isle of Jura is pleased to present their previously unreleased second album, II. The album was recorded from 1995 to 1999 and is born from the same oceanside fusion of instrumental dub, reggae, bossa nova and tango music that made Dub Journey's so distinctive and memorable; II is an equally sublime collection of eleven unheard tracks from the brilliant minds of Ronnie Lion and Andrea Terrano.
ME, MYSELF & I:
Stuff: What I'm Reading - Martyn Pepperell
Lately, I’ve been rereading some of the books the great American author, translator and composer Paul Bowles wrote during the middle years of the 20th century, The Sheltering Sky, Let It Come Down, and The Spider’s House. [Read here]
Places
As plenty of you reading will know, earlier in the year, I published Places, my first small book/zine of landscape/cityscape film photography. It’s not sold out, but I am considering printing a few more copies. Thoughts?
Tamatha Paul Fundraiser Gig + DJing
In September, I helped organise a fundraiser gig for Wellington Central Green Party candidate Tamatha Paul, who was successfully elected. I even got to DJ on the night, which was a lot of fun. Speaking of DJ gigs, this year, I also opened for Brian Jackson, Nadia Reid and Mary Lattimore. Wasn’t a lot of DJ gigs in 2023, but I made them all count.
FIN.