2025 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.

First of all, I’d like to thank everyone who subscribes to this newsletter, takes the time to read my writing, and listens to my DJ mixes and radio shows. I’d also like to thank all the editors who commissioned work from me this year, and all the artists, managers, and labels who hired me to write copy for them. I can’t forget the promoters, bars, venues and festivals who booked me to DJ either. Ostensibly, 2025 was one battle after another, but in between those battles, there were plenty of special moments.

I can’t lie, a couple of years back, this whole freelance music and writing work thing was looking pretty rocky at my end. In a lot of ways, I probably should have called time in 2022 and retrained in literally anything. You know, when you’ve sunk your entire adult life into doing something, changing course can feel impossible. I’m not saying the tide has turned, but this year felt a lot better work-wise, and the numbers are making a bit more sense on paper as well. Don’t get any weird ideas, though. At the end of the day, it isn’t much better than a minimum wage job with no job security, sick leave, or annual holiday pay, but here we are!

This year, I spent a lot of time archiving and thinking about techno, house and downbeat music produced in Aotearoa and Te Waipounamu (New Zealand) and Australia, during the 1990s and early 2000s. I also got to write more frequently about indie rock, country and folk music, which was a nice change.

I think one of the high-watermark moments of the year was hosting a live conversation with the New York music journalist Liz Pelly in Auckland. It also felt pretty special to have my liner notes grace the latest vinyl reissue of Susumu Yokota’s Sakura. If you’d told me I’d be doing that fifteen years ago, I would have said, “What?!” I really hope I make it back to Japan next year. It was also surprisingly moving to have my profile of Eden Burns featured in a print edition of DJ Mag. Physical media still just hits different.

As we come towards the end of the year, I can’t help but think about some of the legends we lost this year, like Toni Huata and Mu from Fat Freddy’s Drop. You’re both missed deeply. In five or ten years’ time, I think we’ll probably look at 2025 as the year a few new legendary stars really started rising as well. It’s funny how it works like that. There’s always something going on.

FEATURES:

Audio Culture: Aaradhna

Aaradhna Jayantilal Patel burst onto the Australasian music scene in 2004 when her vocals featured alongside the R&B sibling duo Adeaze on their platinum hit single, ‘Getting Stronger’. In the years since, Aaradhna has repeatedly proved her mettle in the studio and on stage, affirming her status as one of New Zealand’s most beloved modern R&B and soul artists. Read here.

Audio Culture: Christoph El Truento Goes Dub

Christopher Martin James, better known as Christoph El Truento, was introduced to Jamaican dub music as a child during the final years of the 20th century. Thinking back to his upbringing, he remembers finding a copy of Augustus Pablo and King Tubby’s King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown album in one of his older brothers’ record collections. At the time, Truento spent evenings flipping through the radio dial to see what he could find on the airwaves in 1990s Auckland. In comparison, the slinky sounds he heard on that record – equal parts spaced-out and low-slung – were an early revelation. Read here.

Audio Culture: Chris Cox aka Frank Booker

For over two and a half decades, Chris Cox, aka Frank Booker, has kept dancefloors moving across New Zealand and Australia, and even as far afield as New York, London and Japan. Read here.

Mixmag: Traxman is the essence of Chicago dance music

Traxman started to make music with the simple aim of making people dance and have a good time. That hasn’t changed, but since he started out in the ‘80s, Corky Strong’s masterful productions and DJ sets have marked him out as a house music great. He has been at the forefront of three different generations of dance music in Chicago, pushing the sounds of ghetto house, juke and footwork in the city and to the world. Read here.

Rolling Stone: ‘It’s Not Enough’: Four Albums Into Her Career, Nadia Reid Is Far From Done

In 2021, Nadia Reid was renting a modest studio in King Edward Court, a striking three-story brick building in the heart of her hometown, Dunedin. During her days there, sometimes accompanied by her then three-month-old first daughter, she found the space to write at an unhurried pace. “I’d go in there, she’d sleep in her little seat, and I’d write and play guitar,” she says. “It was a moment of feeling like I’d arrived at adulthood.” Read here.

Mixmag: Exploring the sounds of ‘90s and early 2000s techno in Aotearoa

Growing up in Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington—the capital city of Aotearoa/New Zealand—my first exposure to techno came in the late ‘90s through a network of record shops, cafes, clothing stores, and all-ages warehouse parties. On inner-city dance floors, the upfront sounds of Detroit and Berlin often shared space with Chicago house, UK jungle/drum and bass, trance, and other adjacent dance music genres. Read here.

DJ Mag: Six emerging artists you need to hear: March 2025

The latest and greatest artists rising to the top this month. From percussive techno heaters and FWD-looking breaks to wide-eyed trance, mellow grime and Afro-house, here’s March 2025’s list of upcoming talent you should be keeping track of. Read here.

Rolling Stone: How Making Music Together Strengthened the Bond of This New Zealand Family Band

“In a day-to-day sense, feelings can be quite elusive to me,” says Cello Forrester. “I think it’s such a blessing to have art as a means to explore what a feeling is trying to say before using words and sound to put those feelings in context while reflecting your internal world into the external.” Read here.

Audio Culture: Ten 90s and 2000s downbeat classics and deeper cuts

In the early 90s, alternative music lovers across New Zealand embraced the UK, European and American sounds of trip-hop, downbeat and instrumental hip-hop, à la Nightmares on Wax, Massive Attack, Portishead, Kruder & Dorfmeister, Thievery Corporation, etc. In their slower grooves, sample-based sound palettes and nocturnal vocal stylings, several waves of ravers, clubbers and DJs found an ideal counterpoint to the uptempo house, techno and jungle/drum & bass sounds of the dancefloor. Read here.

Mixmag: Looking back at the sounds of ‘90s and early 2000s house, 2-step/garage and broken beat in Aotearoa

In 1988, a coalition of busy music industry figures based in Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland came together at the producer Alan Jansson’s Module 8 Studios. Over several evenings, they recorded what was arguably Aotearoa/New Zealand’s first house track. A self-titled, one-off studio project, ‘Jam This Record’ was marketed and released as an obscure white label. Read here.

Good Country: Exploring Home

Go deeper into Marlon Williams’ stunning new Māori-language album. Read here.

Audio Culture: Toni Huata Remembered – Oho Mai Koe

On 10 February 2025, news broke about the passing of Māori singer-songwriter, performer, director, and producer Toni Huata. During her lifetime, she released seven albums that effortlessly connected her deep commitment to te ao Māori and te reo Māori with her love and passion for jazz, soul, R&B, opera and an equally diverse array of styles of modern electronic music: downbeat, jazzy jungle/drum and bass, trance, house and beyond. Through and through, she was a lover of music and culture who served as a living bridge between worlds. Read here.

Audio Culture: Ten IDM and Electronica Albums, late 90s/2000s

During the early 1990s, a generation of hardware and laptop-based music makers from the UK and the US began crafting a form of electronic music that made an equal degree of sense on dancefloors and in living rooms. Broadly speaking, it was a mercurial blend of acid house, atmospheric techno, electro, and ambient, often underpinned by an open-eared approach to sampling. Read here.

Remembering Mu

A tribute to the late great Chris Faiumu of Fat Freddy’s Drop. Read here.

Audio Culture: Lucien Johnson

In 2025, saxophonist, composer, and theatre maker, Lucien Johnson, won the Best Jazz Artist Tui at the Aotearoa Music Awards for his third album, Ancient Relics. Over the last two and a half decades, Johnson’s transcendent playing has taken him from Wellington to Paris and back again, with stints in Port-au-Prince, Addis Ababa and New York along the way. Read here.

Susumu Yokota

Susumu Yokota was a uniquely gifted artist and a true creative pioneer. His prolific recorded legacy encompasses an extensive series of pivotal 12” releases and over 30 albums, each defined by a distinct musical and emotional signature. Read here.

Mixmag: Honouring Volition Records: Australia’s club culture catalyst

In January 1993, a sixteen-year-old drummer named Kim Moyes headed to the Sydney Showgrounds to attend the second edition of the legendary Big Day Out music festival. Having spent the summer immersing himself in the sounds of early ‘90s alternative and indie rock at a youth music camp, he was pumped to see Iggy Pop, Sonic Youth, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, and The Clouds. However, his new friends had a different idea. Instead, they took him to see two era-defining Australian electronica acts perform, Severed Heads and Itch-E and Scratch-E. By the end of the festival, he was changed forever. Read here.

Audio Culture: Philippa McIntyre aka Philippa, DJ Philippa

In the mid-2000s, Philippa McIntyre, aka DJ Philippa, was one of the most acclaimed house music DJs in Aotearoa New Zealand and Te Waipounamu South Island. A decade later, she found herself toiling away in obscurity on the other side of the world as she honed her craft as a dance music producer. Read here.

DJ Mag: Six emerging artists you need to hear: August 2025

The latest and greatest DJs and producers rising to the top this month. From brainbending experimental techno and deeply satisfying minimal house, through hip-hop storytelling and high-energy combinations of baile funk, kuduro, guaracha, gqom, neoperreo and much, much more, here’s August 2025’s list of upcoming talent you should be keeping track of. Read here.

Mixmag: The quiet legend of Micronism

When Denver McCarthy, one of Aotearoa’s most respected electronic musicians, released his debut album Morningstar (1994) as Mechanism, he was already operating on a higher frequency. That year, in a testament to the industrial techno he was producing, Mechanism’s Forever I Fly South EP surfaced internationally through IST Records (US). Read here.

Audio Culture: SYSTEMatic Recordings

During the final years of the 20th century, SYSTEMatic Recordings began documenting several mercurial strands of IDM (intelligent dance music), ambient dub, and electronic listening music on the margins of Auckland’s counterculture music scene. Between 1998 and 2002, they released a series of cult compilations, live recordings, and studio albums as limited-edition CD runs, all adorned with minimalist graphic design sensibilities, before fading from view. Read here.

DJ Mag: Six emerging artists you need to hear: October 2025

The latest and greatest DJs and producers rising to the top this month. From dubby techno-pop and Afro-futurist electronics to thrilling club music hybrids and classic progressive house, here’s October 2025’s list of upcoming talent you should be keeping track of. Read here.

Rolling Stone: MOKOMOKAI Embrace the Complexity of Being Māori. Their Music Is Better for It

Somewhere in Mangawhai, Northland, there’s a family home with an accompanying bach, separated by hedges. Inside that smaller unit, there’s a living room with a television and an Xbox game console, two small bedrooms and a bathroom. Read here.

Mixmag: Jeremy Dower’s lost era of ambient techno & electronica resurfaces

In 1982, the Commodore International electronics company introduced the best-selling desktop computer of all time: the Commodore 64 (C64). A low-cost 8-bit PC, it came with a bulky CRT monitor and used data cassettes and floppy disks to load software and games. For several generations, the C64 was a transformative doorway into digital worlds. Read here.

Rolling Stone Deep Dive: The Circling Sun, ‘Orbits’

Near the end of winter 2024, The Circling Sun, the Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland jazz collective, co-led by drummer and percussionist Julien Dyne and woodwind player Cameron Allen, put the finishing touches on their second album, Orbits. Read here.

Mixmag: Kiva, A lush, long-lost queer vision

Kiva, the first and only album from Royce Doherty and Paul Mac’s duo project of the same name, is a sparkling gem hiding in plain sight within the Australian musical canon. Originally released in 1997 by id/Mercury, it offers up a collection of timeless queer pop songs draped in dreamy ambient, downbeat and dub sensibilities. Thanks to Mixmag for republishing the liner notes for this one.

Test Pressing: Evidence For Real: The Story of Lord Shepherd

Originally pressed in 1981, “Evidence For Real” is the debut album from the enigmatic Los Angeles-based soul-jazz, funk and fusion musician Ambonisye Lord Shepherd, a drummer, composer, and bandleader who chose to spend his lifetime walking his own path, well outside the mainstream. Forty-four years after it was first released, “Evidence For Real” was recently reissued in vinyl and digital formats by the New York-based label, Frederiksberg Records. This is his story.

Resident Advisor: The Best Electronic Records of 2000-25

Historically, electronic music struggled with the album format. The sheer volume of club-ready genres that exploded after the late ‘80s helped project the sense of a golden age—but when it comes to LPs, you’ll find it’s actually a bit of a mirage. Many were narrow, padded with filler for CD runtimes, or generally a little undercooked. That, perhaps, is why electronic music has been given such short thrift in all-genre critics lists so far. I was pleased to be able to contribute a single blurb to this list. Sometimes less is more.

The Bluegrass Situation: 2025 Good Country

What is Good Country? We wouldn’t ever begin to even try to define it. Good Country is a place. A feeling. A sense of knowing it when you hear it. Whatever you consider to fall under the term or qualify for the moniker, there certainly is plenty of Good Country to be found these days – and especially in 2025. Thanks to Good Country for inviting me to take part in this list.

Q&A:

The Bluegrass Situation: Marlon Williams’ ‘Te Whare Tīwekaweka’ Is a Homecoming Like Never Before

When he was in his early twenties, Marlon Williams watched a series of major earthquakes flatten Ōtautahi/Christchurch, the largest city in Te Waipounamu (the South Island of New Zealand). In the wake of that tragedy, the Māori New Zealand artist ascended onto the national and later international stage as a singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor with a million-dollar smile and a golden, heaven-sent voice. Read here.

The Bluegrass Situation: Samantha Crain Made ‘Gumshoe’ with Reciprocity and Vulnerability as Its Core

Growing up in Oklahoma, Choctaw singer-songwriter Samantha Crain found solace and calm in mid-20th-century film noir, Westerns, and Broderbund Software, Inc.’s cult Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? media franchise. Along the way, she developed a soft spot for the vernacular term for a private detective, “gumshoe.” Read here.

Mixmag: The return of Signer: Aotearoa’s silent dub techno legend

In 1996, Oblique, the live electronica trio of then-Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington-based musicians Matthew Mitchell, Shanan Holm, and Bevan Smith, contributed three red-hot acid tracks to one of the first New Zealand techno compilations, Skankatronics Pure Wellingtronika. Read here.

Rolling Stone: ‘I Didn’t Expect It to Be All Over Social Media’: High Dependency Unit Discuss Their New Zealand Tour and EP Reissue

In 1997, the cult Ōtepoti/Dunedin trio High Dependency Unit (HDU) was throwing everything they had at the dream of making it as a band. They weren’t earning a lot, but the rent was cheap, the cost of living hadn’t shot through the roof, and there was electricity rippling through the air. Read here.

Mixmag: The Mix 082: DJ Thadz & DJ Slugo

Between them, Thomas Kendricks, AKA DJ Slugo and Thaddeus Anderson, AKA DJ Thadz, represent two generations of undeniable Chicago talent. Musically speaking, their common ground is the raw, stripped-down sensibilities of ghetto house, the movement that changed both of their lives. Read here.

RADIO:

Mouthfull: Music Before Bread w/ Tyler & Martyn Pepperell - June 7th 2025

Music before bread is a weekly breakfast show, broadcasting live from Tyler’s home in Naarm (Melbourne) on Saturday mornings from 9-11 (aest) // 11-1 (nzt). Listen here.

Triple R: Get Down – 5 June 2025

Listen here.

RNZ The Mixtape: Martyn Pepperell

Our guest this week is music journalist, DJ and broadcaster Martyn Pepperell, sharing an expertly curated selection of songs. Listen here.

Radio Active 88.6 FM: U Will Know: A Tribute to D’Angelo

Here’s my three-hour tribute to the late great Michael Eugene Archer aka D’Angelo. Expect a mixture of music from the man, his peers and his influences. Don’t expect a tracklist. Sorry, it’s just not happening this week. Maybe at a later date. Recorded live on Radio Active 88.6 FM’s Late Late Breakfast Show from 1-4 pm on Saturday, the 25th of October 2025. Listen here.

RNZ Music Feature: Aotearoa’s electronic and dub fusion artists

For today’s music feature, we’re travelling back to the heady days of the 1990s - when a new generation of Aotearoa jazz, soul, funk, dub and lounge musicians rose to fame. Nathan Haines and Mark De Clive-Lowe in Auckland and Bongmaster, Ebb and Solaa in Christchurch and Wellington were early pioneers of this movement. This crossover between DJ culture and live music continued into the new Millennium with Fat Freddy’s Drop, Trinity Roots, Ladi6 and Solaa putting New Zealand on the musical map. Listen here.

DJ MIXES:

Mouthfull: Beautiful w/ DJ Martyn Pepperell - March 28th 2025

A mix of ‘90s/2000s house, broken beat, and 2-step/garage from Aotearoa New Zealand. Listen here.

Mouthfull: Motion Capture w/ DJ Martyn Pepperell - May 22nd 2025

A mix of techno from Aotearoa and Te Waipounamu (1992-2002). Listen here.

Loose FM: Not Your Mother’s Tongue W/ Martyn Pepperell

Martyn Pepperell is a freelance music journalist, broadcaster and DJ from Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Aotearoa (Wellington, New Zealand). Over the last decade, his work has been published and presented by Dazed, Dublab, DJ Mag, Mixmag, NTS, Radio New Zealand, Resident Advisor, The Bluegrass Situation, The Wire, and Wax Poetics. Listen here.

Skylab Radio: Islands In The Sun w/ Martyn Pepperell

A one-hour mix of house music recorded and produced on the islands of Aotearoa and Te Waipouamu (New Zealand) during the late ‘90s and early 2000s. Listen here.

Beautiful 2 w/ DJ Martyn Pepperell - August 29th 2025

A one-hour DJ mix of classic and contemporary house, boogie and broken beat from Aotearoa New Zealand. Listen here.

LINER NOTES:

Ayane Shino, River せせらぎ The Timbre Of Guitar #2

A collection of ten hypnotic guitar renditions that dive deeply into the traditional compositional musicality that underpins Harakami’s hallucinatory beatscapes before reconsidering them under a fresh, innovative and engaging new light. River: The Timbre of Guitar #2 Rei Harakami signals a new level of awareness and understanding of both Rei Harakami’s significance and Ayane Shino’s undeniable talent. Read/listen here.

Susumu Yokota, Sakura

Sakura is without doubt the most loved and lauded entry in Susumu Yokota’s catalogue. The music unravels like cascades of petals falling from the eponymous cherry blossom trees. Yokota intended to ‘express ki-do-ai-raku (the four emotions; joy, anger, sorrow, and happiness) through music’, and throughout Sakura, the effect fluctuates between profound tranquillity, hesitation, melancholy and joy with ease, addressing the fickle nature of human emotion, while transcending the inclination to label moods entirely. Read/listen here.

Lord Shepherd, Evidence For Real

Born Robert Charles Sheppard Jr. in Omaha, Nebraska, and later known as Ambonisye Lord Shepherd, the artist carried a life story as inspiring as his music. From his formative years in Omaha’s historic 24th & Lake district to his creative explorations in Los Angeles, Shepherd forged a sound that was at once fiercely personal and universally searching. Read/listen here.

Kiva, Self-Titled

Kiva, the first and only album from Royce Doherty and Paul Mac’s duo project of the same name, is a sparkling gem hiding in plain sight within the Australian musical canon. Originally released in 1997 by id/Mercury, Kiva offers up a collection of timeless queer pop songs draped in dreamy ambient, downbeat and dub sensibilities. Listen/Read here.

EXTRA:

Liz Pelly In Conversation With Martyn Pepperell

Tāmaki Makaurau’s Whammy Bar are hosting a very exciting live event this coming August, demystifying and critiquing the forces shaping contemporary music listening and our global musical economy. Author of the fascinating new publication Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist (One Signal Publishers) — “A searing investigation into Spotify’s origins and influence on music, and how streaming is reshaping music for listeners and artists alike” — New York-based music journalist Liz Pelly will speak in-person with Aotearoa’s own Martyn Pepperell about the book and more on 26th August. More details here.

Pink Warm Belly Of A Dying Sun

Following the release of their experimental spoken word album and an exhibition featuring a sculptural mixed-media installation by Clemens Behr and Manuel Carbone, and video art by Brigitte Fässler and TiND, PINK WARM BELLY OF A DYING SUN, composer Prairie and poet Aint About Me return with a book documenting the entire journey. I wrote an essay for this <3. More details here.

Street Talk Magazine - Issue 2

Street Talk is an independent hip-hop and street culture publication documenting the voices, histories, and creative legacies of Aotearoa and beyond. Each issue weaves together intergenerational stories across the core elements of hip-hop, including Emcee, DJ, B-boy/B-girl, Graffiti, and more. Much love to Diana for asking me to contribute an essay to the second issue. More details here.

DAZED:

The Q1, Q2 and Q3 2025 editions of my quarterly music column for Dazed are live on the site now. Check my content index here.

FIN.