Back Once Again

It's been a minute.

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.

WHAT I’VE BEEN DOING:

Usually, I send this newsletter out weekly, but over the last couple of weeks, I’ve missed my personal deadline twice over. Long story short, I went to Melbourne in Australia for a week, which (thanks covid) was the first time I’ve been overseas since December 2019. While I was there, I played a DJ sets at Hope Street Radio - which is actually closer to being a lounge bar than a radio station - and Skylab Radio, which is a proper underground internet radio station. I also attended performances and DJ sets from Ana Roxanne, YL Hooi, Wilson Tanner, Lucy Dacus, Midori Takada, Shabazz Palaces, DJ Nobu and Kenji Takimi. Crazy.

After doing all that, I flew back to Wellington for a couple of days to recharge, then headed up to Auckland to host a series of live Q&A interviews at a small music seminar called You’re The Future of Music. While I was there, I was lucky enough to sit in conversations with Elijah from Butterz (via zoom, don’t get excited), Hollie Fullbrook aka Tiny Ruins, Hugh Mclure from Here For Good Agency, Amine Ramer from States of Sound, and Charles Kirby-Welch from Kartel Music Group. Plenty of good ideas were discussed. Anyway, I’m back on deck now. Here we go.

WHAT I’VE BEEN READING:

Patrice Rushen: “People are leaning into sampling in a way that is not creative” Sope Soetan speaks to Patrice Rushen for Mixmag about her underappreciated influence on popular music, making music for love, not record sales and an upcoming new album on the horizon.

'Late Capitalism Fantasyland': On Gamifying the Online Club Experience As clubbing becomes increasingly digitised, artists and collectives are harnessing the power of virtual world-building to create bonds between global subcultures. Günseli Yalcinkaya gets into it for Resident Advisor.

Houston’s DJ Screw turned down the tempo on hip-hop Excerpted from DJ Screw: A Life in Slow Revolution by Lance Scott Walker. Reprinted with permission from University of Texas Press.

Get To Know: Iceboy Violet Get acquainted with Iceboy Violet, the Manchester-based artist infusing their take on hip-hop with emotional realness. Sophie McNulty for DJ Mag.

Interview / Barbie Bertisch / Love Injection Love Injection`s Barbie Bertisch released her debut album, Prelude, this past Friday, June 17th. Dr Rob has already written a review detailing how much the record took him by surprise, but here he asks the “How?” “When?” and “Why?”s, while Barbie waxes lyrical in her replies.

The Rocky History of Gorge Music Use Toms. Call It Gorge. Don’t Call It Art. These three instructions constitute the terms and conditions for Gorge Public License, the governing document for Japan’s “gorge” movement. Jude Noel for Bandcamp Daily.

WHAT I’VE BEEN WATCHING:

Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom Here’s the rough outline: An aspiring singer living with his grandmother in the capital of Bhutan dreams of getting a visa to relocate to Australia. Originally released in 2019, Lunana is the feature-length debut from Bhutanese director Pawo Choyning Dorji. Long story short, before he can go to Australia, Ugyen - who works as a school teacher during the days - is assigned to spend a summer teaching in the remote village of Lunana. All of this serves as a vehicle to explore and explain traditional and modern aspects of culture and life in Bhutan (located in the Himalayas between China and India) while serving up some extraordinarily sumptuous landscapes. Unsurprisingly, there are some parables at work here as well.

WHAT I’VE BEEN LISTENING TO:

If you head to the crossroads of big band jazz and ambient (in the Brian Eno mode), you’ll find the young New Zealand saxophonist and composer Louisa Williamson and her new album, What Dreams May Come. A suite of four parts, Louisa envisioned What Dreams May Come as a tool for stress release and relaxation. Sculpted with woodwind, brass, guitar, pianos, acoustic bass and drums, What Dreams May Come delivers on Louisa’s hopes and perhaps offers even more. Dream within a dream, see or seem within the white room, all while barely glistening.

Elegant, melody-led indie-pop songs supported by 80s Japanese city-pop-inspired basslines, Yamaha DX7 synthesiser magic, and jazz percussion shapes. Hailing from Carmarthenshire, rural West Wales, Cate Le Bon has been making rather lovely and entrancing songs for several albums now, but for me, her semi-recent (early 2022) album Pompeii really hits the spot. There’s a track on here called ‘Moderation’. Listeing to it is like walking on sunshine. All things in moderation, even moderation.

The title of this album is Sometimes Life Is Hard And So We Should Help Each Other. Pretty hard to disagree with that sentiment, right? For context, it’s the debut recording of Bratislava-based musician & Warm Winters Ltd. label owner Adam Badí Donoval, recently (more recently than Cate Le Bon) released via the excellent Trilogy Tapes label. I first came across Adam when he was freelancing as a journalist during the John Twells Fact Mag Era. Then I came across him again as a publicist and record label owner promoting and releasing interesting noise/ambient/field recording shaped compositional works. I say all of that to say this, Adam’s very committed to this music stuff.

Over seven pieces, Sometimes Life Is Hard And So We Should Help Each Other sees him turning drone idioms inside out, approaching choral music from a plunderphonic perspective, and dressing it all up in a distinctly Eastern European hauntological mode. Supporting his personal visions, Adela Mede, Tomáš Niesner, Martyna Basta, Andreas Dzialocha, Ondrej Zajac, John Sampson and Kepla contribute voice, guitar, bass, field recordings, cello and suona. This is the sort of work you can virtually submerge yourself in.

As the story goes, two young Italians met in seventies London. Captivated by the visual arts, DIY music, and indie record label scenes of the day, they moved back to Italy and took up residency in an apartment in Rome. Armed with instruments, drum machines, cassette decks, synths, field recordings, found percussion and voice, Bruno De Angelis and Giovanna Gulinello aka Influenza Prods crafted a series of limited edition cassette tape EPs, Greatest Tits (1983), Cheek-A-Bomba (1984) and Quasi Solo (1985), along the way mapping out their own singular art-pop visions. Not long after, life got serious and they drifted apart for a spell, before reconnecting later on down the line. 37 years later, the Melbourne-based Australian reissue label Left Ear Records has released Mémoire, a vinyl LP/digital compilation of their work. It’s a lovely window into what was, and what could have been, for Influenza Prods.

REST IN PEACE, FREDDIE “RED ASTAIRE” CRUGER:

Last week, news broke of the sudden death of the cult Swedish DJ/producer Fredrik Lager, aka Freddie Cruger, aka Red Astaire, who passed away after a heart attack. Some personal context: in the mid-to-late 2000s, Fredrik’s music was basically inescapable within New Zealand’s cafe culture, lounge bars and neo-soul/hip-hop/beats scenes. At the time, I thrashed his album Soul Search (2006) and I wasn’t alone. Simply put, he had a magic touch.

In 2008, Fredrik toured New Zealand. In advance of his appearances here, I was lucky enough to interview him for a now long-defunct local street press title called Groove Guide. In honour of Frederik and the impact he had on us, I’ve reproduced the interview below in full. Absolutely mad to think I wrote this fourteen years ago.

Groove Guide: Freddie Cruger Interview (2008)

Freddie Cruger aka Red Astaire is reserved and succinctly spoken in conversation. I wouldn't have expected any less from a red-haired ice hockey enthusiast hailing from Sweden, especially when they happen to be one of the most musically poetic beat smiths to emerge from Europe over the last few years. My justification for this statement is Freddie's album 'Soul Search' a release that almost overnight redefined a whole generation of music enthusiast’s vision of eclectic sample-based Hip Hop Soul and introduced the wider world to the considerable talents of MC ADL and Soul'stress Linn amongst the other gorgeous voices draped across Freddie's music.

More than just a producer, Freddie is also a world-renowned dj capable of creating Soul, Hip-Hop, Funk, Reggae and Disco fueled roadblocks anywhere and everywhere he touches down on the ones and twos. Essentially a b-boy infected with an all-consuming love of dusty records and analogy sound during the 1980's, Freddie Cruger is old-school personified, but why the name?

"People started calling me Freddie Cruger in 1993. I don't know why, maybe it was the movie? I didn't choose it myself, but because it became something I kept it and released records. Red Astaire was different. I felt I needed an alias to release bootleg records, I never expected the bootlegs would get as big as they did," he says.

The bootleg record that broke Freddie internationally was 'Follow Me', the result of blending a classic D'Angelo acapella with one of Freddie's own productions, a Bossa-styled vibraphone loop. "The moment of truth was right there for me," he chuckles. The impact of this bootleg can best be summed up through a comment DJ Jazzy Jeff left on Freddie's myspace page. 'YO...DID U DO THAT DEANGELO JOINT...OH MY GOD...DUDE IF IT'S U...U R THE SHIT...I PLAY THAT EVERYTIME I PLAY...GOOD LOOKING MAN 4SHO'.

At present Freddie is getting his 'lab rat' on finishing a collaborative album with Swedish soul singer Linn and is releasing an instrumental album entitled 'Just chilling in the spot' in April.

"I use the ASR-10 sampler, it’s old school like me. I started off on it ten years ago and I know it by heart so I can't let it go. I like my music to be atmospheric, a nice soundscape, not too dry but still with a nice bassline. I'm influenced by so many different styles of music, so I just try to put them all together," he says.

In February Freddie will be touring through New Zealand djing at a series of intimate club events in Wellington and Auckland as well as making a high-profile appearance at the Splore Festival. In regards to his thoughts on visiting our country, Freddie had the following to say. "I'm excited, I'm good friends with DJ Vee in London who is originally from New Zealand and he has told me a lot of things about New Zealand. The people seem to like a soul reggae sound. I've listened to some artists on myspace when they request me, the sound is good.

I am a little bit scared about the partying though. I will be keeping myself in check; I am not so young anymore."

BONUS:

Huge congrats to Nikki Nair, Juke Bounce Werk, AceMoMa and the other winners at the 2022 DJ Mag Best of North America Awards over the weekend.

The Hard Times: Wife Installs Breathalyzer Lock on Husband’s Acoustic Guitar.

FIN.