Beats + Pieces Vol. 90
10 NZ Jazz albums from 2016-2015, various other bits, and a surprise.
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.
Before we proceed, thanks to everyone for the feedback on Notes Towards A Personal Essay. Today, we’re getting back to basics with some of the usual stuff with the 90th edition of Beats + Pieces. Please enjoy.
Audio Culture: Ten New Zealand Jazz Records from 2016 to 2025
This week on Audio Culture, I wrote about ten New Zealand jazz albums from the last ten years. The framework I opted for here was one per year. I’ll mention a few other honourable mentions below.
For the longtime players and keepers of the faith, jazz – much like folk, country, rock, and increasingly, hip-hop and electronica – never really goes away. Here in Aotearoa New Zealand, the genre, one of the great cultural traditions the United States has shared with the world, has deep roots dating back to the late 1800s. Over a century later, it continues to be a mode of playing and a source of influence for generation after generation of New Zealand musicians.
If you search for jazz on AudioCulture, you’ll find quite a lot of writing about various 20th century New Zealand jazz musicians. What about this century? Here are 10 significant Aotearoa New Zealand jazz records, one per year, from the decade just past. As it turns out, the mid-to-late 2010s and early 2020s have been a very promising stretch for our local jazz scenes; the musicians operate in genres a step or two removed, while drinking from the same wellsprings.
I’m not a formalist, so not everything in this list is straight-ahead jazz. However, amidst the more experimental, or genre-crossing fusion records I have selected, there are always moments that glide back towards the conventions of tradition. It’s pleasing to note that most of the acts included here have been acknowledged with wins or nominations at the Aotearoa Music Awards and the APRA Best Jazz Composition Award. And, if not, the music still unquestionably speaks for itself.
You can read the full list over on Audio Culture here.
Bonus: Aotearoa Jazz Extras
Joe Kaptein is a multi-instrumentalist, but mainly a keyboardist, who composes and produces music in Auckland, New Zealand, and Eternal Afternoon is the album that made me start really paying attention to what he’s doing. Joe’s got a big imagination and it really shows here.
Dark Light wasn’t recorded in the last ten years, but it is my favourite album from the globe-trotting composer and pianist Jonathan Crayford. I hung out with him in Paris while he was writing the music. The music was inspired by Galois Candle, a genius French mathematician (1811 – 1832) who used abstract algebra to prove the links between field theory and group theory, before dying in a sword fight. I need to tell my guy Gabriel Krauze about Candle, I think he’d love him.
I don’t know if I really think this album is jazz, but elements of it are. I wish Riki Pirihi & Abigail Aroha Jensen had funding to turn it into a video game, or some kind of immersive VR experience even.
WHAT I’VE BEEN READING:
Underground Resilience: Lisbon’s DIY club scene refuses to give up on the dancefloor: Over the past decade, Lisbon has been a haven of DIY nightlife, with a plethora of collectives, record stores, artists, labels and venues coming together to create a vibrant and varied scene. But the Portuguese capital’s underground club community has also faced a wave of threats, with venue closures and hostile government policies endangering its fragile ecosystem, forcing many to rethink the ways it can move forward. Here, April Clare Welsh meets with the artists and promoters who are fighting to keeping the scene alive — a community that refuses to give up the dancefloor. Read here.
A History of Early Electroclash in Ten Tracks: DJ Hell and The Hacker pick electroclash’s key anthems between 1997 and 2001, revisiting the blueprints for the rule-breaking sub-genre still rocking dance floors 30 years later. Read here.
Why won’t the Australian music industry talk about Daniel Ek’s “private” meetings?: Following the Spotify co-founder and Ai military start-up Helsing chairman’s “lunch with music industry bosses”, little has been said publicly. Read here.
WHAT I’VE BEEN LISTENING TO:
This one is a hall of fame remix. If you know, you know.
I love seeing Arooj Aftab thrive. If I really think about the best concerts I’ve been to over the last couple of decades, Prince, Leonard Cohen, Sade, Beverly Glenn Copeland, Brian Jackson and Arooj Aftab are in the mix big time. Arooj is really up there.
An absolutely insane ambient techno record I hope to write about more soon.
A Short Story:
Nine months ago, I started carving out little chunks of time here and there to write short stories. Here’s one I came up with recently. It’s set in a speculative, not-so-distant future in Wellington, New Zealand, a place where people really need their cup of barista coffee.
Most days, the man spent several hours sitting at the window, watching the street. Since the government started delivering weekly supplies, they hadn’t left the house much. There was talk that waste disposal might resume soon. It was a welcome break from how mad everything got for a couple of years.
He vividly remembered when the power and the internet went down. Those days had been confusing and scary. The toughest bit was when they were fortifying the house. He didn’t like to think about the screams. He woke up in a cold sweat most nights. His wife and their one surviving child often did the same.
Today felt different. When he sat down in front of the window after breakfast, he realised the blood smeared across their homemade security bars was completely dry. He couldn’t remember the last time that had happened. The mangled bodies that were on the street yesterday had disappeared as well. Those waste-disposal rumours might be real.
For a moment, the whole street felt eerily still. As he sipped his morning instant coffee, the clouds cleared, and the sun shone down on the street. The sky above looked very blue, and he could hear birds singing in the distance. They weren’t just any birds, either. They were Tuis. Tui’s always made him think of that cheap beer brand and their “Yeah Right” billboards. They could have done some good ones about the way everything had gone. He remembered seeing a few decent memes in that format during the pandemic.
Back in his old life, the man had spent his mornings posting on Facebook. He’d spent a lot of time on Facebook in the afternoons and evenings as well, especially after the agency work dried up. His friends said he spent too much time on there. The arguments hadn’t been good for his blood pressure, but if he hadn’t been on there so much, he wouldn’t have clocked what was happening in real time. He’d been able to get them prepared. They were a good unit at first, but a good unit couldn’t prepare for everything. At least that was what he told himself.
The man got up and walked downstairs into the basement rumpus room. He always felt safe down there. So did the rest of the family. His wife and daughter were watching a movie on the big TV they’d pilfered from one of the abandoned houses on the street. It was The Princess Bride. These days, they watch movies on DVD. They’d scored a bunch from Aro Video in the village during an early supply raid after the lights came back on. He patted both of them on the shoulder, then headed back upstairs.
When the man looked out the window again, he got a surprise. One of their neighbours was on the street, standing by what remained of his letterbox. He waved to the man and called out to him by name. The man waved back and yelled out a greeting. Neither of them had done this for a long time. It felt odd, but the man went with it.
What happened next was even more surprising. The neighbour walked over to the man’s window. “Hey, I heard they’ve opened a coffee shop for essential workers down in the village,” he said. “One of my friends told me that if you turn up, they’ll serve you even if you aren’t certified and equipped. Apparently, they do good barista coffee and counter food. He said they have croissants. They’re making croissants again! Can you believe it?”
The man thought about the pitiful government-supplied instant coffees he’d been drinking in the mornings. Today was particularly bad. Once upon a time, he’d been a proper coffee snob. Into the single-origin coffees, the different filter techniques, you name it. What he really loved was an espresso flat white and a sweet baked treat. That had been his daily combo for years when he was working remotely for the agency. Those were the days. When he thought about it, he didn’t even know if anyone else from the agency was still alive.
His neighbour looked at him with a cheeky grin. “I’m going to go and try my luck,” he said. “You want to come?” The man nodded. “Be right out,” he replied. He put on his boots and jacket, double-locked the door behind him, and pulled on his weapon harness. He was as much of an armchair expert as the next man, but he had decent tools. That said, a lot of it came down to that garden shed they found on one scouting expedition. Whoever had spent their free time there was even better prepared than he’d been. He used to wonder what had happened to them, but you can only ruminate on the same thought so many times.
Pausing to look at his DIY mace, he thought about all the zombie heads he’d smashed in with it. He’d never forget finishing off that stupid politician who always said, “Now what I’ll say to you is this” at press conferences. That had been really satisfying. It was a shame he hadn’t been able to post that on Facebook. There was no guilt either. Once they turned, killing them was a mercy. If the tables were turned, he hoped someone would do the same for him.
“You gonna get your stuff?” he asked his neighbour. The neighbour walked back to his house, picked up the spiked baseball bat and shield he kept by the door and rejoined him on the street. The man briefly wondered if he should tell his wife and daughter. “Nah,” he thought. They’ll be watching the film for another hour. The village was a ten-minute walk. Maybe if everything went according to plan, he could bring them back some takeaway: a flat white and an almond croissant. His wife would like that. Perhaps they’d do a fluffy for his daughter.
To be continued. All good if not.
FIN.