End of Week Beats + Pieces

It's the weekend! Enjoy your life!

Kia ora. Things are still a bit messy at my end. Put it down to emotional exhaustion. I’m not gonna lie, I underestimated how overwhelming releasing the podcast into the world would be. The response has been very humbling, heartening, and full on! Regardless, life goes on. We keep doing things. You already know. This week’s photographs were shot on a Polaroid NOW camera with Black & Yellow 600 Film – Duochrome Edition.

WHAT I’VE BEEN DOING:

I wrote about late eighties/nineties Auckland hip-hop legend Jeremy Toomata for Audio Culture - The Noisy Library of New Zealand Music. Over four acts, Jeremy went from a pop-rap sensation to the heart of the underground, before experiencing a profound personal transformation in the 2000s. Read more here.

I recorded a mix of global New Jack Swing deep cuts for Melbourne’s Skylab Radio. They aired it last week, but you can listen to an archive stream here. Countries represented include Aotearoa, Australia, Japan, South Korea, France and Spain.

The Japanese classical guitar virtuoso Ayane Shino has recorded an EP (maybe it’s an album?) of covers of songs from Susumu Yokota’s lauded Sakura album. I interviewed her about it all for Test Pressing. Thanks to Ken Hidaka for assistance with interview translation.

The New Zealand news website Stuff asked me about a few of my favourite things. These sorts of questions are always impossible for me, but I gave it a go. You can read more here.

It’s not live now, but later today, Audio Culture is running my profile of Emcee Lucia, the first woman to ever release a full-length hip-hop album in New Zealand. It’s a cool story.

BITS + PIECES:

The legendary American composer Alvin “I Am Sitting In A Room” Lucier died this week at age 90. Here’s a feature the great Geeta Dayal wrote about him awhile back for 4Columns.

Shy Thompson’s remarkable Pitchfork review of JJJJJerome Ellis’s equally remarkable The Clearing album is well worth reading. Of course, the album is well worth listening to as well, but I really think you’ll get more out of it if you pair the two.

Debit has a remarkable new album coming out through Manchester’s Modern Love label next year. Nyshka Chandran has more details over at Resident Advisor here.

If you enjoy the music of the Japanese ambient duo Inoyamaland, you’re going to want to head over to Ban Ban Ton Ton. Dr. Rob has interviewed them. It’s just grand.

FIN.