Friday Flow
Resident Advisor, Bandcamp, it does not stop.
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:
I wrote about the ornate and beautifully arranged techno and breakbeat sounds of the late great Japanese composer, producer and DJ Susumu Yokota’s Baroque (2004) album for Resident Advisor. You can read the full review here.
Big love to Bandcamp for letting me write a feature about ten New Zealand albums from the last five years that cross jazz with hip-hop, electronica and experimental music. The cool thing about this is I was also able to include a mini history lesson on the development of the jazz-hip-hop-electronica sound and scene in New Zealand. You can read the full feature here.
Rest in peace to Jay Monds, aka Bulletproof, a genuine New Zealand jungle/drum & bass pioneer. My Audio Culture profile of Jay is live here.
On Saturday, the 22nd of October, I’m hosting The Late Late Breakfast Show from 1-4 PM NZT on Radio Active 88.6 FM in Wellington, New Zealand. Expect three hours of street soul and swingbeat from the UK, Europe and New Zealand. Stream it on the day here.
WHAT I’VE BEEN READING:
When African Country Artists Shaped American Sounds: In the Global North we’re gradually becoming more aware of the vastness and depth of African country music. This Bandcamp Daily guide from 2019 deftly sketched out the long history of this musical link, with its many unexpected twists and regional variations. Recent compilations such as Bulawayo Blue Yodel, a collection of 1950s country from mostly Southern Africa, have given us a window into its earliest period. And a recent viral Twitter thread seemed to push this hidden strand of musical history into something like mainstream conversation. Jamal Khadar for Bandcamp Daily.
Sexy But Terrifying: Sam Quealy's X-Rated Techno-Pop Will Fuck With Your Head: Sam Quealy's unhinged tracks and live performances are sending dancefloors into delirium. She speaks about creativity between the lines. Thomas Hobbs for Mixmag.
Kojey Radical's ego death: Through introspection and a total embrace of vulnerability, the British-Ghanaian rapper has stepped up to become one of music’s most provocative storytellers. Nicolas-Tyrell Scott for GQ UK.
Selections: Lucrecia Dalt: In this series, Selections, we invite DJs, producers and label heads to dig into their digital crates and share the contents of their collections. This week, Lucrecia Dalt spotlights ‘70s salsa, early 20th century Armenian folk music, abstract dembow, pioneering electronic minimalism and more. Eoin Murry for DJ Mag.
Mixing NYC's Underground With Scott "Scotty Hard" Harding: Scott Harding—aka Scotty Hard—is a veteran producer and engineer who has spent over 30 years at the cutting edge of New York underground music. Born in Vancouver, Harding was drawn to New York in the late '80s, entranced by the potent mixture of punk, hip hop and free jazz that permeated the city at the time. John Morrison for Reverb.
WHAT I’VE BEEN LISTENING TO:
Syrian Cassette Archives (SCA) is an initiative to preserve, share and research sounds and stories from Syria’s cassette era (1970s-2000s). At the heart of the initial collection are hundreds of cassette tapes acquired by audio producer and archivist Mark Gergis during multiple stays in Syria between 1997 and 2010. The tapes weren’t originally collected with intentions of developing a public archive or forming a comprehensive overview of Syrian music. Instead, they reflect a period of personal research and curiosity, aided by connections made with local music shops, producers and musicians in Syria during the time.
To celebrate this, they’ve released Syrian Cassette Archives Mixtape vol. 1, a companion cassette that celebrates the archives. All proceeds will go towards supporting the project.
Lucrecia Dalt is back. This time around, she’s exploring the echoes of growing up in Colombia on her new album ¡Ay!. Tropical music by way of experimental music, by way of sci-fi meditations. ¡Ay!’s the kind of album that can gently turn the hands of time backwards or spin them forwards into the far future. Here’s a great review of it via the excellent Isabelia Herrera.
Originally released in 1992, Americana is a retrospective collection of singles and album cuts from the British duo A.R. Kane’s first two records, all drizzled in a smattering of b-sides. For fans of dream pop and shoegaze, they’ve long been an essential act. In fact, they coined the term dream pop. Boomkat has described their sound as “urbane psychedelia that smudged and swooned in the gaps between indie shoegaze jangle, free jazz and acid house with their sampledelic cut-up tekkerz,” and if that isn’t a sales pitch, I don’t know what is. You can order the vinyl edition from them over here.
\NOTES FROM TOM LUDVIGSON:
Tom Ludvigson is a veteran New Zealand musician who comes from a background that takes in blues, jazz, funk and experimental music. He has performed/recorded with Trip to the Moon with Trevor Reekie, the popular Auckland jazz combo Bluespeak, the Inner City Jazz Workshop, the Jack Morris Big Band, Big Sideways, Low Profile/Elephunk, Rick Bryant's original Jive Bombers, electro-funk band Snap with Graeme Gash, electronic multi-media ensemble Nexus, Alloy (electronic dance) and Bongo Nation.
While I was putting together my New Zealand jazz music article for Bandcamp, I reached out to Tom for some context and info. Although I wasn’t able to use all of it in the feature, I’ve decided to share it here. Some of you might find this all interesting. All good if not.
I embraced synthesizers in the late seventies, and I have stayed with the technology as it developed ever since. That meant that I was frequently invited to add an electronic dimension to other people’s projects apart from my own collaborations.
In the early eighties, we had two years of OFF THE DEEP END improvised music festivals in Wellington (inspired by the Primitive Art Group and sponsored by NZ Rail with free tickets for performers attending). They brought improvising musicians (including synthesists) from all over the country to attend and contribute improvised musical performances. For two years running, this created a wonderful opportunity to network and form bonds with like-minded musicians across Aotearoa, which persisted for years, inspiring multiple collaborations producing improvised /unconventional music.
In the early to mid-eighties, I also played the piano (Yamaha electric grand) and synthesizers in Rick Bryant’s original Jive Bombers, touring and recording.
Bluespeak had a residency at Cause Celebre and worked other gigs several nights a week. Bluespeak played fifties RnB with a drinking focus (!) plus some funk jazz, with Greg Johnson out front singing and playing the trumpet. The Inner City Jazz Workshop with four horns was more experimental (partly because I composed the entire repertoire with an aim to break the mould), but we only had performances in front of audiences if we organised them ourselves…
Freebass, led by the Harrop brothers, was basically modal /free jazz to a half-time /hip-hop beat. In the nineties, the places to play even “café jazz” dried-up, as cafés and bars shifted from hiring (small) combos to hiring only (single) DJs. The ICJW shrunk to a quartet with a strong electronic bent – playing jazz on synths to sampled loops with only one horn up front, doing only a few council gigs in parks.
Two decades of CD releases of electronica by Trip to the Moon took me the late nineties into the new century, with Trevor Reekie and guests (esp. Greg Johnson, Nigel Gavin, and the late jazz /woodwind virtuoso Jim Langabeer, but also many others). This was an improvised-overdubs-in-the-studio studio project, with strong jazz contributions from our collaborators. Trip always fell outside the contemporary genre conventions (a.k.a. “styles”) and hence sitting ducks for the label “crossover”.
Our most recent release (“Roto”) was just Trevor Reekie and myself improvising electroacoustic /ambient music live in the studio (no overdubs).
Two releases on Gianmarco Liguori’s Sarang Bang Records. When Murray McNabb passed away, I took his place in Salon Kingsadore - a band dedicated to free improvisation using electronic and acoustic instruments. We released an album (vinyl…) called ‘Spontaneous Compositions” based largely on recordings of live performances.
Then another album of just Marco Liguori and myself doing (improvised) electronica. No overdubs.
Auckland is a small city, and there was much ‘crossover’ among musicians working in different contexts. In my experience, Auckland jazz musicians did form ensembles to suit the occasion /gig. It was not bands getting gigs, it was gigs getting bands.
This was the scene in Auckland, so working on a multitude of different projects with different people became the norm, and this, in turn, made for a fertile garden where hybrid styles and musical experiments could take root and flourish. It was the same group of people in different combinations playing ever new styles for a living as part of meeting employer /publican expectations and then perpetrating their own hybrids in their own time from the shared experience.
I think an important factor was access to audiences, or put differently, places to play. There were not that many. “Underground music” is just another word for music that can’t find a place to play (esp. if you expect to get paid). “VITAMIN S” was (and still is) the Auckland temple of free improvisation - by now, more than twenty years of weekly meetings in central Auckland, where two trios perform improvised sets, the performers drawn each week from a pool of project participants.
FIN.