Midweek Beats + Pieces Vol. 49

Simon Kong, Crystal Chen, Jess Sah Bi & Peter One, etc

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’S BEEN HAPPENING:

In 2018, I worked closely with the Awesome Tapes From Africa label to arrange the reissue of the West African country/folk classic, Our Garden Needs Its Flowers. This week, when I was watching the seventh episode of Donald Glover’s new Amazon series, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, I was pleased to see Sah Bi & One’s song ‘Minmanle?’ made it into the final cut of the soundtrack. It’s always exciting when these things keep on having life breathed into them. You can check out Our Garden Needs Its Flowers below.

On Friday, I’ll be playing a two-hour DJ set on RDU 98.5 FM in Christchurch between 12-2 pm. I’m thinking City Pop meets the music that influenced City Pop. You’ll be able to listen live here. I wouldn’t expect an archival recording.

If there's been a way to build it

there'll be a way to destroy it

Things are not all that out of control.

Yes, I’ve been listening to Stereolab again lately.

Last week, I DJed the opening and interlude music at the Mick Harvey & Amanda Acevedo concert in Wellington at Meow. It was a pretty special evening, and you can see a photo from their show at the top of this newsletter. Actually, you’ve already seen it.

Nick Sylvester (formerly of Godmode, now of Smartdumb, is writing very well about a range of interesting topics through his new substack newsletter. This week (last week?), he wrote In Praise of Hi Hat Gods (Kinda). Get familiar over here.

AUDIO CULTURE: SIMON KONG

In 1991, 15-year-old Simon Kong made a habit of sneaking into Christchurch nightclubs. “Back then, the DJs were really technically good, and they would play across the board,” he says. “Knowing what I know now, what you heard in the club was incredible. I would literally dance all night.”

It was an era when dance music was infiltrating the international pop mainstream. Closer to home, a warehouse rave scene was emerging around New Zealand. Long obsessed with hi-fi gear, radio and records, Simon was fast becoming the music guy at parties. He even hosted a rudimentary dance party at a community hall. “I was really innocent. I thought everyone would dance. Everyone turned up drunk and ended up throwing up in the bushes.”

Revisit my 2015 profile of the New Zealand techno/house DJ and general electronic music advocate Simon Kong over on Audio Culture here.

WHAT I’VE BEEN READING:

Caldwell Finds Bright Places Out of Spotlight - While his popularity is greater overseas, the singer-songwriter, who performs in Anaheim, has plenty to keep him busy--including twins: Recently, I’ve been listening to a lot of Bobby Caldwell again and looking into his life & times. It’s worth noting he was very popular in Japan, which makes sense when you’ve spent a lot of time digging into the city pop sound as I have because, honestly, you can hear this influence all over those early 1980s records. Anywhere, here’s an interesting interview with him that Don Heckman conducted for the LA Times in 1992. Read here.

The ‘Spontaneous Power’ of Damo Suzuki: Colleagues remember the uniquely charismatic Can frontman, who has died at age 74. Honestly, how many bands (if any) had a better decade-long run than Can? For Rolling Stone, Joshua Minsoo Kim. Read here.

My Travels Around The World As A Musician With The Māori Hi-Liners Showband: I am the son of Te Rito Haeata Kuku and Te Waiorirangi Te Whaiti and was given the name Keremeneta. Up until the age of six years, my family lived on the marae called the Hiona Pa along with Uncle Jack and Aunty Maggie, Uncle Boonie, Aunty Snowy, Uncle Tom and Aunty Daisy, Uncle Mita, Aunty Kuini and all their whānau. For Audioculture, Kelly Haetea on the adventure of a lifetime. Read here.

CRYSTAL CHEN & KENNY STERLING:

A couple of weeks ago, I helped the Tamaki Mākaurau-based Chinese-New Zealand singer, musician, and visual artist Crystal Chen put together the media materials for her new single ‘Love Letter’ with producer Kenny Sterling, which is out now. You can listen on streaming or purchase a digital version via Bandcamp below. Expect a music video in March.

Even when they’re brief and fleeting, real love affairs often endure through rose-tinted memories and artefacts of fading ephemera: candid Polaroid photos, elegantly penned handwritten letters, a scent lingering on an item of clothing. On ‘Love Letter,’ the Tamaki Mākaurau-based Chinese-New Zealand singer, musician, and visual artist Crystal Chen passionately implores a lover to write to her. In the process, she evokes a silky smooth atmosphere as vivid and warmly coloured as her analog 35mm and medium format film photography.

Co-written, played, recorded, and produced by Kenny Sterling (Mānuka Recordings), ‘Love Letter’ is an intoxicating melange of jazz, post-disco, R&B, and modern soul that draws emotional and stylistic influences from 80s British sophisti-pop, New York’s late 90s/early 2000s Soulquarian movement and the romantic melodies and drifting dreamscapes of the eternal queen of Asian Pop, the late great Teresa Teng. Featuring Julien Dyne on Congas and Chris Manning on Trumpet, ‘Love Letter’ points towards an accompanying Shanghai-inspired music video and several forthcoming projects, including an album, EP, and a live recording session.

WHAT I’VE BEEN LISTENING TO:

Not sure how I missed this incredible collection of what the legend Ron Trent calls “Condo Music.” Actually, I’m slightly misrepresenting reality; that’s what one of his ex-girlfriends calls it. Just look at the collaborators list! It’s bonkers. The craziest thing, though, is how everyone just gets on contributing to the overall vibe. What Do The Stars Say To You is one of those really beautiful moments where everyone actually comes together to make something that is so much bigger than the sum of it’s individual parts.

The great Helado Negro returns with another set of infinitely replayable Songs (with a capital S) for the 4AD label. When he really gets in his music-making bag, he has a sensibility that feels like the answer to a question not enough people are asking. What would happen if we took 2000s US indie-rock, analogue synthesiser ambient music, classic art-pop, central/south American rhythms, threw them all together, and then lovingly rearranged all the juicy bits and pieces into a series of dreamscapes optimised for deep listening. The more time you spend with these songs, the more you’ll get out of them. It seems like a simple concept, but it doesn’t always play out like that.

INCOMING:

Here are a few interesting records that are coming out over the next few months. The text included is abstractions from their sales notes.

The follow-up compilation to Time Capsule’s Nippon Acid Folk, Nippon Psychedelic Soul takes myriad pathways into the tripped-out undergrowth of 1970s Japan. Finding their feet at home and looking for inspiration abroad, the musicians featured here were engaged in the communal soul-searching that followed the breakdown of the 1960s protest movements. Some made it big, others drifted into oblivion. The music they left behind shimmers with intensity.

In blurring the observational with the introspective, Affection’s avant-pop touch abandons categorisation. The album’s lyrics are as unguarded and devotional as they are inquisitive of alternative ways of being, signing off with ‘being still is hard to do’. Bullion has mastered his sound, but life - in its expectations, contradictions, impulses and desires - remains impossible to control. Affection is an unassumingly powerful pursuit of a more compassionate form of confidence, in which Bullion cements his place in the present-day by entirely surrendering to the future.

Maurice Fulton's outrageous remix of "The Fall" by Rhye has been cherished as a stone-cold masterpiece for the past decade. Out of print almost immediately, its legend has only grown and for too long it's been impossible to find a copy without parting with considerable cash. pre-order via Be With Records here.

On-Ly is the solo and collaborative moniker of pianist and producer Joshua Smeltink. Spanning genres, On-Ly’s house and hip-hop history is ever-present and imbued with the hard-hitting post-bop jazz-rock of the 60’s / 70’s, harking back to bands such as Weather Report and Miles Davis Group (70’s).

FIN.