Midweek Beats + Pieces vol.25

What I've been doing, reading and listening to lately.

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:

Four times a year, I write a new music column for Dazed Digital. As you can probably surmise from that, it essentially serves as a recap of some releases from the previous three months that deserve some extra love. The Q2 2022 edition of the column is live on the site now. Check it out here.

A few times a year, I record a guest mix for the Bethlehem/Ramallah-based Palestinian internet radio station, Radio AlHara. From 7-8 pm Eastern European Summer Time on Wednesday the 29th of June 2022, they’re broadcasting my latest presentation for them, Island In The Sun. Get more familiar with the station here.

Last night, the New York techno grunge duo Machine Girl played their first-ever New Zealand show at San Fran in Wellington. In five to ten years’ time, I think we’ll look back on it as a groundbreaking moment for New Zealand’s 2020s musical underground. They brought together an audience I know exists (yeah, I have Instagram), but have never really seen gathered like that before, and entertained them with a unifying wall of electronic noise, screamo and blast beats. Just being there felt special.

WHAT I’VE BEEN READING:

The Web3 Dream Of An Equitable Nightlife Industry: Imagine a party where lineups are crowdsourced. Amid concerns of corporations diluting the ethos of underground movements, Decentralized Autonomous Organisations aim to give artists and nightlife audiences control over their culture. But just how feasible is that? Nyshka Chandran reporting for RA. Click here.

The Rise of Dissociation Music: From indie rock to SoundCloud rap, artists are combating the hell of modern existence with blank detachment in their voices. Jayson Greene reporting for Pitchfork. Click here.

Get To Know Kirollus: Get acquainted with Kirollus, the Brighton-based DJ, Defected broadcaster and vinyl seller bringing his love for rare funk, boogie and soul to the masses. Ria Hylton for DJ Mag. Click here.

Return to Splendor: Maybe you’ve heard of Sam Gilliam. Maybe you’ve seen his work, but it’s been a while. Right now, the art world is rediscovering the painter for the first or second or maybe third time. Kriston Capps reporting for The Washington City Paper. Click here.

On Derrick May, Detroit techno and toxic male solidarity: Annabel Ross went to Detroit to attend the storied Movement festival. Several weeks later, things got well out of pocket on Instagram. Click here.

The Avant-Garde Musical Legacy of The Moomins: Created in the 1940s by Finnish illustrator Tove Jansson, The Moomins is an odd media franchise in that it lacks a definitive entry point. Though this pastoral world of bohemian forest trolls and eccentric critters debuted with Jansson’s original series of children’s novels, many fans discovered her work through later offshoots in other media formats. Jude Noel reporting for Bandcamp Daily. Click here.

WHAT I’VE BEEN LISTENING TO:

NTS, the London-based internet radio station turned global platform, returns to the record label game with Down & Out, a compilation of downcast private press folk recordings, mostly made in the UK and US between 1968-1980. Spare, haunting and highly affecting, the fourteen tracks Bruno Halper and Samuel Strang dug up are incredible. I could listen to Down & Out on repeat all day if I had to.

The Buenos Aires and Miami-raised, New York-based bassist, DJ, vocalist and producer Barbie Bertisch comes through with the debut album of a lifetime, Prelude. Over eleven tracks, Bertisch weaves together a vivid tapestry of minimal house, ambient, dream-pop, post-punk and beyond. Released through Love Injection Records, a further expansion of her Love Injection zine and party projects with her partner Paul Raffaele, Prelude is the sort of record that might just make you finally start chasing your long-held dreams. Remarkable.

Back in the mid-80s, a tight-knit collective of Australian musicians including Jon Anderson, Rainer Guth, Gary McFeat & Rod Owen regularly gathered in the cool evenings at a shared house in Brisbane. Working by lamp and candle, they spent their evenings using home recording gear to track a collection of ambient, minimal jazz and experimental pieces suited to film, television and advert soundtrack work. In 1987, they compiled the best of their pieces into a demo tape called Picture Music. Decades later, Melbourne’s Left Ear Records has reissued Picture Music in vinyl and digital formats. The cover art really says it all. Essential.

Woman like A.G emerges online from her secret lair in East London with her new GML EP for the South London record label AP Life. Essentially a riddim EP, GML features A.G’s vivid, future-proof ‘GML’ instrumental as well as vocal versions from Manga Saint Hilare, Taliwhoah and St.Plates. All the bases are covered with this one.

FIN.