New Zealand Music Month/Bandcamp Friday

Kédu Carlö, Kraus, Lontalius, Mara TK, etc

In just under nine hours (probably more like eight by the time I send this out), we’ll be entering the May 2021 edition of Bandcamp Friday. For those unfamiliar, the deal is simple, on the first Friday of every month since March 2020, they've waived their revenue share to help support the many artists who have seen their livelihoods disrupted by the pandemic. This month’s Bandcamp Friday falls within a thing called New Zealand Music Month, which I talked about it a little bit in my last mail out. So, in light of this convergence, most of this issue will be devoted to some recent releases (like released today recent) from Aotearoa New Zealand.

WHAT I’VE BEEN READING:

Dazed: Neon Genesis Evangelion at 25: an oral history of the legendary anime, by Günseli Yalcinkaya

Many anime series and films have interrogated the relationship between human and machine, but Neon Genesis Evangelion was perhaps the first to imagine the human as machine. Ever since the series first aired in 1995, Hideaki Anno’s groundbreaking anime went beyond the immediate scope of the mecha genre, characterised by war, teen pilots, shadowy organisations, high tech gadgetry, and rock-’em-sock-’em robots. The voice of Rei Ayanami and singer Yoko Takahashi reflect on joining the franchise, its legacy, and working with creator Hideaki Anno. (read here)

The Guardian: ‘We are witnessing a crime against humanity’: Arundhati Roy on India’s Covid catastrophe

Things will settle down eventually. Of course, they will. But we don’t know who among us will survive to see that day. The rich will breathe easier. The poor will not. For now, among the sick and dying, there is a vestige of democracy. The rich have been felled, too. Hospitals are begging for oxygen. Some have started bring-your-own-oxygen schemes. The oxygen crisis has led to intense, unseemly battles between states, with political parties trying to deflect blame from themselves. (Read here)

Pitchfork: What Can Music Do During Climate Collapse?, by Jayson Greene

The bad news keeps getting worse, and it comes faster than anyone can assimilate: ice storms in Texas, thawing glaciers, vanishing species, ever-more-dangerous wildfires. Today, we watch the weather for portents, for signs of our own fate. The weather has never seemed more pressing, more Biblical; it has never held such threats or foretold such signs. Weather has made its way into all things—into literature, into politics, into every corner and fabric of our existence.

Everyone from pop stars to metal urchins to avant experimentalists are grappling with the grief and anger that comes with living on a planet careening toward environmental disaster. (Read here)

BANDCAMP FRIDAY | AOTEAROA NEW ZEALAND EDITION

Kédu Carlö, Let's Get To It

Auckland production/live performance and DJ duo Kédu Carlö (Jess and Carly) deliver on the promise of their early house and techno singles with their first EP, Let's Get To It. Beginning with the self-titled EP opener, they explore the more melodic and hypnotic shades of spoken word house, before descending into the basements of acid, soaring over the clouds with some lush synthscapes and going hyper-rhythmatic. Not quite something for everyone, but close enough.

Kraus, Interior Castle

Seven years on, longstanding Auckland idiosyncrat Kraus (a.k.a. Pat Kraus) has reissued his 2014 cult/pulp classic, Interior Castle, in cassette and digital formats. Luminous and labyrinthine, Interior Castle is exactly that, a vast fortified structure constructed out of guitar, synth, flute, drums and organ from Kraus, with some live drums from Maryann on the album’s final track ‘Flute’. Equal parts dungeon synth, mid-20th-century sci-fi b-movie soundtrack and dirgey psychedelic workout, it’s a fascinating place to spend some time.

Lontalius, Someone Will Be There For You

Inward looking, but ultimately open-hearted reflections and evocations from the Wellington singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Eddie Johnston aka Lontalius. Someone Will Be There For You is Johnston’s third album in five years and easily his most confident set of songs today. Set against elegant guitar figures, washed-out synthesisers and driving drums, or sometimes just a spare melody, Somebody Will Be There For You reveals new depths in Johnston’s ability to convert pain and heartache into a catharsis though song. Across it’s twelve songs, he shares coming of age stories, lamentations of romantic jealously, virtually photographic recollections of intimate moments and plenty more impressionistic memories.

Mara TK, Bad Meditation (Extra Soul Perception/Years Gone By)

Bad Meditation is the first proper solo album from the Māori-Scottish singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Mara TK, best known for his past work in the future soul trio Electric Wire Hustle. From the first guitar notes of the intro, the record unfolds as an exquisite, beautifully arranged suite of psychedelic soul music with a reverence for the past and a desire to push forward.

Because this is soul music, Bad Meditation begins with pain and one hell of an opening gambit of a first line, “My problems got their own problems”, on album opener ‘Highly Medicated’. That confession lays the foundations for a thirteen-song reflection on a lifetime of love, loss and eventual healing, all filtered through the lens of Mara’s indigenous experience. Complimenting this, Mara and an extensive cast of collaborators (befittingly given the number of projects he has contributed to over the last decade) take soul, jazz and folk-rooted frames and stretch them into driving, celestial shapes, all sequenced in a cinematic style.

From ‘Highly Medicated’ to album closer ‘Met At the River’ (Mara’s solo version), reflective observations in the mode of Marvin Gaye and Donny Hathaway are commonplace across Bad Meditation. Refreshingly though, they come wedded to pastoral psychedelic folk-rock in the style of Arthur Lee’s Love band, music box melodies and machine drums that recall the beats experimentation of The Soulquarians. There are even moments of orchestral lounge music that wouldn’t sound amiss on a record from the famed Rotorua crooner Deane Waretini.

‘Grew Up Inna Chaos’, a rumination on an unstable childhood, features guest vocals from Mara’s nephew 2MY. Meanwhile, ‘Every Hori Is A Star’ and ‘Met At The River’ see Mara sharing respective song space with fellow Māori singer-songwriter and guitarist Troy Kingi and the Kenyan R&B singer and songwriter Xenia Manasseh. Listen closer, and you’ll hear contributions from the jazz drummer/techno producer Cory Champion, Wellington singer-songwriter Louis Baker, bassists Johnny Lawrence and Crete Haami, multi-instrumentalist and producer Riki Gooch, the dearly departed guitar hero Aaron Tokona, and Mara’s father, Billy TK Snr.

For Mara, the son of Aotearoa New Zealand’s greatest psychedelic rock guitarist, and a former hip-hop battle DJ who opened for 50 Cent and G-Unit before reinventing himself as a singer-songwriter, Bad Meditation is a watershed work. As the album unfolds in a lush and expansive style, the psychedelic soul sound he has spent the last decade chasing unfurls in a rich, panoramic style. Excitingly though, for as much as it gives away, every revelation comes partnered with a hint at further depths beneath the surface. Bad Meditation is something to celebrate, but the story presented here is far from over.

THE ARTS FOUNDATION 2021 SPRINGBOARD AWARD

I just want to send some aroha (love) to Larsen Winiata Tito-Taylor aka WhyFi of Noa Records, who, alongside six other artists from Aotearoa New Zealand, has just received a 2021 Springboard Award from The Arts Foundation. Over the course of the next year, Larsen will be mentored by Riki Gooch. Congrats Larsen, congrats Riki! (Read here)

FIN.