Selected Works Most-Read Stories of 2025
Here's the ten most well read pieces I published here last year.
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.
In 1997, the cult Ōtepoti/Dunedin trio High Dependency Unit (HDU) was throwing everything they had at the dream of making it as a band. They weren’t earning a lot, but the rent was cheap, the cost of living hadn’t shot through the roof, and there was electricity rippling through the air. That year, Neil Phillips (bass, guitar), Tristan Dingemans (guitar, vocals), and Dino Karlis (drums, percussion, synth, and samples) headed into Tailgater Studios with the engineer and producer Dale Cotton, assisted by Nick Abbott, to record one of the masterpieces in their hefty catalogue, the Higher EP.
Mixmag ANZ: Honouring Volition Records: Australia's club culture catalyst
In January 1993, a sixteen-year-old drummer named Kim Moyes headed to the Sydney Showgrounds to attend the second edition of the legendary Big Day Out music festival. Having spent the summer immersing himself in the sounds of early ‘90s alternative and indie rock at a youth music camp, he was pumped to see Iggy Pop, Sonic Youth, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, and The Clouds. However, his new friends had a different idea. Instead, they took him to see two era-defining Australian electronica acts perform, Severed Heads and Itch-E and Scratch-E. By the end of the festival, he was changed forever.
Sunday Reissue: The legend of Steve Hiett
“It’s the summer album, the summer soundtrack!” enthuses English art director Simon Kentish, speaking from his adopted home on the picturesque Amalfi Coast in the south of Italy. “On those hot days when you just want to be in the house and cook for the family, on goes Steve’s album. My original has flour in the grooves from making ravioli, cooking and listening to vinyl.” He’s talking about Down On The Road By The Beach, the desert island disc his friend, collaborator and fellow countryman Steve Hiett, the late great fashion photographer, graphic designer and guitarist, recorded between Paris, Tokyo and New York for a Japan-only release in 1983.
Mixmag ANZ: The quiet legend of Micronism
When Denver McCarthy, one of Aotearoa’s most respected electronic musicians, released his debut album Morningstar (1994) as Mechanism, he was already operating on a higher frequency. That year, in a testament to the industrial techno he was producing, Mechanism’s Forever I Fly South EP surfaced internationally through IST Records (US). Near the end of the second half of the ‘90s, McCarthy’s sophomore album, Inside A Quiet Mind (1998), arrived under a new alias, Micronism. Across its eleven tracks, he swapped his brutalist beatscapes for leafy biophilic architecture and sweeping synthesised vistas, reimagining his music as a heady convergence of ambient dub techno and ecotechnological electro.
Mu was a beacon. He was like a lighthouse, and his legacy always will be. For a long time, he was Wellington’s lighthouse, shining his light on good tunes, good laughs, and good times. People knew him from record stores, bars, gigs, studio sessions, Radio Active, social sports games, or even just a wave and a nod on Cuba Street or out Lyall Bay way. The Fonky Monks, Roots Foundation, Crackhead Experience, Bongmaster, Fat Freddy’s Drop, Joe Dukie and DJ Fitchie, Friday nights at The Matterhorn with Mu and Vee, the list goes on. Collaborator to many, remixer to Trinity Roots, Ebb, Che Fu, Salmonella Dub. Again, the list goes on.
Ten 80s Electro/Dance Obscurities from New Zealand
Here’s a list of ten 80s electro/dance obscurities from New Zealand. Most of these songs are available on YouTube. Some of them are available on streaming services or Bandcamp. Some are locked away in other places. This list is by no means definitive; it’s really just what I was able to dig up while I had some free time this morning. If you want a window into what was going on down here during the Decade of Decadence, it’s as good a place to start as any. Big hair and bigger beats ahoy.
Susumu Yokota - Skintone Edition Volume 1
In 2015, the Japanese composer, producer, and DJ Susumu Yokota passed from this world to the next. When he died on March 27, 2015, at the age of fifty-four, Yokota left behind an impressive legacy of albums, EPs, singles, and remixes released under his birth name and eleven aliases: 246, Anima Mundi, Ebi, Frankfurt-Tokyo-Connection, Prism, Ringo, Stevia, Tenshin, Tokyo Cult House, Y, and Yin & Yang. Beginning with acid house in the early 1990s, Yokota spent the next twenty years exploring the possibilities of trance, deep house, Detroit-influenced techno, breakbeat, drum & bass, ambient, and beyond. In the process, he cultivated an oeuvre that runs as wide and deep as central Tokyo’s storied Sumida River.
In March 2025, the homies at Mouthfull Radio (Est. 2017), an independent non-profit online radio station broadcasting from Aotearoa and beyond, were kind enough to host my latest DJ mix, Beautiful. As I noted above, Beautiful is a mix of '90s/2000s house, garage/2-step and broken beat from Aotearoa N,ew Zealand. You can listen to it below via Soundcloud, r on Mixcloud here.
Mixmag AUS/NZ: Exploring the sounds of ‘90s and early 2000s techno in Aotearoa
Growing up in Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington—the capital city of Aotearoa/New Zealand—my first exposure to techno came in the late ‘90s through a network of record shops, cafes, clothing stores, and all-ages warehouse parties. On inner-city dance floors, the upfront sounds of Detroit and Berlin often shared space with Chicago house, UK jungle/drum and bass, trance, and other adjacent dance music genres. Thinking back, I recall overhearing conversations in 24-hour cafes about UFOs and hacking.
In February 2025, news broke about the passing of the late great Māori singer, composer and performer Toni Huata (Ngāti Kahungunu and Rongowhakaata iwi). A tireless advocate for Māori music and te reo Māori, Huata spent the majority of her recording career in the 2000s and 2010s, releasing music in her mother tongue in a variety of styles. She was also the Kaihautū Puoro Māori - director of Māori music at the SOUNZ Centre for NZ Music.
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