Revisit our coverage of Ha The Unclear, Bunchy’s Big Score, Same Name Confusion, HOMESICKK?, Nat Hathaway, Christoph El Truento and Nicholas Joseph, then explore more new / recent Aotearoa highlights from Reb Fountain, Louis Baker, Eo, Summer Vee, The Datsuns, Bulletbelt, Echomatica, Conrad Wedde, Hob, Call Centre, and Mild Orange.
2020 Taite Music Prize winner Reb Fountain is embarking on an extensive nationwide tour of Aotearoa New Zealand with her enhanced band — Dianne Swann, James Duncan, Dave Khan and Earl Robertson — starting this Thursday, spreading word of her politically engaged new album Water for Gasoline. Finding inspiration in her own back yard, Fountain shared an intimate new camcorder clip for album standout ‘Swarm’, directed by daughter and regular creative collaborator Lola Fountain-Best, with appearances from Taco Fuente the cat and Huey Lewis the dog.
Launching his third studio album Trouble on 9th October then heading out on tour the following week, Aotearoa soul star Louis Baker honours the legacy of a lost local giant with his powerful new single ‘Mighty Tree’ — recorded with Cory Champion, Tristan Carter, Leo Coghini and Riki Gooch. “I wrote pages and pages of lyrics. In the end, I kept only the lines that felt like they mattered most. Words fail when trying to sum up a loss like this in a song.”
Key contributor to the late ’10s explosion of artistic activity known as The Grow Room, Eo aka Ethan Oliver King reemerges with a second offical release for Mānuka Records. The Tāmaki Makaurau wordsmith and visual artist is keeping fine company on his upcoming Battery Pack EP, a collaboration with producers Surly and Hiki, out in full on 15th October. Eo poetically critiques the non-stop madness of our contemporary era, as Hiki dispenses dubby space echoes on the jazz-funk title track. “They freed the body but the mind stay caught.”
Captivating listeners worldwide with the mellifluous jazz-funk of Mānuka Records’ first release ‘Key To All Your Love / Judas’, Summer Vee reunites with producer Kenny Sterling on new single ‘Let Go (Tuku)’. Sung in te eo Māori and English, the soul ballad expresses an open-hearted spirit, with instrumental assistance from Sterling, Tom Broome, Elijah Wilson and Jong-Yun JY Lee. “The song is about forgiveness. When you’re holding onto things and closed off, you can’t make room for something new. You have to make space and appreciate the good in your life.”
Once known to local gig-goers as ‘Trinket’, Aotearoa rock gods The Datsuns‘ new album Moonstruck Man will be out on 13th November via Hellsquad Records, foreshadowed with the crunchy heavy psych riffage of single number two ‘Run From The Sun’. They’re currently blasting amps in Europe, where frontman Dolf has been doing double duty as bassist for fellow rock veterans The Hellacopters.
Icons of Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington’s extreme metal community, “the brotherhood of steel is once agin complete” on Bulletbelt‘s behemoth new single ‘Deathgasm 2’. Premiered by international tastemakers Decibel Magazine, ‘Deathgasm 2’ is both the title track to director Jason Howden’s imminent horror-comedy Deathgasm 2: Goremageddon and the lead single from Bulletbelt’s next album Midnight Fistfight, out this summer on 12 February. Gripping listeners by the throat and pummelling them relentlessly for nearly four minutes of hellish riffs and soaring yowls, experience the insanity of director Alex Hargreaves‘ accompanying video.
Fast SRN faves with an entrancing run of releases in 2025, Echomatica‘s new anthem ‘Atomic Girl’ feels like they’ve levelled up to rocking stadiums (complimentary). An instantly catchy “dreamwave” intersection of dream-pop, reverberating synth sparkles and alt-rock heft, ‘Atomic Girl’ launched with pitch perfect space-age visuals, directed / edited by Ellen Glenn. You can catch them playing with Gareth Thomas at Big Fan in Morningside on 20th November, get tickets HERE. Vocalist Charlie MacLean shared: “The nostalgic vibes of the song are more about the idea that the future was going to be better than the present. That’s a pretty powerful idea to lose, and one young people today are experiencing more than ever.”
Whispered about in hushed tones as the MVP of The Phoenix Foundation, Conrad Wedde (also of Moniker) very casually unveiled his first official new solo album since 2014’s Space World. Sporting nine tracks “mostly recorded outside in Kenepuru Sound, NZ”, Green Trees transports listeners far from urbane daily grizzles to an instrumental realm populated with lush flora, chattering fauna and contemplative, new age adjacent guitar / synth voyaging splendour.
While info on Original Conjuring Hob is currently rather (deliberately?) scant, all indications point towards Hob being the project of a prominent member of Ōtautahi’s Wurld Series. Like a solo balladic flip-side to the aforementioned combo’s straight up excellent 2023 album The Giant’s Lawn, Original Conjuring Hob presents four strangely atemporal, almost folkloric guitar / synth tunes. To which we can only respond: “Well met and please some more, my good sir.”
Revisiting their 2024 EP via Strange Behaviour, Te Whanganuia-a-Tara electronic dance collective Call Centre‘s No Remixes Left On Premises collection presents five synapses-reconfiguring reworks by hominid, Jerry Watts, Current Bias, Junus Orca and Integument. If you move fast you can grip the limited cassette edition from the rather stylish Slug Pop Up, irl in the capital until 4th October. ” We think these remakes align ideologically with the original experiments while offering bold new interpretations for left-leaning clubs and liminal spaces.”
Hailing from Ōtepoti Dunedin and these days roaming the globe, Mild Orange unveiled a new 35 minute Baga Toirog Live Session filmed in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia — featuring the Aotearoa dream-rock five-piece joined by Batbayar Urtbayar on horse fiddle (morin khuur) and guttural throat singing.
