My weekly work, reading and listening recap.
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 READING:
Police vs promoters: Inside a growing summer festival ‘crisis’: NZ police blame alcohol abuse and violence on a widespread crackdown on outdoor events. But promoters call that “misinformation” and say unfair opposition puts their events at risk. For RNZ, Chris Schulz.
The real story behind Christchurch’s ‘brutalist’ Timezone: It’s become of one of Christchurch’s most famous landmarks online, but why? Alex Casey steps through the portal of the brutalist Timezone. For The Spinoff.
Book of the Week: The mermaid who stopped wearing lipstick: An epic review of a memoir so good that it really, absolutely ought to appear on tomorrow’s Ockham awards longlist for best nonfiction. For Newsroom, Anna Rankin.
COPYWRITING:
As I’m sure plenty of you have noticed, I’ve been doing a lot of copywriting for musicians and record labels over the last year. It’s something I’ve done on the side for over a decade, but as the media landscape continues to shift, it’s become an increasingly prominent part of my working week.
Broadly speaking, in the world of music, copywriting generally translates into putting together one-sheet biographies for artists, bands and producer-DJs, press releases for albums or tours, short pieces of text for social/online, and sometimes even liner notes for the vinyl editions of albums. Big thanks to Awesome Tapes From Africa, Sublime Records, Mokomokai, Revulva and Frederiksberg Records for getting me involved in their projects to that level.
In the past, I’ve also completed copywriting jobs for hospitality, film & television, and information technology businesses. Long story short, if you’re ever looking for some help with writing (paid), drop me a line and I’ll see if we can work something out.
Before we move on to the rest of the newsletter, here are a couple of recent copywriting jobs that went live last week.
Louisa Williamson – In Tune (feat. MĀ)
‘In Tune’ is the first single from the Wellington saxophonist, composer and band leader Louisa Williamson’s forthcoming second album, Groundwork. Beginning with a flurry of woodwinds, piano and explosive rhythms, ‘In Tune’ unfolds into a regal backdrop for songwriter and vocalist MĀ to combine neo-soul tones with hip-hop cadences while singing in a languid, unhurried manner about coexistence, connection, and the intricacies that lie between.
D.D. Mirage – Exotic Illusions
After releasing their well-received 7” and 12” singles ‘Night Time’ and ‘Feel It / So Hot’, Isle of Jura is pleased to present Exotic Illusions, the debut album from D.D. Mirage, the Sydney-based duo of Josh Dives and Disky Dee.
Having first played music together during the mid-2010s in the indie-psyche and punky-shoegaze bands King Colour and SCK CHX, the two Australian musicians/DJs came up in the warehouse party scene that fermented in the wake of the Sydney lockout laws. While organising mixed-media events under the Yeah Nah Yeah brand, they discovered the joys of disco, dance-punk and the Balearic beat through Pender St Steppers’ DJ mixes and reissue releases and found themselves changing direction in response.
Written and recorded with a range of vintage keyboards and preamps, instruments and digital studio software, Exotic Illusions is a cosmopolitan love letter to the immaculate blend of Italo disco, Neopolitan funk, Nigerian boogie, cosmic house, synth-pop, UK street soul and lovers rock sounds that have inspired D.D. Mirage since they began this iteration of their ever-evolving musical relationship.
For more details, head over to D.D. Mirage’s Bandcamp page here.
WHAT I’VE BEEN LISTENING TO:
In 2014, I had the opportunity to visit Tokyo for the first time to attend the Red Bull Music Academy as media. On that trip, I was lucky enough to attend a lecture from Yellow Magic Orchestra’s fearless leader, Haruomi-Hosono. Not long afterwards, I fell in love with the sounds that simmered up in Japan during the ‘70s and ‘80s, started collecting the records, and got really focused on DJing them to audiences around New Zealand.
In recent years, Wewantsounds and DJ Notoya have knocked out a killer set of compilation albums that explore the sounds of ‘70s/’80s funk, boogie and city pop, Tokyo Glow, Funk Tide, and now Tokyo Bliss. Focused on 1974-88, Tokyo Bliss features some absolutely bubbling sunset/sunrise numbers from the likes of Keiko Toda, Koji Kobayashi, Yuko Imai, Kumiko Sawada and more. Expect sounds that you know, as reflected through a lens you might not be familiar with. There’s a lot of fantasy and freedom spilling out over here.
You are Marshall Allen, an American free jazz and avant-garde jazz woodwind player and the leader of the late Sun Ra’s Arkestra. Aged 100, you decide to record your first solo album under your own name. A year later, New Dawn is available for purchase in vinyl, CD and digital formats, with Neneh Cherry as a guest vocalist on the title track.
“The one thing that I’m really looking forward to, and I think this is the best thing ever, is the fact that Marshall Allen is about to release, at the age of 100, his debut album under his own name. There is no greater feat of durability, working at your craft, and putting your ego to the back of the room while you’re supporting other artists and performers.” – Gilles Peterson
Three years on, I still think Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals’s 2022 album, King Cobra, is one of the best modern experimental/abstract hip-hop albums in the canon.
There are a couple of things going on with this Baltimore duo. First off, Infinity Knives is a staggeringly skilled beatmaker, composer and producer. Knives can make a knocking, jacked-up beat BEAT while also being able to craft beautifully cinematic interludes, intros, outros, etc. I can see film scores in the future, maybe.
That all said, what really makes their chemistry for me is how Ennal uses Knives instrumentals as a backdrop for his vividly realised and stylishly-rapped zero-fux-given song storylines. Every track could be a short film or an episode in an anthology television show that looks closely at not just the dark heart of the USA but the dark heart of the world writ large. With King Cobra, these guys combined the great American literary and cinema traditions with the best of what hip-hop can offer on the edges. It’s a new American gothic that’s also an old American gothic, so to speak.
Anyway, the fellas have a new album coming out in April called A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears. The sample track/lead single, “Sometimes, Papi Chulo” ft. Gabriela Bibiana is anywhere near what I expected, which is exciting because it made me realise I genuinely have no idea where these two idiosyncratic geniuses are going to take things next.
Park Jiha is a Korean composer/multi-instrumentalist who has spent the last eighteen years building herself a reputation (in the duo 숨[suːm] and solo) as a master of modern classical and ambient music rooted in traditional Korean instruments and performance. Four solo albums in the bells are ringing and All Living Things, Jiha’s celebration of the essence and texture of the natural, living world may very well be the masterwork.
Employing an array of Korean instruments – piri, yanggeum and the saenghwang – alongside flute, glockenspiel, bells, her flexible voice and, most crucially, electronics, Jiha crafts a cycle of quiet miracles adding up until we arrive at the biggest miracle of all while meditating on the full spectrum of the natural lifecycle, birth to death and everything between considered over nine evocatively titled pieces. It’s staggeringly ambitious, and the ambition feels justified. I’ve seen people suggest All Living Things is Jiha’s Vulture Prince, and the analogy does hold water.
PSA:
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FIN.
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