Aotearoa

Track: Aotearoa/New Zealand artist Hemi Hemingway releases the thrilling, enigmatic track ‘(To Be) Without You’.
Under the moniker Hemi Hemingway, Aotearoan/New Zealand auteur Shaun Blackwell has released the exciting thrum of ‘(To Be) Without You’, a vibrant enigmatic track that is luminsicent as it is thrilling. With Hemingway’s deep sonorous vocals that shake the foundations and a motorik beat, the track is filled with a luscious instrumentation including soaring saxophones …

News: Fazerdaze is formally launching the album ‘Soft Power’ with an independently organised gig at the Powerhouse in Auckland.
Last year’s ‘Soft Power’ from Fazerdaze, released through Buttrfly/Virgin Music Group, was for me one of the albums of the year (see my review here). Fazerdaze spent a lot of the time since that release touring extensively across the US and Australia in support of Pond and Finneas and has only now had time to organise …

Album Review: Aotearoa/New Zealand’s Nik Brinkman envelopes us in a shimmering veil of dreamy pop in his sophomore album ‘World Within’.
There is a dreamy heartbreakingly beautiful shimmer to the new album from Aotearoa/New Zealand artist Nik Brinkman that glows like the stars over the expansive southern hemisphere skies. Brinkman last blew us away here at Backseat Mafia back in 2021 with his debut album ‘Secret Stairs’ (see my review here) and in the intervening time has …

Track: ‘Where Are You Now?’ – Aotearoan dream pop King, Nik Brinkman, dials up the shimmering jingle jangle sounds with new single.
Ahead of the release of his new album ‘World Within’, New Zealand dream pop artist Nik Brinkman has followed up his first single in a few years, ‘Long Way To Go’, with a second positively shimmering release, ‘Where Are You Now’. With languid laid back vocals channeling Jim Reid from The Jesus and Mary Chain, the …

Track: There’s ‘Nothing Like’ Reb Fountain as she releases another gorgeous track ahead of her new album ‘How Love Bends’
Reb Fountain is building up heady anticipation for her new album ‘How Love Bends’ with the release of another breathtaking track ‘Nothing Like’: an absolutely delicious, shimmering track punctuated by an air of melancholia and with ethereal strings wafting through the ether. There is a carefree romanticism in the track: Fountain’s vocals are like a …