Release Roundup: Auto Angel, Nice Girl, Karl Sölve Steven, Young Gho$t, Anna Coddington + More

It's been a big week in Aotearoa music, with the absolute highlight being Vera Ellen winning the 2024 Taite Music Prize for her latest album Ideal Home Noise (Flying Nun Records) — read UTR roving reporter Liam Hansen's rundown of Tuesday night's ceremony (peppered with exceptional live performances and minor scandals) HERE. On to this week's roundup — revisit our coverage of Tom Lark, Sam Bambery, Sheeps and Brainwave, then scroll down for more recent local release highlights from Auto Angel, Nice Girl, Karl Sölve Steven, Young Gho$t, Elliott Dawson, Anna Coddington, jeline, This Plain, A.M, Bodyache, Jeff Parsnips, and the third volume of the Audio Foundation Improvisors Series. 

The latest Aotearoa insta-classic to emerge from Bankrupt Records, Auto Angel's True Sincerity EP explodes with digital-punk fury on opener 'Nothing Kept Sacred' — staying true to that iconoclastic sentiment on all six tracks. Closing with the massive and moving 'What Else But Love' featuring Fable and Yuko Miyoshi (Memory Foam), guest contributors also include Nightmare Honey, Joe Locke (P.H.F), Ciara Bernstein (No Brainers), and many more.

Naarm-based Aotearoa electronic dance producer Nice Girl served up the delectable title cut from their forthcoming new album Yummy. The full record is out on 3rd May via Munich-based imprint / fashion house Public Possession, less than six months since her fab previous long player UPP.

Multi-award winning film composer Karl Sölve Steven unveiled the soundtrack to Aotearoa megachurch TV drama Testify — "an uneasy haze of analogue and FM synths with weird vocalisations and a few tender morsels of drums by Julien Dyne… all trying to evoke some sort of cloudy cityscape at night or multi-layered disintergrating graffiti wall or something."

One half of Aotearoa's mighty Bad Taste, Young Gho$t and Pōneke breaks producer Unwell unleashed noirish club banger 'Jamma' (in both instrumental and vocal versions), plus a bevy of reworks by Caru, Ultraviolet and Mr Bump.

 One of the more distinctive local releases of 2022, Te Whanganui-a-Tara's Elliot Dawson reminds us of the Good Time inspired excellence of his debut solo album Hang Low with eight newly unearthed, certainly release-worthy Demos.

Anna Coddington (Ngāti Tūwharetoa and Te Arawa) makes funk-pop shapes with bandmates The Appreciations (Jol Mulholland, Mike Hall and Fen Ikner) on new anthem 'Kātuarehe', sung in te reo and English — the lead single from her forthcoming album Coddington.

Pōneke-base "Filipina girl-next-door" jeline cranks up the emotional melodrama to infectious levels on "are you over her?"— produced by Jack Hegarty, sporting enjoyably obsessive visuals directed by Francesca Sewell and Kerry Pulham.

Featuring Harry Lilley on "strings" and Jono Galuszka on "tubs & metal", This Plain venture into Thela-esque, Le Jazz Non free noise territory with the deeply atmospheric pounding textures of 'Skid Resistance / Reality Check'.

Masterton sound artist Antony Milton aka A.M reemerges with a full spectrum of sonic strategies on his immersive new Colour Wheel collection — "a collection of audio experiments from over the last 5 or 6 years."

Bodyache's two track Altriciality journeys beyond the synaesthetic ambience of January's The Sound of Accretion to engulf listeners in thirty four minutes of busted speaker, undistllled Noise. "A total deconstruction of my previous experiments. Following alongside my earliest Noise inspirations to bring a 'pure' harsh noise experience."

The jewel in Tāmaki Makaurau's live music / sound crown, the third volume of Audio Foundation's Improvisors Series showcases "the spontaneous creations of Henrieta Tornyai (theremin, guitar, vocals), Rosie Langabeer (keyboard), Motoko Kikkawa (violin/vocals) and Citacsy (field recordings, electronics)". Recorded live at The Wine Cellar in October 2022 for Vitamin-S Festival, now hearable by all.

What does it mean to be kind? What does it mean to be smart? The children's entertainment alias of Ōtautahi songsmith Jed Parsons, Jeff Parsnips asks and answers these crucial questions while raising our own self-esteem with toe-tappin' latest single 'Who's That Person In the Mirror?'