Release Roundup: Big Scout, The Tarts, DalyanRD, Greg Malcolm & Stefan Neville, Sin City, ROTATO + More

It's been a significant week in local showbiz, with The Beths taking away the prestigious main prize at Wednesday evening's Silver Scroll awards ceremony at Tāmaki Makaurau's Spark Arena. Big congratulations again to all the winners, the nominees, and 2023 NZ Music Hall of Fame | Te Whare Taonga Puoro o Aotearoa inductee Don McGlashan. Bring on the tunes — let's revisit our coverage of Georgia Gets By, Dick Move, Danica Bryant, Roy Montgomery x Marty Lattimore and a handy sample pack made by Kraus from Musical Electronics Library resources, then delve deeper downwards for more handpicked new / recent releases from Big Scout, The Tarts, Macho Macho, Greg Malcolm & Stefan Neville, ROTATO, DalyanRD, Sin City, QUALMS, Demons Of Noon, and Pluto.

Supports for Sleaford Mods when they visited Aotearoa in May, Blenheim post-punks Big Scout bound back with raucously powerful new single 'Donut' — "an acerbic tanty aimed at this Country’s centrist, magenta-faced MPs". Smash play on the trio's first release since 2022's standout long player Council Sport.

Turning our attention to halfway across the globe, Berlin-based mystery collective The Tarts look to have a rock solid Aotearoa connection. Out now via Fantasy Fiction Records, SOLID GOLD gets the post-punk party pumping like few other local (or related) released I've heard this year — feeling a bit like someone took a weed wacker to a box full of Shocking Pinks, Goodwin & Kyle, DOG Power and Data Animal records. They say: "The T.A.R.T.S must illuminate the main strips and the cinema aisles, the alleycats and the supermarket choirs; from Queen la shivas's eastern segmented head to the western alcoholic's teepee, from the wet northern floating tussock tufts down past the southern salty fizzy foam! The message must be broadcast loud and UNclear. Sonic Soul-diers, armed from fingerindex down across the midrift with stringed axes and synthesisers, must force through cracks preceded by banshee-primal screams and yelps!"

Playing an EP release party at Tāmaki Makaurau Whammy Backroom on the 4th, Macho Macho follow their January single 'Blink' with new jangle-rock hip-shaker 'Junior Munch (La La La)', complete with 'Tequila'-style intro.

Heroes of Aotearoa's sonically unchained underground, the virtuosic team of Greg Malcolm and Stefan Neville (Pumice) dropped a ten track gem, reimagining a clutch of traditional songs in their own inimitable manner on Dont Drown. You can catch Malcolm performing at Audio Foundation's Now!here!this! Ōtautahi 2023 festival next week — lineup details and tickets HERE.

The latest crucial drop from Aotearoa's Bankrupt Records is the self-titled four track debut from ROTATO, the free jazz mind-meld of guitarist Jack Mells (Raiden Freeman) and Sam Curtiss (Impress) — "me and Sam improvising and playing standards in a silly manner." Don't miss them playing with Power Nap (aka me) and Raiden Freeman at Pōneke's Pyramid Club on 13th October, get your tickets HERE.

Tāmaki Makaurau rapper / producer DalyanRD follows last year's all-killer Mapili collaboration LLTG with their first new solo collection in three years — again keeping it flawless on the five track BDAY K HOLE, featuring BAD FOR EDUCATION on 'FIRE & ICE'.

Fronted by one half of neanderthal rockers The Cavemen (touring in December), Sin City ask the big questions on their latest soul-rocking, sorrow-drowning anthem 'Am I The One You Love?'

Gracing the stage at Kirikiriroa's Dougfest later this month, Tāmaki Makaurau's QUALMS not only unleashed their eight anthem SINGLES 1 collection last week, but they're also dropping their BURNT EP next week on Friday 13th October. Here we are right in the middle — perfect equilibrium. Wrap your ears around these huge-hearted, punk-powered tunes and have a squiz at their merch options HERE.

Tāmaki Makaurau's cult doom fanatics Demons of Noon announced their forthcoming album Death Machine by pulverising us into oblivion with supernatural lead single 'Coward'. Bassist Jonathan Burgess explained: "Coward was written about a specific person. If you yell along with it, know that you’re channelling righteous anger at someone who inflicted a great deal of fear and suffering on people that I care about. If there’s someone like that in your life, you can aim it at them, too. Let it out."

Reemerging in 2019 with their first new album in over a decade IV, Pluto demonstrate they're well and truly back with new psych-rock anthem 'Maybe Twice'. Frontman Milan Borich stated: "'Maybe Twice' is a haunting song that explores Nietzsche's theory of eternal return. The basic concept of the eternal return is that the whole history of the universe has already happened and will happen again. In Nietzsche's view, the reaction you have to the prospect of repeating every moment of your life indicates whether you’re living your truth."