Watch Troy Kingi's Video For New Single 'Ocelli'

A towering figure in Aotearoa's musical landscape, the eighth instalment of Troy Kingi's mercurial 1O 1O 1O Series ("10 albums in 10 genres in 10 years") is Leatherman & the Mojave Green, a sun-baked excursion into desert / stoner rock sonics laid down at Rancho de la Luna studio in Joshua Tree, California. Lead single 'Ocelli' ("a simple eye") views the blazed legacy of Queens Of The Stone Age / Kyuss / Eagles of Death Metal through Kingi's own artistic prism, featuring the powerful combo of Treye Liu on drums, Marika Hodgson on bass and Ezra Simons (Earth Tongue) on guitar, produced / mixed by series mainstay TeMatera Smith — blasting into glorious cosmic-psych-doom shred excess during the song's closing moments.

Troy Kingi's time recording his latest long player in the Mojave Desert was captured in the accompanying four part documentary series Troy Kingi’s Desert Hikoi, streamable right now via TVNZ+ on demand — directed by Tom Hern (The Panthers) and featuring Serj Tankian (System of a Down), Brant Bjork, Dave Catching (who runs Rancho de la Luna), and more. Made with support from NZ On Air, the clip for 'Ocelli' presents snippets of that experience, starring the award-winning artist and band frying amps amidst snakes and cacti. Keep on the lookout for Leatherman & the Mojave Green's imminent release on 23rd August...

"The trip to Joshua Tree was a timely Godsend - at a pivotal point where I had hit a wall, a blockage, I was waning, struggling creatively with were to go to next with my music, the whole 10/10/10 thing, had it finally broken me?

Being in this place - one of the holiest of holys for me, the birthplace of the greatest rock album of all time ‘ songs for the deaf’ - it was hard not to be inspired by it all - by the crazy Martian like landscape, the people, the foreign-ness, songs started forming in my dreams, rushing to me from the heated horizon, I found my thing again - and it seemed to flow easily like it once did when I first started my journey 8 years ago. The sound we found is definitely different, it’s the most aggressive sound I’ve ever created."

'Leatherman & the Mojave Green' is out on Friday 23rd August digitally, on compact disc and on vinyl LP via AllGood Absolute Alternative Records (AAARecords) / Border.