Release Roundup: Troy Kingi ft. SWIDT, Raiza Biza, AndWahn x Synthetic Children, Cuticles, O/PUS, Frog Power, Bic Runga + More

Revisit our this week's coverage of D.C. Maxwell, Erase Everything, Amamelia and Hemi Hemingway, read our interview with Scotland's Lord Rochester (soon touring our shores), then scroll downwards for more new / recent Aotearoa release highlights from Troy Kingi ft. SWIDT, Raiza Biza, AndWahn x Synthetic Children, Cuticles, O/PUS, Frog Power, Bic Runga duetting with Serj Tankian, This Silent Divide, Lou'ana, and Casual Healing.

Scope out the UTR Roundup Playlist below, a rolling weekly playlist keeping you in the loop with every new release we've featured on the site over the past month. Only including tracks available on streaming services of course, which has been an increasingly hot topic during the past few weeks.

Are you an Aotearoa artist / imprint releasing something new soon? Let us know — send your info including links to editor@undertheradar.co.nz.

Taite Music Prize winner and star of film and television, Troy Kingi reveals hip-hop & RnB is the musical zone he's exploring next with his unprecedentedly ambitious 10/10/10 album cycle. Kingi joins forces with Onehunga icons SWIDT on 'Isn't How I Remember', a mic smokin' lead cut from Troy Kingi Presents: Night Lords, out in full 28th November. "From the beginning of my 10/10/10 series I was trying to find a way to insert this genre without it seeming forced or pastiche and I found my in through the albums Blakroc and then later Glorious Game by El Michels Affair and Black Thought. I could still be authentic and true to the music and not feel like a phoney through collaboration — bringing people on board that I admire and that live and breathe the genre. In a somewhat 'songhubsy' format I brought these amazing artists into the studio with me and my band and just let things happen - by the end of each day we had these amazing songs."

African-Aotearoa rap king Raiza Biza returns to command the mic on his first new single in two years 'Chapati', sizzling up speakers in collaboration with Fijian-Australian MZ Jdro and producer DJ Skinni — getting fans hyped for his upcoming studio album Pangea.

As the double entendre title inplied, Joint Effort is club-blazing collaboration from Aotearoa electronic dance deconstructors AndWahn and Synthetic Children. Ping-ponging sessions between their respect home studios in Tāmaki Makaurau and Te Papaioea — "from DAW to drum-machine and back again" — the carefully crafted three track EP feels darkly atmospheric and bass booming throughout, an ideal soundtrack for both bleeding edge underground warehouse ragers and Monster energised LAN parties. Both artists are playing at Taonui Tinyclub presents Melt this Saturday at Snails: Artist Run Spaces (get tickets HERE), plus AndWahn will be throwing down at Sigil Sound: The Summoning II tonight at Pōneke's Valhalla (get tickets HERE).

There's more to Ōamaru than the design dubiousness that is steampunk, for example: resident noiseniks Cuticles. Back at it with their first official release since last year's accurately named Major Works, the three track Howling Moons finds bandmates Matt Plunkett, Albert King, Austen Mcmillan, Folina Vili and Tom Havard kicking up a world-class and curiously catchy ruckus, pondering "stuff that is not aligned with whimsy or bridges or fascist pricks or cramped heaving or non-howling or nostalgia." We all could do well to attempt the same.

One of Tāmaki Makaurau's best live bands in this or any era, noise-punk supercollective O/PUS — Liz Mathews, Beth Dawson, Jade Farley and Stefan Neville — are soon releasing their debut album Out At Sea, The Water Is Deep on shiny vinyl disc via 1:12 Records. There's four whole advance tunes to savour before the whole package arrives to squash listeners flat next month.

The only local release this week to pay homage to YouTuber KingCobraJFS (RIP) and heroically declare "fuck shakespear in the park", Frog Power albums are always an event when they magically emerge via my YouTube algorithmic feed (otherwise just a hugely embarrassing mixture of synth-fluencers, 'music critique', explainer videos and other pop culture cringe). Fans of the Ōtepoti outsider pop star will find Frog Power in epic form on twink resurrection, dope cover artwork too ribbit.

Aotearoa icon Bic Runga duets with System Of A Down frontman Serj Tankian on 'Things Unspoken', a soaring and tender ballad finally released into the world after more than a decade's gestation. Tankian revealed: "'Things Unspoken' began its roots on a piano at the Watergate Hotel during a moment of limbo at the start of Ozzfest many years ago and bloomed into this duet, in collaboration with Bic about a dozen years ago while she was in LA."

Pōneke's This Silent Divide put the rock into 'Rockets', a storming advance cut from their forthcoming new four track EP, launching with a headline gig at Newtown's Moon on 24th October. Featuring special guests Kaletta and Adult Friends, you can grab tickets HERE.

Lou'ana gifts listeners a solid gold disco nugget with 'Heartbeat', making like an Aotearoa Chic with producer Nathan Judd in the lead-up to her forthcoming DISCO WITCH Side A - AS ABOVE (out in full 31st October), and we are here for it. "This release aligns with the Spring Equinox — a time of renewal, balance and celebration. As a Disco Witch, I honour the turning of the seasons, staying in tune with Mother Earth and the cosmos."

WAI is the third EP release in Nikau Te Huki (Ngāti Kahungunu ki te Wairarapa) aka Casual Healing's four part series "inspired by Te Taiao — the natural world", contemplating the role water plays in our own personal life journeys across six soulful tracks, sung in both te reo Māori and English.