Halloween Release Roundup: Bog Wolf, The Bats, Earth Tongue, Ex-Partner, Postnatal Abortion, Georgia Knight, Jed Parsons + More

Halloween is here and we have a spookily spectacular selection of new / recent Aotearoa releases to share with you. Revisit this week's coverage of Beastwars, Alphabethead, Erase Everything, Gina Malcolm, the Loop Electronic: Select 001 compilation and The Beths, check out our Halloween-themed gig picks HERE, then delve downwards for more local highlights from Bog Wolf, The Bats, Earth Tongue, Ex-Partner, Postnatal Abortion, Georgia Knight, Jed Parsons, Body of Work, and Frog Power.

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 thorny topic in recent months.

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

A brand new release from MAGNETIC B.S / STINK MAGNETIC, definitely the most Halloween-y Aotearoa imprint(s) of all time, 'BEWARE MY HAIRY PITS' tells a frighteningly real tale "about a hairy pit thats waitin for you", transmutated into mesmeric sonic vibrations by the primal rockin' grooves of BOG WOLF.

What's that flapping and screeching sound up in the belfry? Just kidding, it's Aotearoa's legendary southern ambassadors of sound The Bats — Robert Scott, Kaye Woodward, Paul Kean and Malcolm Grant — whose new album Corner Coming Up via Flying Nun Records (the group's eleventh studio long player together since forming in 1982) maintains one of the most consistently immaculate run of releases in local music history. And that's simply a fact, easily confirmed by listening here and / or gripping the physical edition at good record stores.

Released nearly two weeks ago (when I was briefly vacationing away from my news desk), it feels strangely appropriate to feature Earth Tongue's new single / video extravaganza on Halloween Friday. Directed by Oscar Keys and ET's Ezra Simons, fuzz-scorcher 'Ritual' receives blood-drenched cult-horror visuals centred around Gussie Larkin, garbed in shimmering scale mail.

Launching their new album Lore-Core next Friday at Tāmaki Makaurau's Audio Foundation (get tickets HERE), Ex-Partner yowls "you know how to make a labyrinthine hell just to insert me" deep within a flurry of distorted percussion and mind-mashing electronics on new single 'You Know How To Hurt Me' — closing with a time-warped snippet from Fraudian Slips' 1985 dance-punk classic 'Deviance'. 

Playing the Crate Day Carnage event at Pōneke's iconic Valhalla on 6th December (get tickets HERE), savage sludgy deathgrind specialists Postnatal Abortion have released a earhole brutalising split cassette release with Maced — out now via Razored Raw.

Entrancing listeners with a shadowy run of trip-hop / cinematic dark-pop singles "written largely on autoharp", Ōtautahi-based Naarm songcrafter Georgia Knight has unveiled her debut album Beanpole.

Devilishly dapper co-host of this week's all-star APRA Silver Scroll Awards in Ōtautahi Christchurch, Jed Parsons' new guitar ballad 'I Might Go Swimming' (his first official release in four years) is spooky in it's own lovely way, co-produced by Will McGillivray (Goodwill). There's also a live acoustic version out now, caught on camera by Caleb Macdonald (KITA Films) and Adam Hogan (LORE Films). "Thank you all for sticking with me over the years since my last release - this song unwraps a tiny slice of what’s been going on for me since then, and I really love it."

The project of Tāmaki Makaurau vocalist Sarah Illingworth with songwriter Dan B. Hill, multi-instrumentalist / producer Shannon Fowler (Tom Lark) and selected special guests, Body of Work has transformed intent into reality with their keenly awaited debut collection Secondhand Blues — completed with the elegant dream-pop swagger of new ballad 'Durutti / Durruti Poem'. "As the release of 'Durutti / Durruti Poem' signals the completion of the Secondhand Blues EP, I want to clearly thank dbh for asking me to work with the songs he'd created – and assuming I could, and Shannon for enabling me to see that through in such a classy yet unassuming way."

Ōtepoti outsider pop star Frog Power recently dropped a new covers collection collection via his highly popular YouTube page — applying the patented Frog Power magic to such timeless tunes as 'Don't Dream It's Over', 'Don't Speak', 'Scat Man', 'Knights In White Satin', plus lots more.