Release Roundup: Troy Kingi, Hemi Hemingway, Princess Chelsea, Floating Eels, Fazed On A Pony, Body Beat Ritual, T. G. Shand + More

A release roundup on a Tuesday? Wilder things have and (we must assume) will happen. Revisit our recent coverage of DISPLEASURE, Tom Cunliffe, Dropper and Daniel Vernon (DARTZ), and get stuck into a cavalcade of local highlights from the past week or so by Troy Kingi, Hemi Hemingway, Princess Chelsea, Floating Eels, Fazed On A Pony, Body Beat Ritual, T. G. Shand, Pining Radiata, The New Existentialists, and Libbianski.

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 controversial 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.

2020 Taite Music Prize winner Troy Kingi's (Te Arawa, Ngāpuhi, Te Whānau-ā-Apanui) new album Night Lords could be the most star-stacked edition of his 10 10 10 Series ("10 albums in 10 genres in 10 years") to date. Kingi's latest record is his personal contribution to the vast kaleidoscopic realm of hip-hop, sharing the mic with Aotearoa greats Adam Tukiri, Brandn Shiraz, Diggy Dupé, JessB, Lucky Lance, Mā, Mareko, Melodownz, MOKOMOKAI, Rizvan, Rubi Du, SWIDT, Tipene, Tom Scott and Tyna. "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... My biggest accomplishment on the album I feel is how cohesive it all is, you have 14 artists all amazing and different in their right yet it all feels cut from the same cloth."

These days strutting the streets of Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Hemi Hemingway aka songwriter Shaun Blackwell (Te Āti Awa, Ngāti Toa, Ngāti Kahungunu ki Heretaunga) revealed a swoony duet with 2024 Taite Music Prize winner Vera Ellen. Expressions of heartache, yearning and romantic redemption intertwine and soar skyward on 'Oh, My Albertine', blasting beyond Mazzy Star strum with twin powerhouse vocals by Hemingway and Ellen, which may get you all weepy. "Time leaves cool scars" indeed — we can collectively look forward to Hemingway's second album Wings of Desire as the new year dawns, out in full on 20th February via PNKSLM Recordings.

You may think from reading today's roundup that Taite Music Prizes were being handed out like candy, but they are in fact tricky to come by. Winner of the 2023 Taite Music Prize, Princess Chelsea's remix / reimagining of Dudley Benson's effervescent take on Hirini Melbourne's cherished classic 'Pūrerehua' is now listenable online. A gorgeously reverberated, new agey vision in sound, featuring new additional vocals by the Aotearoa music royal herself, the remix and original are featured on the Pūrerehua Remix EP, out now on limited yellow 7" vinyl, with the prospect of more superstar remixes to come. "All proceeds from sales of Pūrerehua are given to The Manaaki Collective, an organisation who work to protect activists against the far right."

A trio of legendary 3Ds guitarist / songwriter David Mitchell, Paul Jones and Björn Magnusson, Floating Eels unfurled their new collection Get down with the Floating Eels — an eleven track "album of improvised music" and free / avant-folk song-forms laid down in London, strikingly adorned with Mitchell's peerless artwork.

Fazed On A Pony's tender new alt-country ballad 'Heart Goes Blank' heralds a fresh wave of releases in 2026 from Tāmaki Makaurau-based tunesmith Peter McCall and band — out via southern lords Melted Ice Cream (Oceania/Asia) and Meritorio (rest of world). "If there’s a thread through this new batch of songs, it’s not holding things too tightly. 'Heart Goes Blank' became emblematic of that idea, both lyrically and in the way it was recorded."

Rumoured to have deep ties to Aotearoa's mid-00s rave resurgence, Body Beat Ritual has been decimating dancers in Whanganui and all around the world with his patented take on teeth-gnashing EBM, featured on an outpouring of EP releases from 2018 onwards. Bodily Function is a new collection, cherry-picking crucial cuts from Body Beat Ritual's club-pumping oeuvre so far, "re-edited and remixed from originals" for your listening enjoyment.

T. G. Shand instantly melts this listener (already overwhelmed by summer heat) into a puddle of mutagenic goo, courtesy of the pleasingly psych-zapped shoegaze wash, doom metal level bass crunch and vocal abstractions of the Canterbury artist's new single 'Levitating The Knife'.

Recent tour mates with Model Home and Yon Loader, Pining Radiata's emotive guitar balladry is very much in tune with the Papaiti Records extended family — I was half expecting their new long player to have a song called 'Home Alone' on it. Pining Radiata unpack frazzled textures and emotions while conjuring moments of celestial beauty and quiet grace on their self-titled debut, recorded with Harry Lilley at Te Papaioea's iconic The Stomach.

Out for a few weeks now but certainly deserving your attention is Bad Astrology, the latest album from pioneer of Aotearoa's noisy underground George D. Henderson's (The Puddle, Mink) "freakbeat, softcore and dirtbag psych metal" group The New Existentialists. Handily including songs from 2022's Last Days of the Internet EP and recent singles amidst newly unveiled numbers, Bad Astrology is their first official vinyl LP release — featuring contributions from such fellow trailblazers as Cosmo Potts (Frog Power), Brother Love and Duane Zarakov. "AI wants to break your heart / The algorithm's come true / That hologram's in love with you / And watchin' what you do." Who else locally is writing lines better than these?

Libbianski inject metallic heft into their all-enveloping shoegazey squall on 'Continue The Sad' — the thunderous lead single from the Te Whanganui-a-Tara trio's forthcoming Episode 1 EP, due out early this month.