Release Roundup: Richard O’Brien, Hun Lynch, The Spectre Collective, ZIPS, Crook, TOOMS + More

Scroll downwards for new and recent Aotearoa highlights from Richard O’Brien, Hun Lynch, The Spectre Collective, ZIPS, Crook, TOOMS, Arthur Ahbez, Maebh McCurdy & Finn Johansson, STONEHEDGE AOTEAROA, and dORKWIND.

Some of the most famous songs ever written by an Aotearoa artist presented in their primal state, The Rocky Horror Show - Original Demos (50th Anniversary Edition) has arrived just in time for Richard O’Brien's eighty fourth birthday. You can hear the roots of NZ punk in these wonderful tape recorded glam rock tunes — written in O’Brien's London flat during the early 1970s, originally envisaged to soundtrack "three weeks of fun."

Tāmaki Makaurau multi-disciplinary talent Hun Lynch revealed 'Conan', the self-produced first release from her forthcoming debut album Sycophant via Noa Records. Other-dimensional trip-hop percussion and spiritual mantras dance together in 'Conan' (named after Hun Lynch's best friend), while the accompanying visuals co-directed by THUNDERLIPS keep the song grounded, starring the artist with family casting long shadows in a carpark on a sunny day. "Conan began as a meditation on an image from Tony Kushner’s Angels in America of souls rising after death “like skydivers in reverse, limbs all akimbo, wheeling and spinning”, stretching out then being absorbed into the atmosphere, becoming “the stuff of ozone”. Its atmospheric and electronic chambers lend itself to the dreaming ahead, dreaming beyond the ruptured present towards collective hope and resistance."

Likely the most stunning Aotearoa animated video you'll experience anytime soon, The Spectre Collective's 'Flamingo' is a skull-frying tour de force of sci-fi-psych — itself teasing the release of their forthcoming album Psychic Animals. Animator / core member Will Agnew spilled the beans about what turned out to be a five year project (!) over on Instagram. Here's an excerpt: "Everything you see was drawn frame by frame. Sometimes I’d trace over reference animations I found online to study movements and physics, then modify them accordingly. I had no idea where the story was going, and gradually pieced together bits of cool imagery I dreamed up until it seemed like there was a semblance of a narrative. The video also informed the songwriting - we knew it would be a cartoon, and there was no way I was animating anything longer than 2min30s. Fuuuuck that."

ZIPS GALORE is the monumental party-pumping fourteen track debut album from Aotearoa's ZIPS collective, a world-class hip-hop dream team whose membership includes Church & AP, deadforest, Dera Meelan, RNZŌ, Sollyy, Zion Garcia, Ipod, Tyran and FRIDAY*.

'Shoving' is the second single from Tāmaki post-punk all-stars Crook, overstimulating our senses with a lurid cruise ship montage as we inch towards the launch of their debut album Murderous Intent — out on 17th April.

Squishing listeners like bugs with their monstrously minimalist drums / guitar / yowls pummel, 'AUDREY' by TOOMS may or may not be named after the giant toothy killer plant (or maybe Ellen Greene's character) in Little Shop Of Horrors.

Not to be mixed up with the Elvis Presley / Junior Parker classic, 'Mystery Train' is a magical new organ-drenched psych-pop nugget from Tāmaki Makaurau's Arthur Ahbez. "Somewhere between a half-remembered dream and the last carriage of a midnight locomotive, 'Mystery Train' comes rattling down the line, greased in moonlight, whispering secrets it probably shouldn’t know."

Two Tāmaki Makaurau songwriting talents unite to deliver sound advice on 'Traipsing Through the Swamp (Every Little Froggy Gotta Love)', a sonically warped four minute glam-prog-rock / arthouse pop opus from Maebh McCurdy & Finn Johansson.

STONEHEDGE AOTEAROA are the new power-duo of Aotearoa legends Bek Coogan (Cortina) and Gemma Syme (Instant Fantasy) — covering Mama Cass and generously gassing us up to 'Make Your Own Kind Of Music', the lead cut from next week's Demos EP AD2026. "But you've gotta / Make your own kind of music / Sing your own special song / Make your own kind of music / Even if nobody else sings along."

An overdose of heavy psych skullet shred, so powerful I got off my bus at the wrong stop while listening yesterday morning, is STRESSED OUT! STRESSED OUT! — the first new collection in fourteen years (!) from dORKWIND. "20min of CHECK TO SEE IF YOU'VE PISSED YOUR PANTS AT THE PARTY bangers" by Daif King (Stälker, Golden Axe), Ryan Bennet (Clear Licorice) and the aforementioned Gemma Syme and Bek Coogan.