Listen To Rob Thorne & Delaney Davidson's Single 'Ake Ake (Mauri Ora)'

'Ake Ake (Mauri Ora)' is a scorching new garage-rock waiata from acclaimed taonga pūoro composer and performer Rob Thorne (Ngāti Tumutumu, Ngāti Tamaterā, Ngāti Maru), recorded in collaboration with Lyttelton luminary Delaney Davidson. A rare lyrical outing from Thorne since his Black Pudding days, 'Ake Ake (Mauri Ora)' celebrates the Te Whanganui-a-Tara-based artist's roots while forging future pathways, an innovative interweaving of exuberant pūtōrino and squally noise-rock. Sung by Thorne entirely in te reo Māori, the single features Davidson on guitar / bass / drums duties and uplifting vocal chants by Thorne, Davidson, and engineer / mixer Simon Blackwell (Waitaha, Kai Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Te Āti Awa, Ngāti Mutunga).

Finalist in the Tohu Paerangi (Best Original Music in a Series Award) category to be presented at the 2024 APRA Silver Scroll Awards (for his work on ‘Black Coast Vanishings’ with Karl Sölve Steven), Thorne's debut single via Sunreturn is a timely release for Te Wiki o te Reo Māori / Māori Language Week. You can nab yourself a ticket for Davidson's Happiness Is Near album release tour with Barry Saunders before they all run out HERE, and sing along with the lyric video for 'Ake Ake (Mauri Ora)' below...

“Ake Ake (Mauri Ora) is one song in a now large canon of unreleased and unfinished material that I've been writing and working on since 2020. This new direction is about looking at who I am and all I've done creatively and trying to weave them together in a way that expresses all that I am as a person and an artist more fully, more completely, and more authentically. The songwriting, the solo acoustic, the free noise, the rock & roll, the taonga pūoro, who I am as Māori, the mātauranga, māramatanga, the reo, the simple and the complicated.

The intention with these songs has been to try and open myself more to who I am and what I do naturally, and be in service to what comes through, letting it come out as it is, rather than filtering or judging the work as it comes. That said, what has happened is that I have found myself bogged down after writing in the judgement of my production skills, so rather than judging in the creative act of writing, I have become extremely critical of my ability and work in the post/production phase and as a result, unable to release the work. Ake Ake (Mauri Ora) is about taking that step, to break the spell, to get the ball rolling, to push one out and release something. To finally manifest what that creative act was destined for - to be shared.

Ake Ake (Mauri Ora) was written out of an intuition, a waking dream, that was seeking to understand what mauri is and does. In the vision I perceived my mauri as a conscious spark that entered the whare tangata, the womb, at the very moment of my fertilisation. As a conscious entity, this mauri immediately begins to manifest, build, a physicality, a body, around itself, like a whare, to protect, embody and carry itself, as a fire, out into the human world, to become. This act of conscious creation never stops, continuing across my entire life, in every fractal moment, until my body dies, upon when the fire that has burned and grown within is scattered - now unprotected - blown by ngā hau e wha, back out into the cosmos, again. Forever onward, forever upward, my mauri seeks and manifests life, for that is what it is.”

'Ake Ake (Mauri Ora)' is out today on major streaming services via Sunreturn.