Release Roundup: Jazmine Mary, Fazerdaze, Jim Nothing, Jujulipps, The Veils, Liam Finn, Crash Teslas + More

The UTR newsdesk has been running hot this week, with so many significant Aotearoa releases and top-tier shows / tours it feels like we've been time-warped back to 2019 — sans 'Old Town Road' singalongs at The Wine Cellar, Baby Yoda tees and hideous knitted sneakers at your local mall. Tuck into this week's news coverage of Jon Toogood, Lips, MOKOTRON, ratbag, Goodwill, Revulva and Yurt Party, read our exclusive interview with visiting UK rapper Jeshi, and explore even more new / recent releases from Jazmine Mary, Fazerdaze, Jim Nothing, Jujulipps, The Veils, Liam Finn, Koizilla, The Pleasure Majenta, Crash Teslas, Netana, and Goodspace.

Special guest for Jon Toogood's album launch tour starting tonight in Kerikeri, Jazmine Mary blesses our Friday with their first official single since 2023's standout album DOG. Accompanied by beaut minimal monochrome visuals filmed by Annabel Kean, Jazmine Mary croons "I'll tell you everything if you ask me to" in the 2021 Best Independent Debut Award-winner's thrilling new indie-folk ballad. Don't think, just go to the 'In a Field' release show at Tāmaki Makaurau's Glen Eden Playhouse Theatre on 1st November, starring JM with full band and special guest Pete Moriarty — nab tickets HERE.

Releasing her long hoped-for sophomore album Soft Power on 15th November, Fazerdaze aka Amelia Murray treats fans to elegant new sonic gem 'A Thousand Years' plus her first ever self-directed video, drawing inspiration from self-portrait fine art innovator Cindy Sherman. "The video is a self-portrait of my experience with high-functioning depression. My character exists within a box that never stays the same. It tightens, expands, but never at her will. I wanted to show feelings of isolation and powerlessness. My character appears composed - makeup, a suit - but psychologically is not."

The hits keep flowing like a heavenly stream from the songwriting pen of Jim Nothing, who astutely states "After the sun goes down / It's time to clown around" in new ballad 'Sundown Clown'. The Tāmaki Makaurau tunesmith's new album Grey Eyes, Grey Lynn is out next Friday — head along to the release shindig the following evening at Audio Foundation (tickets HERE) and preorder the vinyl LP edition via the Bandcamp link.

2024 Best Independent Debut winner Jujulipps asks "Where did the good guys go / I don't see them no more" in new club banger 'Good Guys', produced by none other than WHO SHOT SCOTT — soon to be special guest on our LIVE MUSIC BAR web series.

Devonport icon Finn Andrews makes like a modern day Charon, traversing Stygian waters between life and the hereafter in the first single from The Veils' forthcoming seventh studio album Asphodels, out on 24th January via V2 Records / Banished From The Universe. Directed by Tu Neill, the gothic ballad's minimal, mirror-glass visuals were filmed at Parihoa on Auckland's West Coast. "'The Ladder' was initially inspired by the crazed and mystical paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, who often painted ladders as routes to psychological exploration. It’s about the longing to transcend the relentless chaos of our world, I suppose. But don’t let that description get you down, it’s also a jaunty little number."

From Finn to Liam— the boundlessly creative Liam Finn (now core member of a little known group named Crowded House) casually unleashed his new Suspicious EP. Finn gets unexpectedly yet laudably funky on the title track and bundles together a bunch of previously standalone works, including the hyperkinetic 'Spiraling' and 'Purple Dress'.

Joining Bad Taste and Ripship at The Crown on 30th November (grab tickets HERE), Ōtepoti's furiously fuzzy Koizilla unleashed whole dang new album SICK late last week — soak it up.

Based in Berlin and hailing from Aotearoa, post-punks The Pleasure Majenta significantly expanded ranks to become the eight-piece of Lawrence Goodwin, EJ Alfaro, Chris Wratt, Martha Rose, Run Arnadottir, Aaron Longville, Jong-Yung Lee and Jake Preston on their All We Have Is Time EP. Experience the dark majesty of Noah Swan's short film for opening number 'On A Day Like This (No More Goodbyes)'.

A name that becomes more endearing every day, Crash Teslas is the solo project of Thom Burton, Northland-based frontman of Guardian Singles, Wilberforces and lots more. As the title suggests, Burton's new ten track collection 2014​/​2024 was begun a decade ago and finally completed this year. He reveals: "These recordings and the songs therein started in 2014 when my mental health had hit a wall and I moved into a fairly isolated spot in the far north of NZ for two years. Some of these would become blueprints for songs in other projects, but mostly were forgotten, until I rediscovered the tapes when I became a father and had moved back in 2022 (my mental health this time doing the rollercoaster of being a new parent!). I’ve collected the songs, done some work on them and thought they should be made available for the world to hear. Oh — the other half of them are new XD. See if you can tell which ones are which!"

Contributor to MOKOTRON's landmark remix project THE UNITED TRIBES OF BASS, indigenous sonic futurist Netana's bass-blasting 'Mutu te Kaikiri' incorporates a "vocal sample of Naida Glavish who once in the face of racism was inspired to stand her ground when she was visited by the voice of her tupuna (ancestor); “That voice became my strength at the time to carry on and it is still my strength today.""

Hosting an immersive listening experience at Lim Chour foodcourt on Karangahape Road for all last week, Tāmaki Makaurau songwriter / producer Goodspace aka Jefferson Chen considers life's big questions while dishing up tasty grooves on his funk-fuelled debut album Let's Talk About Death.