Release Roundup: Princess Chelsea, Clementine, Voom, CRUSH, Velveteen, Jay Clarkson & The Containers

Scroll downwards for new and recent local release highlights from Princess Chelsea, Clementine, Voom, CRUSH, Velveteen, and Jay Clarkson & The Containers.

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One minute I'm watching Nile Rogers dropping juicy goss about Grace Jones on UK music quiz show Never Mind The Buzzcocks, the next I find a new release by Rogers' recent collaborator Princess Chelsea aka Chelsea Nikkel burning up the inbox. Revisiting her live favourite cover of 'In Heaven' by Peter Ivers and David Lynch, featured on Nikkel's Taite Music Prize winning album Everything is Going To Be Alright, the song's new video by Mean Bitch Productions is a celestial new age meisterwerk — uncannily echoing Princess Irulan's (played by Virginia Madsen) interstellar narrator sequence in Lynch's 1984 Dune adaptation.

An unstoppable force in Tāmaki Makaurau's gig community over the past year, Clementine (fronted by UTR contributor Liam Hansen) casually dropped their debut recorded release today, just before this evening's show at Flying Out with Work. Whipping up a whirlwind of guitar/ drums / keys / bass, 'Limbs (demo)' nails the landing, keeping the energy frantic and emotions frazzled. "All funds from this track go towards our bassists Tāmoko! Support will also help us keep recording and keep releasing in the future!"

Launching their first new album in nineteen years (!) Something Good Is Happening on 16th May via Flying Nun Records, Voom pave the way with heart-melting new singalong single 'I Love You Girl', plus a simply delightful accompanying nature doco clip by Murray Fisher (Goodshirt).

CRUSH are the studio-based Aotearoa super-team of Cello Forrester, Richard Larsen, Bevan Smith, Cory Champion and Tom Callwood, whose new four song GLOW EP swirls together body-moving elements of space-disco, soul-boogie, italo, synth-pop, electronica and avant-pop. In some ways akin to a club-friendly alternate universe to Cello's work with Womb, we demand live gigs by this über-talented "dream-grunge" collective stat.

Out today digitally and on ultra-modern compact disc via Winegum Records, Velveteen's new album Heavy Machinery offers a magnificently maximal vision of emotive alt-rock / industrial / grunge that would do our eyeliner-loving '90s / '00s forefathers proud. If these earnestly angst-fuelled, fuzzed-out and hook-packed tunes don't rule Aotearoa's rock radio airwaves in the near future, we need to tear down the whole system and start again. "I was going through a lot mentally when I was writing and recording… I really love this album and it means so much to me. It's got some really angry moments and some very heartfelt ones. It's very emo and angsty, a bit gothic at times. It’s pretty loud and fuzzy and I love all of it."

Jay Clarkson & The Containers are travelling northwards from their Ōtepoti home base to play a release show for their new album FALLING THROUGH this Saturday at Ōtautahi's Space Academy (tickets available HERE). Fronted by the aforementioned legendary songwriter and featuring Alan Haig, Mike Dooley and Tenzin Mullin (plus bassist Dave Glynn on one song), FALLING THROUGH arrives ten years following Clarkson's previous album Spur. "It's been a long time coming and it's very satisfying to hear it sounding so rich and full. And beautiful".