“Siva Masina” by LEAO

Our song for day 26 of New Zealand Music Month comes from LEAO via ghost roads from memories of music from the Samoan islands.

This is first take lo-fi DIY pop – East River Pipe or early Ariel Pink comes to mind, or our own Kraus or Roy Irwin – but filtered through a Samoan pop perspective.

LEAO is Tāmaki-based David Feauai-Afaese (AKA Dave Urso) and his “Ghost Roads” EP was “written from a fa’asamoa core, providing feelings and messages embodied both in language and spirit.”

There’s ghosts in this music. The vocals sound like field recordings from a previous era, the music a woozy smudged vagueness. Although originating from the opposite side of the world to Irish experimental pop creator Maria Somerville, there’s a similar approach here to the music on Somerville’s “All My People” album through linking the traditional and the modern, transforming memories into a ghostly personal tribute to the communal experience of childhood music memories.

There’s an introduction to and overview of Noa Records, the Auckland label on which this is released, in this recent Bandcamp Daily feature.

“Truth is in the Shadow of a Doubt” by Virtual Shadow Ensemble

Our day 21 song for New Zealand Music Month 2020 comes from an intriguing isolation lockdown collaboration called “Keep Your Distance!” by the Virtual Shadow Ensemble on Noa Records. Here’s “Truth is in the Shadow of a Doubt” –

It’s a brief spoken word reflection on the (human) world put on temporary pause while nature carries on around us, featuring Aije and Janina Nana Yaa. Musically, it’s an appropriately blissful spaced-out psychedelic Jazz + Pacific Cosmic Music brew.

“Made within the span of ten days during a national lockdown in Aotearoa amidst a global pandemic, this virtual recording project reflects a widespread upheaval taking place in our collective consciousness, being forced away from each other physically into social isolation – a situation that seems to have turned the tides (for many at least) on a social climate of isolation that already exists in todays society. Cyber-architecture via social media has provided space for creativity to flourish during a time when our presence is felt stronger online in the absence of face-to-face interaction with our peers. Despite physical distance we are still connected, still creating together.”