I’ve been remiss in not mentioning a couple of new musical projects I have been working on over the last year.
First up, The Snow Ponies. The idea for this project came about when my old friend and former songwriting partner Reece Fairfield from The Debutantes came to visit me in New Zealand. We wrote a tune together one drunken evening and I recorded it soon after. This was released late in 2023, and you can see the video for it below. We’re currently working on some more stuff and hope to release another couple of singles in 2024.
I’ve also been working with a Kirikiriroa-based new wave/punk act The Dawks. It’s been a lot of fun doing a few shows with them and actually playing with a proper band again for the first time since 2017.
We recorded a bunch of songs in 2023 which I ended up producing and mixing because that’s what I always seem to end up doing. This band is nothing like anything I’ve worked on before, and I’m really enjoying just playing electric guitar and making some noise again.
Here’s the video for Flat Out Bat, which we released in January 2024.
But what about The Gathering Tide? Well I’ve been surprised to see that our 2020 single When The Rain Comes has been picking up thousands of Spotify plays lately for reasons unknown! I’ve got a couple of Gathering Tide songs queued up for recording, and I’m hoping to release them later this year.
But I’m also working on some Zeptepi stuff – principally remixing our 2010 album Stormclouds. I love the songs on this album and it was quite successful, but I really dislike the mix… I had no funds, mixed it myself and now find it very hard to listen to. Loading up the tracks in the studio again lately has led to me discovering a whole heap of extra parts that were recorded at the time and never used, so I’m remixing it and I think the final result will be quite different from the original album – and hopefully a lot better. Hope to finish it off this year, but don’t hold your breath…