Pro-Teens x MFDOOM album coming

Melbourne's The Pro Teens have dropped a handful of singles off this album, and its out mid January. Preorder vinyl/digital on Bandcamp.

"Helmed by Hudson Whitlock, prolific drummer and percussionist of Karate Boogaloo and Surprise Chef, Melbourne’s The Pro-Teens is a collective of instrumentalists making weirdo instrumental soul records. Drawing from the community of musicians from bands in the College Of Knowledge orbit, The Pro-Teens’ incorporate the comic book stylings of DOOM and Kool Keith, the dark flavors of Gravediggaz and Wu-Tang Clan, and the cinematic composition of Galt MacDermot, culminating in an unorthodox patchwork of cinematic soul, boom-bap funk breaks and left-field instrumental textures.

‘MF TEEN: Your Concurrence In The Above Is Assumed’ recognises the legacy of rap’s Illest Villain, traversing MF DOOM’s discography and personas, flipping selections from Madvillain, MM.. FOOD, Viktor Vaughan, Danger Doom and more, taking care to ensure recognisable tunes such as Doomsday and Curls are represented alongside more obscure cuts such as The Gas Face, the Third Bass song that featured the first recorded verse from MF DOOM in his original moniker of Zev Love X of the ill-fated 90s NYC rap group KMD.

“The diversity of tones, moods, feels and arrangements was an intentional act to mirror the diversity within DOOM's own diverse musical vocabulary. We wanted to fluctuate between putting our own spin on DOOM's classic tunes as well as staying true to the original source.” - Bandleader Hudson Whitlock aka Libby Clique-Baité.

MF TEEN: Your Concurrence In The Above Is Assumed comes after 2021’s Snooch Dodd & The Pro-Teens - I Flip My Life Every Time I Fly, which gained BBC6 Music’s Album Of The Day honors after its co-release by College Of Knowledge and UK tastemaker label Mr Bongo.

‘Charsnuka’ was originally produced under the Metal Fingers moniker and used as the beat for the song ‘?’ from DOOM’s now classic debut album Operation: Doomsday. The Pro-Teens embrace the boom bap hip hop feel from the original tune, replacing the organ melody with distorted glockenspiel and beefing up the backbeat with old-school handclaps, overall maintaining the energy from MF DOOM’s beat and imbuing it with the soul of a live band. The track ends with triumphant applause from the band.

New Dam Native single out now

At the launch event in September at Flying Out for Dam Native's classic debut album KDRU re-release, main man Danny Haimona said the reissue had inspired him to finally share his new tunes with the world, and promised it was on the way and here it is. 

Next single in January, followed by a new album. 'Language of the heart'. 

MOKOTRON's debut LP has landed!

MOKOTRON's debut vinyl album has arrived, and it's awesome. The vinyl version has two bonus tracks, a couple of his tunes that were very popular on student radio - Tawhito, and Hīreretia Rā.

From The Spinoff: Mokotron reckons there’s no box to label this genre. Honestly, who’s gonna be brave to try and put the sounds of his latest album, Waerea, into one category? “The point was to put a flag in the ground for Māori Bass music as the logical next step in the evolution of dance music in this country and the ongoing cultural renaissance of our people,” he says. 

“To be honest it’s already happening: We have Netana, Lakeboon, Akcept, Caru, Lady Shaka, Samara Alofa, Huia, Te Manu, Ngāio Matariki, Kommi, Ahirā / Kōroto, Diaz Grimm, Wear Pounamu, Riki Pirihi and hopefully others stacking up an arsenal of anti-colonial subsonic artillery. I want Māori Bass to exist in my lifetime.”

From Flying Out: "MOKOTRON is a Tāmaki-based Māori producer from Ngāti Hine, who spreads seismic waves of low frequency Indigenous electronic music. Exploring ancient futurism through music, MOKOTRON imagines a reality without colonisation, where the ancestors transition from the ancient world into the modern, creating futures of hope juxtaposed with the hard realities of urban disconnection.

Following a string of sold-out short-run vinyl releases (Mind Control Krew, Tatau O Te Pō and Embrace The Bass) and award winning digital albums (2022’s TAWHITO and 2024’s THE UNITED TRIBES OF BASS) MOKOTRON returns with his new record WAEREA, delivering nine tracks of pure Dark Māori Bass.

The foundation of WAEREA is Te Reo Māori, traditional forms of song and chant, and the voices of puoro, colliding with breakbeats, bars and basslines to reflect the worldscapes of urban Māori."

Deepgrooves book chats and tings

I've been doing some radio interviews which have been fun, talking about my Deepgrooves book and playing music from the label. 

RNZ Music101's Charlotte Ryan had me in for a chat, and were played Sitting By The Phone (Unitone Hifi feat Teremoana), Hiphop Holiday (3 The Hard Way), and 'Sound Advice' (Breaks Co-op). 

95BFM Swapmeet show with Jubt got me up to spin some Deepgrooves tunes for an hour and talk, enjoyed it. Also did a fun interview with Josh on Radio Active's show The Vault. 

Martyn Pepperell wrote about my book in his weekly newsletter Beats N Pieces: 

"In the early ‘90s, a new energy was swirling through inner-city Auckland as a generation of New Zealand musicians, DJs, and vocalists embraced the then-nascent sounds of hip-hop, dub, ragga, house, trip-hop and street soul. Three decades so on, one of the best historical expressions of this era can be found in the discography of an independent Auckland record label that saw the future clearly and did the absolute best it could to speed up its arrival, Deepgrooves Records.

Over the last decade, the Auckland-based writer, broadcaster, DJ, archivist, and musician Peter McLennan (Dub Asylum, Hallelujah Picassos) has spent countless hours uploading music and videos from the Deepgrooves era onto his YouTube channel while conducting interviews and research towards his written opus, Deepgrooves: A Record Label Deep in the Pacific of Bass, and the People Who Gave It a Voice.

A soft format coffee table title with over 300 pages and a literal treasure trove of photography and album art, Deepgrooves: A Record Label Deep in the Pacific of Bass, and the People Who Gave It a Voice, documents the rise of one of New Zealand’s truly idiosyncratic record labels and also tells the stories of many of the key players and musicians involved, and just as importantly, expanding out into what they did next. Viewed together, it becomes clear that Deepgrooves was a crucial launchpad for a generation or two - a once-in-a-lifetime type thing.

Inside, readers learn about groups and solo artists like Fuemana, Sulata, Grace, Urban Disturbance, Freebass, Breaks Co-op, New Loungehead and Ermehn while learning about how record labels liked this operated during the era, the clashes between expectations, and the beautiful friendships and collaborations that came out of the friction, fire and fun of it all."

My book is available from Flying Out Pitt st, Real Groovy Victoria st, Flying Nun K Rd Auckland, and Flying Nun Cuba st Wellington. Or buy online from Flying Out, they ship around NZ, and overseas.