Music makers

Tonkyn Pearson make longform tracks combining hardware, field recordings and software. It’s the duo of Shanan Holm (Octif) and Michael Upton (Jet Jaguar). They made music as Montano for about 20 years, until 2021.

Dark and brooding soundscapes and more recently gentler piano pieces.

Dry and sometimes lo-fi pieces, often involving piano. Everything sounds quite intimate, like being in the room with someone. Another pretty much anonymous artist, apparently in Canterbury.

Project of Auckland music maker Jonathan Glenday, who also makes dance tracks as Fly Nights and plays guitar in Long Distance Runner.

Mo H. Zareei has the most fortuitous initials for a sound artist with an interest in the foundational blocks of electronic sound. So, yeah, his releases show up under “mHz”, as in “millihertz”. Mo is an Iranian sound artist based in Wellington, where he lectures in composition and sound art. Most of his releases to date have music of interest to ambient fans, with his most recent releases in very sparse, almost completely beatless territory.

Tofujuice makes long, usually soft ambient tracks with varying amounts of noise.

èvia dropped their debut on Chicago’s Lillerne Tapes and is keeping pretty anonymous. Crisp, bright, concise electronic sounds.

John Kingston layers up fx-laden guitars under this alias. He’s also been collaborating, introducing other primarily acoustic instruments into the mix of what he does.

James Erwin has an album of bright and sparkly synth stuff that nods to dance culture and song forms, but minus the drums.

Ike’s music has a bit of a conceptual bent, often featuring clean digital synths, spoken word samples and dramatic bursts of sub bass.