2026
FEATURES
Industry
Industry: The Developing Picture of Digital Music Distribution
The rapid growth of newer distribution and services companies highlights how the NZ music industry has diversified. Rather than replacing traditional structures, these models are expanding the ecosystem ...
Interviews
Adam McGrath: Stand Up, Fight Back
The Kiwi epitome of a working musician, Adam McGrath is nearing his own half century, still playing three or four solo shows a week in music venues and country halls all over the motu. Lyttelton’s favourite ...
Interviews
Menzies: Magic Hands
Menzies’ songs are populated with famously Kiwiana things like our national rugby team, sausage rolls, inter-island ferry crossings and mashed potatoes. Attracting parallels with the Kiwi-conscious likes ...
Interviews
Lee Martin: Might As Well Dance
With a background delivering soul-rich vocals across a spread of genres, Ōtautahi singer-songwriter Lee Martin has earned a reputation as a versatile storytelling artist, with an old soul. The first single ...
Interviews
The Veils: Pieces That Make Up The Whole
With more than two decades of evolution behind them, and just a year on from the last album, ‘Asphodels’, The Veils return in June 2026 with their eighth long player, ‘Fragile World’. Dasha Koryagina ...
Interviews
Mainard Larkin: Standing For Something
Mainard Larkin, the Auckland artist previously known as rap artist Randa, has re-emerged in 2026 as a self-aware country artist, embracing the full-on embroidered Western shirt and snake boots kind of ...
Fresh Talent
Fresh Talent: Evie Bamford
The first day of NZ Music Month brought with it the third introductory single from Tāmaki Makaurau singer-songwriter Evie Bamford, a jazzy, uptempo alt pop track titled Company. She describes is her ...
Industry: The Story Behind MixMates
Playlists are both the convenient digital-era version of lovingly shared mixtapes, and an efficient promotion mechanism for artists – and for the millions compiling them for any variety of other reasons. Still, ...
Fresh Talent
Fresh Talent: Tehran Don
Tehran Don (aka T.DON) was writing poetry from a young age, and fell in love with hip hop early on – listening to underground artists in his homeland of Iran, where rap music is illegal. Tehran (Saman ...
Interviews
Fables: Sensitive To Change
There’s been a several gap in the Fables discography, which the title of her 2026 album ‘Change is a Slow Moving Beast’ perhaps goes some way to explain. Rich with confessional storytelling the album ...
On Foreign Soil
On Foreign Soil: Written By Wolves Tour of Europe/UK, April-May 2026
Although they’d never played with or even met Solence before, Auckland’s high energy progressive rock act Written By Wolves were invited to join the Swedish electronic rock/metal band on their 21-date ...
LESSONS
X-Factory
X-Factory: Reb Fountain – Come Down
Reb Fountain has enjoyed a number of critical and commercial successes since the release of her debut album ‘Like Water’ in 2008. After three albums and a live EP, her biggest breakthrough came with ...