The Sampler: Team Dynamite, Lou'ana, Miles Calder

Tony Stamp listens to three new local albums - the positive affirmations of Tāmaki Makaurau hip hop trio Team Dynamite, the magick-tinged soul grooves of Lou'ana, and Miles Calder's nostalgic dream-folk.

Respect The Process by Team Dynamite

The last full-length album by Auckland hip hop trio Team Dynamite came out in 2014 to great acclaim, getting four Pacific Music Award nominations along the way. The follow up took seven years to arrive, accompanied by some copy saying the group had to 'get destroyed then rebuilt', which felt a bit ominous. But for the most part the music on this concise new ten track offering is anything but. 

The album is called Respect The Process, perhaps as a reference to the album’s long gestation. But nothing about it seems pained or protracted. Haz Beats’ production is bold and summery, and Tony Teez and Lucky Lance's rhymes often feel as light as air, even though they’re usually negotiating some very complicated wordplay.

The track ‘I Like That’ sums up the overall air of positivity. "Let me soar through the darkest night" goes the chorus, which should give you an idea of where Team Dynamite are coming from these days. "Blowing kisses to the enemies" goes another refrain.

They’re signed to Tom Scott’s Years Gone By record label, who put up a ten minute documentary about the album, going into Lance letting substance use get the better of him, and the band subsequently dissolving. These days Tony is a dad, Lance says he’s mended his life, and when you see a track called ‘Principle’, you can hazard a guess what it’s about.

Lyrically it touches on a running theme for Team Dynamite: not worrying about other people’s perceptions.

“I don’t think you know me like you think you do.” is the refrain, and on 'Reason', the oldest track here (it originally came out in 2018), they seem to be getting at something similar. It’s full of positive affirmations like “I taught myself to love myself”. The message seems to be ‘stick to your guns. Don’t worry about the haters’. 

In fact “haters gonna hate" is invoked on the track ‘Island Songs’, a minute-long cut that’s the only thing on Respect The Process not produced by Haz Beats, with the credit for that one going to Christoph El Truento.

It’s the most explicit nod to their Pacific Island heritage (Lance is Samoan and Haz and Tony are Niuean), but much like the work of fellow Aucklander Diggy Dupe (who appears on the track 'Who?'), the vibe of Aotearoa’s Pacific Island community is omnipresent. Even just in the way they rap - it’s broad NZ accents all round, which is easy to take for granted these days, but it wasn’t that long ago that every local artist sounded American. 

Haz has never been a slouch production-wise, but here he seems to have a new mastery of the bottom end, drawing heavily on funk samples throughout. 'Lightning Bolt' channels 90s era G-Funk, with its chest thumping bassline and kitschy bells and a hook from Bailey Wiley. 

In 2015 Lance was quoted in The NZ Herald saying he was sick of what he was hearing on the radio, and wanted Team Dynamite to offer an alternative to what he called “raunchy stuff’. Respect The Process certainly has plenty of substance. I’ve barely started to unpack the mind-boggling wordplay that’s present on every track. Each song is littered with references and in-jokes. It’ll reward repeat listens for sure. 

'Dragon Fruit' has a line about "sand in my togs pocket", the kind of hyper local line these guys specialise in. Louis Baker sings the hook, saying “I will never give it up/ No I’m never gonna stop”, and it’s hard not to think of Team Dynamite themselves. Respect The Process may have come from a period of adversity, and there are moments of darkness on the album, but for the most part it’s a celebration of living your best life, whatever it takes. 

Moonlight Madness by Lou’ana

Sometimes the more you look into an artist, the more you find things you weren’t expecting. And sometimes they turn out to be someone completely different than you thought. 

I interviewed the Auckland singer Lou’ana a few years ago when she performed live at RNZ, and, like everyone who hears her music, was impressed by her distinctive, husky voice, and accomplished soul grooves. Now she’s released her first full length album Moonlight Madness, and unexpectedly, it features a lot of references to witchcraft.

Now, I have no idea if Lou’ana practices witchcraft. But it comes up in at least three of her music videos. Her website describes her sound as including a big dose of 'magick'.

This song 'Love Bind' seems to be about a love spell. 'Feel This' is about lunar cycles. Lou’ana says the moon is her main muse. All this is fascinating material, and not necessarily what you’d expect when you hear it Lou’ana’s music, which is informed by sixties doo wop with hints of funk and disco.

Opening track 'Eye To Eye' is pleasantly rough around the edges, coloured with warm distortion. But that’s all by design of course. These songs have clearly had a lot of time and attention paid to them. There’s an inevitable Amy Winehouse comparison to be made to that track, not just her voice but the sort of breathless energy to the thing. 

The title seems to refer to a wayward relationship, but I can’t help but hear ‘Eye To Eye’ and get drawn in a slightly more mysterious direction. Lou’ana’s name has an apostrophe in its middle, and on the album cover this is replaced by an image of an eye. It looks a bit like the illuminati symbol. It’s very possible I’m reading into things too much, but Lou’ana and her producer Nathan Judd definitely sweat the details.

You can hear it in the sample-bolstered rhythms on the album, and the subtle string arrangements, that are elevated to pride of place on the sultry torch song 'Don’t Let Me Fall'.

It was all recorded at Judd’s home studio, which i must admit surprised me. Hearing such lavish string and brass sections, I just assumed it had been made somewhere that charged by the hour. 

This kind of sonic luxury suits the vintage influences that Lou’ana is channeling. Listening to the album can feel a bit like wandering through three decades of soul and funk. She actually studied jazz at Te Kōkī School of Music, which clearly honed her vocal chops, as well as time spent performing on cruise ships. 

It’s hard to hear a track like 'Silence' and not think how perfectly it would fit in on a cruise. 

Her Samoan heritage infuses a lot of the music too, most obviously on the title track, which features a prominent pate, or log drum. The song feels like the sum of all the aspects of Lou’ana’s personality. There are lyrics about the moon and madness, a slightly spooky xylophone, the sound of the tides, and a nostalgic kind of rhythm.

The most immediate thing about Moonlight Madness is of course Lou’ana’s voice, moving between a whisper and a howl and conjuring up memories of a bygone era. But there’s plenty to listen out for here, thanks to the many talented musicians performing on each song, and the surprising subtext of the album. Come for the grooves, stay for the magic.

Autopilot Life by Miles Calder

I recently asked someone why emerging bands and artists are constantly drawn back to the music of the sixties as inspiration. When I first started reading interviews with musicians in the 1990s, the Beatles in particular were constantly cited as an influence, and all these years later, they still are. The response I got was that any type of music has an early period of intensity, and discovery, and The Beatles stretch of innovation lasted quite a while, so it makes sense that anyone that came later would go back to the wellspring. 

Wellington musician Miles Calder has been up front about sinking into late period Beatles while writing his new album Auto Pilot Life, as well as bands like Pink Floyd and modern indie musicians like Kevin Morby. And while Calder has certainly made something that sounds like him, he also manages to cram in a lot of the Fab Four.

Opening track 'Lost In A Dream' has a bit of melody from 'Lucy in the Sky', backwards guitars, some very Lennon/ McCartney type harmonies... He’s definitely not trying to hide it. It’s a very skillful homage, and almost feels like Calder’s trying to get it out of his system.

The next track 'Take Me Back To How It Was' comes next, and is much more its own beast, a blustery acoustic number that he wrote while overseas and missing home. Lyrically it references the prior track, which is clever, and contains some beautiful turns of phrase like "All My horizons would soften and curve".

On all these songs, Calder’s voice is a highlight, not overly polished by any means, but distinct, with a kind of woozy quality that reminded me of American musician Kurt Vile, himself a Bob Dylan acolyte.

There’s a bit of Bob here too. I think he’s at his best on tracks like 'Bad For Me', which has an identifiably kiwi sound in its summery jangle, with Calder pushing his voice up a register while amiable railing against an unnamed antagonist. I like the plainspoken lyrics: “Are we back at school? You’re a bully”.

But Calder never gets too angry on these songs. Mostly they drift along in the kind of existential daze that defines generations of singer songwriters. 

He’s said he found himself caught in routines and situations, and realised he didn’t want to be, describing it in the liner notes as waking up. It makes sense that the first track finds him lost in a dream. The title track, 'Autopilot Life', says it all in its name, and finds Calder deploying one of his best melodies as the track tumbles and lurches around him.

There’s more than a little Beatles in its guitar part, but personally I’m a sucker for the whispery analogue synth.

There’s a bit of a magpie approach to Mile’s Calder’s songwriting, but that itself is part of a long tradition. When you spend time with the album it’s clear how realised his sound is. He’s not afraid to stretch out runtimes and get a bit psychedelic, but mostly these songs are vehicles for him to patiently philosophise about life, over unhurried, pristine arrangements. They’re dreamy, but he’s wide awake.