News
For his second full-length LP and most realized release as Serebii yet, the artist had one thing he had to overcome first: he was “terrified” of himself.
After establishing the Serebii project with several albums worth of trancing neo-soul and shape-shifting ballads, much of it done in collaboration with fellow New Zealander Arjuna Oakes, Mower had no lack of confidence in his musical abilities. But much of Mower’s focus in the past was on instruments and production—swirling, cinematic instrumentals under his own name or funky art-pop jams with others on vocals. On Dime, however, Mower knew he wanted to push forward with his own singing placed center stage. “It’s exposing,” Mower says of releasing music so heavy on his singing.
Mower, it turns out, has nothing to be afraid of. He has a gentle croon deceptive in its power—on a song like “Feet for Pegs,” for example, he lures you in with a Tropicalia guitar progression, but carries the song on vocal subtleties that pass like wisps of smoke. And using that voice, he’s created an album unlike anything he’s done before, rolling seamlessly from track to track—not just a collection of songs but a singular project conceived to work together as a unified statement. “That was the approach with Dime,” Mower says. “To really focus on putting something together that sounded like it was done in one sitting. One chapter.”
Serebii and his band also released a jazzy-soulful live performance video featuring swirling cinematic instrumentals for first single "Might As Well Be Watching" and an endearing video for track "Verrans Corner," where Mower is shrunken to the size of a pea and sent out floating on a toy sailing boat, looking every bit like the skipper for top local sailing team Emirates Team New Zealand.
Here he shares the story behind his latest live video for "Goji":
"After three years apart, myself and dear friend Skud Gumbosi decided to do what we both missed dearly and write music together. We spent a good portion of the day working on this Bossa groove with some chords Skud pulled from his back pocket. By the end of the session we both knew we had something special but felt the ideas were far too sluggish for our liking.
As you can imagine the only downside to this is that you’d need to start the song from scratch in this new BPM and key, but that meant we would get to spend another day in each other’s company, and so we did just that.
This song is about our flat cat Goji, she was a street cat from Hamilton, New Zealand, she accidentally ate a box of weed brownies and we believe she has been stoned since."
A shapeshifter, a sonic acrobat, a performer with one foot in the cosmos and the other in arthouse theatrics, Gelli Haha (pronounced Jelly-Haha) is a space for pure creative chaos.
For the opening trick, Gelli Haha presents her debut album, Switcheroo. Gelli’s music thrives on duality: playful but profound, tongue-in-cheek but sincere. Switcheroo is the soundtrack to the Gelliverse, a sensory adventure sphere created by Gelli.
Her debut art pop single “Bounce House” flashes back to youth-like innocence with high upbeat energy, turning the dance floor into a playground. The track’s accompanying music video rockets viewers straight into Gelliverse. This live revue is an invitation into a world of choreography, dolphin balloons, flutes, mini trampolines, and a stage bathed in the project’s primary color, red - bold and full of mischief. The 360 experience was shot all in one take by director David Gutel.
With a shared taste for off-kilter pop and vintage gear, producer Sean Guerin (of De Lux) joined Gelli in turning freshly-formed demos into a high-voltage experiment, abandoning meticulous structure for something freer and more electrifying. Every song on Switcheroo makes use of a myriad of recording toys; wacky analog effects, such as the Eventide Harmonizer, MXR Pitch Transposer, and various Electrix units, fashion an intentionally flawed and strictly silly texture throughout the album.
Switcheroo is an exercise in letting go, an inside joke turned theatrical spectacle. Participation is encouraged. Surrender is required. Switcheroo sees its release June 27 via Innovative Leisure. Gelli Haha performs March 22 in her hometown of Los Angeles at Permanent Records just ahead of her appearance at this year’s Treefort Music Fest.
Listen to "Bounce House" and pre-order Switcheroo here
"Dime" started as a finger-plucked guitar melody in a strange tuning that led to Serebii putting the whole song together in a day. It’s a reflection on the feeling of having been cast into the world with little more than some loose change and ending up back where you started, wondering what it was all about.
On new album single/title track "Dime" Serebii (aka Callum Mower) layers vocal harmonies on a sparse finger-plucked guitar for a delicate two minute track.
With his crooning falsetto Mower sings “Thought I’d never look back. Running a lie to keep on track.”
The typically quiet and humble artist recognized what he had captured in the song, and named it appropriately—a dime, as in a perfect ten. “I just remember being like, that’s a dime. I got my dime,” said Callum.
NZ-based Serebii releases this track ahead of upcoming LP Dime out March 28.
São Paulo based artist dadá Joãozinho released his critically acclaimed debut project for Innovative Leisure in 2023 which careens across musical universes like a psychedelic fever-dream - 13 distinct, yet porous movements shoplifting from samba, baile funk, dub, hip-hop & even punk while inventing a few future styles in the process. Like if Arthur Russell and Lee Perry co-owned a recording studio in Brazil producing for Jorge Ben. He returns with a follow-up EP
1997 is his follow-up LP and released in digital formats.
"Brilliant Album!" - GILLES PETERSON
"one of the coolest records of the year" - AMOEBA RECORDS
"as laid back as it is endlessly replayable" - THE FADER
"A dazzling collage of baile funk, hip-hop, and jazz" - REMEZCLA
"Paying homage to samba and bossa styles, Joãozinho sets modern production elements to his work by sampling the band he assembled, tearing it up, then chopping and flipping the arrangements. It’s heaven." - KCRW
Maria Chiara Argirò releases a bonus track from 2024's album, Closer. Look for upcoming, additional bonus tracks in 2025.