Having a plan is good for getting it done, if Troy Kingi (Te Arawa, Ngāpuhi, Te Whānau-ā-Apanui) is anything to go by.
The Kerikeri-based artist only started pursuing music-making in earnest six or seven years ago, but has already released five albums and claimed several industry awards – most recentlythe 2021 APRA Silver Scroll for All Your Ships Have Sailed, from his 2020 album The Ghost Of Freddie Cesar.
"I've been following the Silver Scrolls for many years," says Kingi, "since before I even embarked on my own journey, so to get one's a little bit surreal. We don't do our music for awards, but if you're going to win one, I feel like this is the one."
Freddie Cesar was the fourth record in Kingi's 10 10 10 series, a challenge the artist set himself to record 10 albums in 10 years, in 10 genres.
"I didn't know where I sat in the spectrum of sound," he says of his motivation for the project. "I really enjoyed all sorts of different styles of music, and if I was going to combine it all into one album it would feel quite clunky and not really flow.
"You could easily find your niche and just stick with it and do really well, but I think I'd get really bored. It's nice knowing that you've got something fresh coming up. It's quite scary, you don't know where you're going to end up, but it's good knowing that you've got work, regardless of not knowing what that work is just yet."
Black Sea Golden Ladder, which came out amid the Covid chaos of 2021, marks the halfway point of Kingi's endeavour. For the folk-focused record, Kingi chose to work with Lyttelton-based savant Delaney Davidson, who – already entrenched in the genre – helped keep the process both efficient and true to form.
With Black Sea's tour plans derailed several times due to changes in alert level settings, the release of Kingi's 2022 LP has been slightly delayed. But rest assured, it's ready to go and will be out before the year is. This album's focus is 80s synth sounds that hark back to Kingi's own childhood:
"I've always thought of [that era] as the cheesy sound of the history of music, which is weird because I was born smack-bang in the middle of it. But it was good getting real deep into it. At the core, I suppose it was just finding nostalgic sounds that took me back to my childhood."
Also upcoming is a te reo Māori version of Holy Colony Burning Acres (2019), titled Pū Whenua Hautapu Eka Mumura. That release is currently pencilled for the first day of the first-ever official celebration of Matariki in Aotearoa, on June 24.
Kingi is enthusiastic about the new public holiday, saying: "It's just another awesome chance to learn tikanga kawa history and ways that Māori lived in days gone by, and to learn it in a modern context as well. It can only be a good thing, I reckon. And it's always good to have another relaxing day off."
