Various: The Coleman Sessions

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald Rating: * * *)

Just as the young person's rock station gets its Auckland signal back to full strength after losing its old frequency, Channel Z releases an all-local, 17-track collection from live-at-York-St-studio sessions hosted by DJ James Coleman — you might recognise him as one of the towering talents on TV3's The Panel as he drapes himself about the place in the artwork.

It's an assortment of established names (Pacifier, Tadpole, feelers, goodshirt, Pluto) and up and comers, with a couple of excursions outside guitar groups in P-Money and Scribe's The X-Pedition and the Black Seeds' Coming Back Home. Elsewhere, it's a pity some bands didn't take the lead of Pacifier, who contribute a largely acoustic version of Run and use their red-light time to try a different take on familiar material. Still, there's a couple of unfamiliar gems (Cassette's Ain't That Bad, the Heavy Jones Trio's Starting at the Ocean), and some of the other performances have an appealing one-take urgency.

Label: Warner