Latest news with #Aseurai
Scoop
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scoop
PHOEBE RINGS Release Their ‘Quietly Beautiful' Debut Album Aseurai
June 6, 2025: Tāmaki Makaura dream-pop quartet Phoebe Rings – dubbed an 'indie supergroup' by RNZ given its members' involvement in other notable projects such as Tiny Ruins, AC Freazy, Princess Chelsea, Fazerdaze and Lucky Boy^ – today release their anticipated debut album Aseurai via Carpark Records with the focus track 'Playground Song', alongside a string of new live dates including supporting Japanese Breakfast in Auckland tomorrow night + their first live shows in South Korea and Japan this month (full details below). Stream/order Aseurai HERE. A lullaby-like, cyclical track which reflects on childhood friendship and nostalgia, focus track ' Playground Song ' features stereo acoustic guitars, warm synth textures, and gentle wave-like noises, with its centrepiece – a flute solo played by Lukas Fritsch – adding a dreamy, reflective touch. It's released alongside its floral-adorned live performance video directed by Nahyeon Lee – watch HERE. On Aseurai, Phoebe Rings continue to explore their disco and city-pop influences while staying true to the dream-pop sound of their self-titled debut EP released last year. 'Aseurai means around you in the atmosphere, hard to reach, fading away,' singer Crystal Choi says, 'it's a poetic expression. You wouldn't say it in normal conversation, but I like that.' Across its four singles so far – 'Aseurai', 'Drifting', 'Get Up' and 'Fading Star' – the album has garnered praise from international outlets like Pitchfork, FLOOD, Beats Per Minute, Rolling Stone, frankie, Happy, Northern Transmissions and Paste Magazine, who said the album finds the band 'sharply in the pocket that makes them terrific.' While Phoebe Rings – named for the outermost ring around Saturn which is known to be the largest, but the least visible – was originally a solo project of singer Crystal Choi, who is also a university-trained jazz pianist, Aseurai marks a shift with contributing songwriting credits from the whole band, which includes guitar/synthesist Simeon Kavanagh-Vincent, bassist Benjamin Locke and drummer/producer Alex Freer. With a more ambitious collection of instruments, Choi says this album heralds the start of true collaboration: 'I feel more precious about this LP because it includes everyone's gems.' The broth is richer with more cooks in the kitchen, and the brewing of textures creates a distinct ' Phoebe Rings ' sound. If their S/T EP was spacey, then Aseurai settles on earth, rooted in tangible moments. 'Without getting too gloomy, it's a weird world out there. A lot has changed in the world since the EP came out,' says Kavanagh-Vincent on this transformation. The album delves into hope and longing across all possibilities, and this exploration of holding on and letting go is organically threaded throughout. They mark out a brilliant new constellation in their sky, bringing their individual compositions to the fore whilst seamlessly threading them into one celestial body all underpinned by their ongoing inspirations: Studio Ghibli films, Zelda and Stardew soundtracks, Bossa Nova, Stereolab, and 90's Korean ballads. Phoebe Rings' storytelling ranges from tongue-in-cheek musings on gentrification, to commentary on the housing crisis (' Mandarin Tree '), musicians moving on in their careers (' Fading Star '), finding small oases in everyday life (' Not A Necessity ') and tender autobiographical memories – including on the title-track and 'B lue Butterfly ' both wrapped in grief, Crystal yearns for people she can't see anymore, in this case her late grandmother who she was separated from for a large period of her life (she also thinks that's why she wrote ' Aseurai ' in her mother tongue of Korean, in a way using it to be closer to her grandmother through song and shared language), ' Get Up ' on which drummer Benjamin Locke talks of the paralysis of extended periods of struggling with mental health and leaning on the famous scene from The Matrix to try to will yourself out of it, and ' Goodnight ', a tender, loving ode to our cats and the comfort they bring us.
Scoop
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scoop
PHOEBE RINGS Release Their 'Quietly Beautiful' Debut Album Aseurai
June 6, 2025: Tāmaki Makaura dream-pop quartet Phoebe Rings - dubbed an "indie supergroup" by RNZ given its members' involvement in other notable projects such as Tiny Ruins, AC Freazy, Princess Chelsea, Fazerdaze and Lucky Boy^ - today release their anticipated debut album Aseurai via Carpark Records with the focus track 'Playground Song', alongside a string of new live dates including supporting Japanese Breakfast in Auckland tomorrow night + their first live shows in South Korea and Japan this month (full details below). Stream/order Aseurai HERE. A lullaby-like, cyclical track which reflects on childhood friendship and nostalgia, focus track ' Playground Song ' features stereo acoustic guitars, warm synth textures, and gentle wave-like noises, with its centrepiece - a flute solo played by Lukas Fritsch - adding a dreamy, reflective touch. It's released alongside its floral-adorned live performance video directed by Nahyeon Lee - watch HERE. On Aseurai, Phoebe Rings continue to explore their disco and city-pop influences while staying true to the dream-pop sound of their self-titled debut EP released last year. 'Aseurai means around you in the atmosphere, hard to reach, fading away,' singer Crystal Choi says, 'it's a poetic expression. You wouldn't say it in normal conversation, but I like that.' Across its four singles so far - 'Aseurai', 'Drifting', 'Get Up' and 'Fading Star' - the album has garnered praise from international outlets like Pitchfork, FLOOD, Beats Per Minute, Rolling Stone, frankie, Happy, Northern Transmissions and Paste Magazine, who said the album finds the band 'sharply in the pocket that makes them terrific.' While Phoebe Rings - named for the outermost ring around Saturn which is known to be the largest, but the least visible - was originally a solo project of singer Crystal Choi, who is also a university-trained jazz pianist, Aseurai marks a shift with contributing songwriting credits from the whole band, which includes guitar/synthesist Simeon Kavanagh-Vincent, bassist Benjamin Locke and drummer/producer Alex Freer. With a more ambitious collection of instruments, Choi says this album heralds the start of true collaboration: 'I feel more precious about this LP because it includes everyone's gems.' The broth is richer with more cooks in the kitchen, and the brewing of textures creates a distinct ' Phoebe Rings ' sound. If their S/T EP was spacey, then Aseurai settles on earth, rooted in tangible moments. 'Without getting too gloomy, it's a weird world out there. A lot has changed in the world since the EP came out,' says Kavanagh-Vincent on this transformation. The album delves into hope and longing across all possibilities, and this exploration of holding on and letting go is organically threaded throughout. They mark out a brilliant new constellation in their sky, bringing their individual compositions to the fore whilst seamlessly threading them into one celestial body all underpinned by their ongoing inspirations: Studio Ghibli films, Zelda and Stardew soundtracks, Bossa Nova, Stereolab, and 90's Korean ballads. Phoebe Rings' storytelling ranges from tongue-in-cheek musings on gentrification, to commentary on the housing crisis (' Mandarin Tree '), musicians moving on in their careers (' Fading Star '), finding small oases in everyday life (' Not A Necessity ') and tender autobiographical memories - including on the title-track and 'B lue Butterfly ' both wrapped in grief, Crystal yearns for people she can't see anymore, in this case her late grandmother who she was separated from for a large period of her life (she also thinks that's why she wrote ' Aseurai ' in her mother tongue of Korean, in a way using it to be closer to her grandmother through song and shared language), ' Get Up ' on which drummer Benjamin Locke talks of the paralysis of extended periods of struggling with mental health and leaning on the famous scene from The Matrix to try to will yourself out of it, and ' Goodnight ', a tender, loving ode to our cats and the comfort they bring us.
Scoop
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scoop
Phoebe Rings Joins Japanese Breakfast As Support For The Auckland Winter Series
Press Release – Live Nation Entertainment TĀMAKI MAKAURAU AUCKLAND (MAY 29, 2025) – Live Nation is proud to announce local act Phoebe Rings will join Japanese Breakfast at the Auckland Winter Series line up at the Auckland Town Hall this June. Tickets to their June 7 show are on sale now. Well known for their signature blend of Jazz-inspired dream-pop sounds Phoebe Rings formed in 2019. Having created a loyal fanbase since opening for The Beths, and releasing their self-titled EP last October, Phoebe Rings will be debuting their forthcoming LP Aseurai, out June 6. Made up of lead singer/synthesist Crystal Choi, drummer Alex Freer, guitar/synthesist Simeon Kavanagh-Vincent, and bassist Benjamin Locke, they join U.S. band Japanese Breakfast who will perform for the first time ever in Aotearoa next month as part of the Auckland Winter Series. After a decade making the most of improvised recording spaces set in warehouses, trailers and lofts, Japanese Breakfast 's fourth album, For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women), marks the band's first proper studio release out on March 21st. Produced by Grammy Award winner Blake Mills — an innovator of uncommon subtlety, known for his work with everyone from Bob Dylan to Fiona Apple and quietly regarded as many a legacy artist's favorite guitar player — and tracked at the venerable Sound City in Los Angeles — birthplace of After The Gold Rush, Fleetwood Mac and Nevermind among other classics — the record sees front-woman and songwriter Michelle Zauner pull back from the bright extroversion that defined its predecessor Jubilee to examine the darker waves that roil within, the moody, fecund field of melancholy, long held to be the psychic state of poets on the verge of inspiration. The result is an artistic statement of purpose: a mature, intricate, contemplative work that conjures the romantic thrill of a gothic novel. For Melancholy Brunettes follows a transformative period in Zauner's life during which her 2x GRAMMY nominated breakthrough album Jubilee and her bestselling memoir Crying In H Mart catapulted her into the cultural mainstream, delivering on her deepest artistic ambitions. Reflecting on that success, Zauner came to appreciate the irony of desire, which so often commingles bliss and doom. ' I felt seduced by getting what I always wanted,' she says. ' I was flying too close to the sun, and I realized if I kept going I was going to die.' The plight of Icarus and other such condemned ones lends For Melancholy Brunettes its most persistent theme, the perils of desire. Like light dispersed, its spectral parts take the album's characters through cycles of temptation, transgression and retribution. On the album's lead single ' Orlando in Love ' — a riff on John Cheever's riff on Orlando Innamorato, an unfinished epic made up of 68 ½ cantos by the Renaissance poet Matteo Maria Boiardo — the hero is a well meaning poet who parks his Winnebago by the sea and falls victim to a siren's call, his 69th canto (even in the lofty realm of classical myth Zauner has a soft spot for innuendo). Sadness is the dominant emotional key of this record, but it is sadness of a rarified form: the pensive, prescient sadness of melancholy, in which the recognition of life's essentially tragic character occurs with sensitivity to its fleeting beauty. Zauner finds space enough inside it for glimmers of hope. They are the consolations of mortals that poets before her have called out to and that poets after will continue to rediscover: love and labor, and though they run like tonic resolutions through the record's many episodes. Japanese Breakfast performs The Melancholy Tour for one night only at Auckland Town Hall in June 2025 as part of Live Nation's Auckland Winter Series.
Scoop
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scoop
PHOEBE RINGS Share Talking Heads Inspired New Single 'Fading Star'
May 8, 2025: Rising Tāmaki Makaurau band, Phoebe Rings share 'Fading Star,' the charming new single from their forthcoming debut album, Aseurai, due June 6th on Carpark Records. Fading Star is the final single to be released from Aseurai and follows 'Aseurai', 'Drifting' and 'Get Up', which have seen support and acclaim from Pitchfork, Paste, Flood, Rolling Stone, Happy Mag, Northern Transmissions, plus adds to Spotify Fresh Finds AU&NZ. Phoebe Rings have just announced a 35-date US tour including supporting The Beths this Oct-Dec and a string of headline shows. The groove persists with 'Fading Star,' through which the dream pop quartet continues to evolve their sound by adding rhythms that snap into place and steely jazz/rock guitar solos. 'Fading Star' sees the group return to work with Punctum Productions and director Nahyeon Lee for their office themed music video, which was made with assistance from NZ On Air Music. 'Fading Star' was conceptualised by drummer and producer Alex Freer after seeing musicians and bands that he loved and respected tour NZ to smaller crowds, and feeling like the size of their audiences was not equal to the impact they had on his, and everyone else's lives. Freer shares, "'Fading Star' was built upon harmony inspired by city pop and disco jazz. I wanted the verses to have more of a Talking Heads/Orange Juice rudimentary groove while the choruses have twinkly, dreamy layers with string synth and warbly guitar. The bridge allows a moment of full disco excess with percussion, clavinet synth, and a tube screamer guitar solo.' To celebrate the release of 'Fading Star' and Te Marama Puoro o Aotearoa (NZ Music Month) Phoebe Rings will perform in-store at Real Groovy on May 16 with Bub and George Villa. The event kicks off at 6PM and entry is free!
