{"title":"Connan Mockasin","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"ade-connan-mockasin-its-just-wind-184923126105","title":"Ade \u0026 Connan Mockasin - It's Just Wind - Te Awanga Sunset Yellow Vinyl","description":"\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003carticle class=\"article-decorated\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eA few years in the not-so-distant past, a clairvoyant delivered an indelible message to Connan Mockasin. Inferring a project involving his father that had not yet been started, a woman he’d met only by chance told him: “You need to make it your priority, or you’ll regret it for the rest of your life”.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThough Connan and his father, Ade, had always joked that they’d make an album together, it was this extrasensory perception that summoned\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt’s Just Wind\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e— its name a retort used by Ade’s father “whenever he broke wind and caused a ruckus around him” — into the realm of the real. Ade had himself only recently hovered precariously between realms; suffering a sudden cardiac arrest which left him flatlined for 40 minutes, and then in a coma. “I couldn’t win a raffle if there were two tickets in a plastic bucket” he muses, “so the chances of surviving a coronary ... surviving was good luck.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eMatch struck against the box by future-seeing eyes, Connan proposed that the next of his yearly artist residencies at Mexican Summer’s Marfa Myths festival, in Marfa, Texas, be used to make the album that had been stirring in Ade for 40 years or more; for despite maintaining a lifelong interest in music, playing in various bands throughout the 1960s and 70s, recording sessions, and even making an album with his band The Autumn Stone, which survives only in the form of damaged master tapes — a fate he blithely aligns with the nearly-but-never-quite of\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eThe League of Gentleman’s\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eCreme Brulee — an Ade Hosford album had never yet tasted the air.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWith both label and medical sign-off, Ade left New Zealand on a desert-bound plane, armed with a children’s school exercise book of song ideas (“I wrote ‘POETRY’ on the front so the Americans didn’t see I was writing lyrics”). Aside from Ade’s notes, the album didn’t yet have a definite shape. Travel-weary, knee-deep in first-night margaritas, and on the precipice of going to bed, Connan and his band spontaneously upped instruments and began playing together in the studio they’d set up to start recording the next day. And, in a souplike stupor of which he has little memory (“I had a lot of nasty drugs pumped through me, my doctor at the time said it’d cooked the brain a bit”) Ade joined them, testing out bits of lyrics from his book, getting them wrong by accident, getting them wrong on purpose, cutting, sticking and ad-libbing through the fug, around Connan and Co.’s improvised arrangements, never quite sure of what the hell was going to come out next. When they listened back to what they’d captured on the 8-track cassette the next morning, they found that they had, somehow, committed the majority of an album to tape. “The whole recording was quite a fluke; it was the most natural recording I’ve ever been involved with,” reflects Connan. “It just seemed to be the right thing at the right time... There was a nice magic to it.” Ade concurs: “I got a bit emotional at one point, because the music was rolling right over the top of my head. I was standing facing the engineer and I had keyboards [John Carroll Kirby] one side, Connan [guitar, number two vocals], drummer [Matthew Eccles], bassist [Nicholas Harsant] the other side, and number two guitarist [Rory McCarthy, aka Infinite Bisous] right behind me, sitting on the couch, so I was completely enveloped. The sound roared over the top, and it got me.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAfter just a couple more days of mixing and tweaking, still in-situ in Marfa,\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt’s Just Wind\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ematerialised: as much one continuous piece of music, operating on its own auto-written dream-logic, as a series of ten discrete songs. It starts with the big, bad tale of ‘The Wolf’ — a twisted, bongwater-and-panpipes spoken-word rehash of the familiar tale over a drum-machine beat, featuring three porky little shits and a rent-demanding lupine landlord. Sandwiched between instrumentals that are sometimes like mist rolling around a mountain-top (‘Edge of Darkness’), sometimes smooth, breezy and just slightly jolty, like the tape has worn thin in places (‘It’s Just Wind’) and sometimes 68-second master strokes of squelchy weirdo-funkery (‘What It Are’) are snippets of mussed-up vocal interjection from Connan (‘Tight Waxing’), and gruff rhythm-and-blues-inflected observations of the seemingly mundane (“Thirty-two leaf \/ sixty-four pages \/ seven millimeter ruled”, Ade sings on ‘Stuck’ — a lyric pulled not from inside his notebook, but from its very material reality).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eTucked under the ruckus of jam, distortion, and wry surrealism, there’s also a quietly contemplative narrative thread. ‘Te Awanga’ tells of a 6-week journey, undertaken long ago in a metal boat, from a far-off land to a distant land. ‘Marfa’ laments the inevitability of the 9-5, and ‘Round Peg in a Square Hole’ considers the quiet melancholia of not fitting in. “It’s primarily a story about a guy who was born in London, England, and came to New Zealand as a young child ... just a matter of survival basically, a story of some guy surviving in a new land,” Ade surmises. The lines between the jest and the serious, the fictive and the lived, blur, as the plotline of\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIt’s Just Wind\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ebends gently around Ade’s own. Indeed, the cover art — a drawing of a former boss, found by Connan with a stash of other artwork in the roof of Ade’s house — is also plucked from Ade’s past. A quality of bittersweet self-reflection, redolent of Bowie’s\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBlackstar\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eor Cash’s\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAmerican IV\u003c\/em\u003e, pervades, as an old man, from a point of slight detachment, surveys his life like a landscape. Whiskey in hand, Ade looks across life and land both, from a porch, on final track ‘Clifton’. He laughs at it all. At slight remove from his debut album — to be released on the occasion of his 72nd birthday — he laughs at that too. “I’ve been listening to it every day for three years, and I still don’t understand it”.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBoth a lifetime in the making and utterly impromptu, it means everything and nothing. It is, after all, just wind.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e-Diva Harris, June 2021\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/article\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589443698989,"sku":"184923126105","price":26.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/MEX261_Ade-ItsJustWind_ProductShots-GoldLP_02.jpg?v=1729260926"},{"product_id":"connan-mockasin-jassbusters-two-184923128819","title":"Connan Mockasin - Jassbusters Two - Black Vinyl","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003carticle class=\"article-decorated\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eLimited to 500\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eAs a solitary janitor buffs the floor of a tired high school building, a furtively jazzy bassline slips under a door and down the hallway. It’s after hours in the teachers’ lounge; perhaps someone’s smoked a little confiscated weed. The leather-blazered and bemulletted faculty members of Connan Mockasin’s upside-down music department adjust their sock garters and try their strings, as Jassbusters, the most tangible band of imagined music teachers the world has never seen, prepares itself for a second stab at after-school stardom.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003ePulled from the same fictive universe as 2018’s\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJassbusters\u003c\/em\u003e, the shrewdly named\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJassbusters Two\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003emakes a languid counterpart to its predecessor – both albums were recorded by the aforementioned fictional band of schoolteachers from the as yet mostly unseen daytime TV miniseries\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eBost’n ‘n Dobs’n\u003c\/em\u003e, conceived, directed by, and starring Mockasin himself, and possibly coming to a late night cinema near you.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIn the mists of 2016,\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJassbusters\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ehad found its feet in Paris, and\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJassbusters Two\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ematerialised only shortly thereafter in 2017, three-and-a-half-thousand miles across the Atlantic. “\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJassbusters\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003ewas the first record I’d done as a band,” Connan reflects. “I really enjoyed it, and wanted to make more music while we were still in character as this group of music teachers.” At Gary’s Electric Studio in Brooklyn, New York, Mockasin, along with Jassbusters’ real-life counterparts (Nicholas Harsant on bass, Matthew Eccles on drums, and Rory McCarthy, aka Infinite Bisous, on rhythm guitar), freestyled across long live takes, weaving under, over, and straight through each other’s blurry riffs. “I was playing the role of the guitar teacher in the band, who was pushed into being the singer who didn’t have lyrics. So, like the first Jassbusters record, the lyrics were improvised, blurted out.”\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhile the band let loose with\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJassbusters\u003c\/em\u003e, its follow-up is so laid back as to be horizontal. Vocal improvisations — sometimes eerie, sometimes crooney, and often more shapeshifting, otherworldly sounds than definable words — slosh around Mockasin’s signature bent-over-backwards guitar arrangements. All here is smooth and unencumbered, viscous as a palmful of mercury. Opening track ‘Jass Two’, at first ghoulish and oversaturated, later sits back into its own mellow groove. The effortless flourishes of ‘K is for Klassical’ honour classical modes of play, Spanish-guitar-styled one second, and lutelike the next — though always with a maverick Mockasinian twist.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eKlassical sentiment overhangs into lead track ‘Flipping Poles’, a perfect spokesperson for the multitudes contained within\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJassbusters Two\u003c\/em\u003e’s whole; rules by turns strictly adhered to and determinedly defied; here, as elsewhere, genres seeping into one another gooily: playful stringwork meets school-noise nostalgia meets science fiction sound effect.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e‘In Tune’ and ‘Maori Honey’ see the jassers swap leather for polycotton frills at a perfect pastiche prom; first a low-key, loungey wig-out, then later a punch-drunk slow-dance number. As ‘She’s My Lady’ plays, the band wordlessly watch the sun come up on the parking lot — and yet another day of coffee-stained carpet and red pen — and ‘Shaved Buckley’ brings things to a close in a subtly forlorn fashion; a lament, perhaps, for the passing of youth and its unhampered throes, and a reminder of the clock that ticks inevitably towards middle-age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWith its bending of genre, a tinge of sensuality, and just enough wonk,\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJassbusters Two\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eperfectly follows both\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003e\u003cem data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJassbusters\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003c\/span\u003eand the wider Connan Mockasin canon, the artist’s playfulness, surreal characterisation, and improvisational knack melted down and spread into new directions; chopped, churned, and smoothed with a jazzer’s intuition, a country fingerpicker’s dexterity, and a funkster’s flow. Be you listener, player, or faculty member of the mind, this latest Mockasin master work invites you to forget the grind, just for a bit, and settle into the syrupy, boundless world of Jass.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/article\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589446254893,"sku":"184923128819","price":21.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/ReleaseProduct-246533-147254.jpg?v=1700161239"},{"product_id":"connan-mockasin-jassbusters-184923123814","title":"Connan Mockasin - Jassbusters - Black Vinyl","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003carticle class=\"article-decorated\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJassbusters is Connan Mockasin’s third album and first in five years. An unclassifiable, unconventional album that neither picks up from nor abandons the modes of 2013’s widely-embraced Caramel or its 2010 predecessor Forever Dolphin Love, Jassbusters foreshadows a five-part melodrama film titled Bostyn 'n Dobsyn, created by Mockasin. Jassbusters soundtracks the unpredictable narrative of the film in eclectic, electric ways.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhether bending genres or collaborating with artists like James Blake, MGMT, and Charlotte Gainsbourg, Connan Mockasin has always maneuvered in mysterious ways. After touring with the likes of Radiohead and Neil \u0026amp; Liam Finn (Crowded House), the R\u0026amp;B surrealist continues assembling a cult around his theater, nay spectacle of life with Bostyn 'n Dobsyn screenings and Jassbusters performances around the globe.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/article\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589446320429,"sku":"184923123814","price":24.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/MEX253_Connan_Mockasin_-_Jassbusters_Product_Shots_LP_Front.jpg?v=1755532178"},{"product_id":"connan-mockasin-jassbusters-184923123821","title":"Connan Mockasin - Jassbusters - CD","description":"\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\n\u003carticle class=\"article-decorated\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eJassbusters is Connan Mockasin’s third album and first in five years. An unclassifiable, unconventional album that neither picks up from nor abandons the modes of 2013’s widely-embraced Caramel or its 2010 predecessor Forever Dolphin Love, Jassbusters foreshadows a five-part melodrama film titled Bostyn 'n Dobsyn, created by Mockasin. Jassbusters soundtracks the unpredictable narrative of the film in eclectic, electric ways.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eWhether bending genres or collaborating with artists like James Blake, MGMT, and Charlotte Gainsbourg, Connan Mockasin has always maneuvered in mysterious ways. After touring with the likes of Radiohead and Neil \u0026amp; Liam Finn (Crowded House), the R\u0026amp;B surrealist continues assembling a cult around his theater, nay spectacle of life with Bostyn 'n Dobsyn screenings and Jassbusters performances around the globe.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/article\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589446353197,"sku":"184923123821","price":9.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/MEX253_Connan_Mockasin_-_Jassbusters_Product_Shots_CD_Front.jpg?v=1755532271"},{"product_id":"connan-mockasin-forever-dolphin-love-184923116625","title":"Connan Mockasin - Forever Dolphin Love - CD","description":"","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589446615341,"sku":"184923116625","price":7.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/195340.jpg?v=1700160953"},{"product_id":"connan-mockasin-caramel-184923117929","title":"Connan Mockasin - Caramel - CD","description":"","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47589446713645,"sku":"184923117929","price":9.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/195343.jpg?v=1700160981"},{"product_id":"connan-mockasin-caramel-gold-nugget-lp","title":"Connan Mockasin - Caramel - Gold Nugget Vinyl","description":"\u003carticle class=\"article-decorated\"\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e \u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(255, 42, 0);\"\u003eShipping out on or around \u003cspan class=\"end\"\u003eNovember 14, 2025\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eProduct Details:\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\n\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e \u003cspan\u003e140g Gold Nugget vinyl LP, housed in full color jacket.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhether bending genres or collaborating with artists like James Blake, MGMT, and Charlotte Gainsbourg, Connan Mockasin has always maneuvered in mysterious ways. After touring with the likes of Radiohead and Neil and Liam Finn (Crowded House), the R’n’B surrealist continues assembling a cult around his theater, nay spectacle of life.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCaramel boasts a unique brand of mutated, lustrous soul that was almost wholly self-recorded over a month in a Tokyo hotel room. Described by Clash Music as “a true cosmonaut of inner space,” the album explores different regions of Mockasin's singular galaxy, guided by his truly adventurous songwriting that favors reconfigured pop structures with a skewed funk sensibility.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/article\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51529876373805,"sku":"840460775939","price":26.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/MEX179_ConnanMockasin-Caramel_Mockup-LP-1.png?v=1759501030"},{"product_id":"connan-mockasin-forever-dolphin-love-silver-nugget-vinyl","title":"Connan Mockasin - Forever Dolphin Love - Silver Nugget Vinyl","description":"\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e \u003cspan style=\"color: rgb(255, 42, 0);\"\u003eShipping out on or around \u003cspan class=\"end\"\u003eNovember 14, 2025\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eProduct Details:\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli dir=\"ltr\"\u003e\n\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e \u003cspan\u003e140g Silver Nugget vinyl LP, housed in full color jacket.\u003c\/span\u003e\n\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOriginally released in 2010, Forever Dolphin Love remains a vital introduction to the strange and fantastical universe of Connan Tant Hosford. Following its release, Connan enjoyed a flurry of critical and artistic praise from the likes of David Byrne, Johnny Marr, Blood Orange's Dev Hynes and Charlotte Gainsbourg, with whom Connan is an ongoing collaborator.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere's a truly mercurial quality cast over the album, which is full of subtle idiosyncrasies that gradually reveal themselves after repeated listens. \"It's Choade My Dear\" and \"Faking Jazz Together\" are perfect slices of light-headed psych pop, constructed around spidery hooks, pitter-patter percussion and slow, sinuous grooves. The title track acts as the album's centerpiece - an ambitious suite that clocks in at over ten minutes; slithering through funk-filled interludes and lush passages into one of the album's most frantic and memorable hooks.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Mexican Summer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51529879486765,"sku":"840460775922","price":26.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0846\/5802\/8845\/files\/MEX166_ConnanMockasin-FDL_Mockup-LP-1.png?v=1759501204"}],"url":"https:\/\/mexicansummer.myshopify.com\/collections\/connan-mockasin.oembed","provider":"Mexican Summer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}