Horn of Plenty chips in with Stefan Neville for this second outing from the Māpura Music project, a music making program situated in Auckland designed for people living with disabilities. As a concept it shares commonalities with the output of acts like Reynols and Triple Negative, as well as the UK's very own Heart N Soul organisation, offering, at its core, the opportunity to hear music from alternative and underprivileged perspectives. Agency is vital of course, and the shared ideology across these projects important to understand, but sonically Māpura Music is channeling something that extends beyond the context of its creators' circumstances and reaches into the rich vein of fringe music that underpins a lot of underground music from NZ and beyond. There's a freeness and spontaneity at work here that isn't avant garde in any accepted understanding, because its makers aren't institutionally grounded in the same way, but on a musical level it possesses a similar appeal, that sense of the road less travelled, of an instinct pursued. Clatter, drone, slide, repeat (or never do) - these aren't the accepted components of the rock/pop idiom, yet they're not entirely unfamiliar if you've spent time at the outer edges of DIY/lo-fi/noise/improv music making. Graham Lambkin has explored similar sounds across his Kye imprint, while you might also be reminded of misunderstood LPs by Prominent Disturbance and one time Swell Maps member, Richard Earl. What is different is that the people involved with Māpura Music are less frequently represented, their opportunities less obvious. That makes the project admirable, but it doesn't automatically make it interesting or enjoyable. Credit for that belongs to the people involved themselves and their willingness to follow where an instinct leads.
