From the endlessly inspiring London based imprint, Horn of Plenty, comes Māpura Music, one of the year’s most conceptually and creatively engrossing releases to date. Gathering material recorded live between 2020 and 2023 by Stefan Neville’s initiative to facilitate the making of collaborative experimental and spontaneous music between disabled and neurodiverse people, living in Tāmaki Makaurau / Auckland, New Zealand, it’s a truly inspiring and creatively thrilling body of sonority rooted in the true spirit of what experimental music is all about.

Over the last few years, the London based imprint, Horn of Plenty, has emerged as a crucial voice in the landscape of contemporary sound. Led by the ears, heart, and principled vision of its founder Nick Hamilton, via releases by artists like Moniek Darge, Valentina Magaletti, Francis Plagne, Paul Chain, The Apostles, Nova Scotia, Annelies Monseré, Little Skull, Eyes Of The Amaryllis, and numerous others, Horn of Plenty has continuously looked beyond the beaten path and dominant trends, issuing important works that are bound as a band of outsiders under the label’s umbrella by the unifying force of singular artistic vision.

For more than 30 years, Stefan Neville has remained an active member of the most radical tributaries of the New Zealand underground, working in projects like Pumice, Blowfly Saint, Casagrante Apparatus, and numerous others, as well as producing a small body of solo and collaborative works with artists like Greg Malcolm, Anla Courtis, Tetuzi Akiyama, and others. In addition to all of his other activities, Neville also dedicates a significant amount of his time to working with disabled and neurodiverse people, leading to his development of the Māpura Music project in 2017, activating processes of spontaneous music making amongst this community. Meeting weekly under Neville’s belief that everyone can make music, the project embraces the extended tactics, techniques, and broad listening approaches of experimental music to create wild and wonderful collaborative music without rules or notions of right/wrong or good/bad, offering agency and centre stage to the voices and actions of these people.

Horn of Plenty’s beautifully produced LP dedicated to the music of Māpura Music - helped into being and co-curated by David Roeder (Nein Rodere) - is the first vinyl release dedicated to the project, following upon a handful of cassettes and digital only releases. Comprising 13 real-time compositions, recorded live between 2020 and 2023, Roeder states: “On surface level, this collection of improvised group jams verges towards the latter, but soon structures of a playfully melodic sensibility reveal themselves and references beyond the Corpus Hermeticum / Kye axis can be considered. This is neither avant noise nor is it sound collage, but it also barely adheres to any (western) folk, rock or pop song formats.”

A wildly original sound vision, Māpura Music is marked by a remarkable openness and intuitiveness at the borders of free improvisation and noise that sometimes feels like psychedelia coming apart at the seams as it clatters and writhes like a stormy sea. While undeniably connected to the tradition of “Art Brut”, the music that unfolds across the length of the LP proposes something deeper and more meaningful connected to the openness and legitimacy of the acts of collaboration and democratic language making at the root of experimental music.

Truly engrossing and inspiring on countless levels, Māpura Music is a triumph that has to be heard.