09 August 2023 - 0 Comments

Wellington, New Zealand based songwriter and producer Raiden Freeman (real name Jack Mells) has released his new album DF2 (Deep Farm 2) on Bandcamp and streaming services via Bankrupt Records. This is the hotly anticipated sequel to his beloved 2017 album Deep Farm, a bona fide NZ classic.

The contrast to Mells' previous LP Within The Speed Limit Of Love is stark: moody performance is replaced with sharp upbeat, existential poetry is replaced with snappy humour, lo-fi crunch replaced with clear fidelity. It is a return to the spirit of the original Deep Farm, simple songcraft with sincere intent, bridged by voice memo recordings from Mells' friends and heroes. Also contrasting with Mells' previously established eclecticism, DF2's music style is primarily singer/songwriter alternative rock, albeit not without a few curveballs like the James Brown style jam If You Don't Want Me To, the Prince-esque Stop Messing Me Around, and the bizarre Beck inspired country-rap tirade Skip This S***. Mells wrote, played every instrument and self produced the entire project himself during the month of July 2023, but despite his continuing occupation as producer in a compositional sense he wants to remind audiences with this release that at the core he is just as much a songwriter as anybody else.

Lyrically the record is much less calculated and more whimsical than previous efforts, which lends a more stream-of-consciousness quality to the wordplay and composition. Topics range from confusion about love, to personal grievances with the local scene, to tall poppy syndrome, to the world viewed through autistic eyes, to the moon's gravity and quantum mechanics: on a line to line basis, nothing is off the table. With this record Mells wanted to try hanging up his astringency of the past to see what would happen with a less filtered approach, in many ways this gives the record a more personal quality than anything made prior. It is closer to the subconscious and closer to a broad emotional range than just despairing and overthinking - embracing lightness, humour, sarcasm and silliness.

DF2 is available on now Bandcamp and on all good streaming services.

Photo Credit: Nicola Sandford

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