So So Modern Release ‘Light Years’ EP
Today is the day! Pōneke post-punks So So Modern have finally shared their latest record, and their first new material in 13 years – the Light Years EP. Out now, the EP has an exclusive vinyl release courtesy of a recent ongoing collaboration between Flying Nun Records and Holiday Records – each with their own exclusive colour variant, limited to 150 copies of each.
Buy Flying Nun Pink + White Vinyl LP
Buy Holiday Records Orange + Black Vinyl LP
Light Years is So So Modern’s latest offering. A collection of songs written in the decade since their last release, the twenty-something-year-old post-punk band have for years defied convention for how a group should operate or sound. Today the band resembles less the four young, unknowing friends who started this journey in the mid-2000’s but more an extended family, bound through intersecting lives and close-knit community.
The musical landscape has since overtaken them with speed and saturation, but SSM have stuck to the path of the slow and steady – because time beats everything. Whilst the band’s sound has garnered a reputation for complex, chaotic convergences of guitars, synthesisers and rhythm, the songs in Light Years are about clarity, restraint and simplicity – an acknowledgement and misremembering of the straightforward hardcore punk and pop that inspired them as teenagers.
Light Years represents time, distance and the entanglement of life, although it is unclear if this is in relation to a distant past or the horizon of the future. The limited 12” vinyl release by Flying Nun Records and Holiday Records is accompanied by the illuminating artwork of Lily Paris West.
So So Modern emerged from Te Whanganui-a-Tara as one of the country’s most adventurous and internationally acclaimed bands of the late 2000’s. Fusing the urgency of post-punk, the precision of math rock, and the pulse of electronic music, the band built a formidable reputation from early A Low Hum shows through to relentless international touring, sharing stages with artists such as Foals, CSS, Deerhoof, and Dirty Projectors, performing more than 150 shows a year across Europe, the UK, and North America at their peak.
The band released a series of acclaimed 7-inch singles and their debut album Crude Futures through influential UK independent label Transgressive Records, helping establish them as one of New Zealand’s most successful international underground exports.
Their explosive live performances and boundary-pushing sound drew widespread critical acclaim. NME praised the band for creating music that “weld[s] together successfully the disruptive qualities of post-punk with the discipline of math-rock,” while The Guardian memorably described them as sounding “like Klaxons and Kraftwerk together.”
Now shaping their optimistic, apocalyptic, apocamystic future, SSM returns as the original line up of Daniel, Aidan, Grayson and Mark – a testimony to their long-lasting musical friendship.
To celebrate releasing Light Years, the band are playing All Ages & R18 sets at Newtown Community Centre in November! Limited tickets for a limited capacity for a limited time. Supports TBA.
