More Whispering Waves - 18 Silken Hits For The Gin Palace Or Crib (c. 1997)

More Silken Hits -- NZ AO-/Soft-/Yacht-Rock from the Seventies and Eighties -- brought to you by the same faceless megacorp who comp'd your Silicon Hits. 

A second tasteful selection of upbeat soothers -- from love bug Anna Leah’s hooky-af self-penned slow jam to the sound of a seaside afternoon cafe quintet; plus a New Age James K Baxter bossanova, teenage rock’n’rollers now relaxed and all grown up, and ex-‘Nature’-ists salacious snakebit soul. Forgotten and underrecorded folks like Fire Exit and Jade — here rescued from RNZ’s Radio Trax promo LPs — cheek to cheek with peeps on sweet boutiques like Tartar and Charisma, and those on heavy-hitting acronyms EMI, CBS & RCA. 

Sleek, streamlined and satiny, this collection uncovers and uplifts uncoloured funk, throbbing grunty grooves, and effervescent weltschmerz from these tanned and glassy bands, featherlight singer-songsters, shimmering studio whizzes, session legends, rising stars and also-rans.

And Prisms The Ocean

Whispering Waves - 18 Silken Hits For The Gin Palace Or Crib (c. 1996)

From the folks who brought you the Silicon Hits series, comes the first(?) Silken Hits compilation of the best of NZ's Soft-/Adult-Oriented-/Yacht-Rock.

These tracks from '72 - '83 serve up a soft and sunny coupling of singer/songwriter & soul sensitivities, mixed with disco & funk lubricity and produced in second string Steely Dan sophistication. Sometimes there's sax or brass, maybe a string section, almost always an electric piano. Tune in to tight & dirty grooves, seriously cheesy sleaze, elegant arrangements, pastoral post-disco chill-outs, bouncy soul serenades and country funk ballads.

Dismissed at the time by supercilious hipsters (and now championed by the same), these smooth'n'lite sounds soothe and swaddle and deserve a second and third listen in these nervous times. Suck up the sensual sentimentality, luxuriate in the pricey production, and bob your noggin to the rhythms of Whispering Waves.


I Want The Sand In My Shoes, I Want The Wind In My Hair [link removed]