Connan Mockasin (NZ)

Hailing from Te Awanga in New Zealand, Connan has spent the last few years in England, where inspirational artistic contacts are easier to find (his records are released by Erol Alkan), as is an understanding for his radically individualistic approach to music. Psychedelia, jazz, contemporary music, and avant-pop grow into a single, solid trunk that bears fruit in the form of recordings that can hardly be compared to anything else. But you have to hand it to one reviewer at “Drowned in Sound” for at least trying to describe the album Forever Dolphin Love (2011): “Picture Syd Barrett performing Pet Sounds. Like Brian Wilson, he’s not afraid of singing in an uncomfortably high register. At times sounding like a five-year-old Chinese girl warbling.”