In October 2020 (19 Oct – 2 Nov), the Audio Foundation hosted Noa Records as artists in residence.

Noa Records is a creative vessel and emerging collective voice expressed as a record label, media archive and creative whānau. Through our work(s) we intend to unearth and present diverse creative outputs and perspectives from artistic practitioners based geo-spiritually within Aotearoa/Te Moana Nui a Kiwa.

During their residency, Noa whānau members Larsen Taylor (aka WhyFi.), David Feauai-Afaese (aka LEAO) and Navakatoa Tekela-Pule (aka Schofield Strangelove) hosted a series of group recording sessions. Each of these sessions was informed by conversation developed during faikava (kava drinking) rituals, themes emerging in day to day conversation, or reflections on the times in which we find ourselves globally, locally and personally. For the Noa whānau, “the incorporation of lali and pātē drums (island log drums) in these sessions helped to anchor our intentions in terms of our position and respective diasporas within Te Moana Nui a Kiwa (Pacific Ocean), seeking to create rhythms that reflect contemporary understandings and relationships to our cultural identities, acknowledging our multifaceted/multi-influenced being-ness in today’s world, while also sending our attention to traditional rhythms and ancestral intent.”

A variety of artists, musicians and friends of Noa Records passed through the space during the residency and contributed to the musical conversation. The Noa Residency recording sessions are being mixed and there are plans for overdubbing to take place at Audio Foundation with the intention of preserving the locative root of the music within the space.

Photography courtesy of Dylan Cook