SIERRA

12th January 2024

Arjuna Oakes and John Psathas return for a new

collaborative project ‘Sierra’ after their underground hit ‘Future Lullaby’. Fusing Greek folk instrumentation with modern Jazz and recorded live in Athens’ iconic Sierra Studios, this EP brings together electrifying musicians from New Zealand and Greece to experiment and express themselves through the lens of Oakes and Psathas’ compositions.

After creating the music in a remote beach town in New Zealand, Arjuna and John assembled an all-star lineup of musical talent to bring the music to life, including New Zealand drummer Sam Notman, and renowned Greek musicians Harris Lambrakis (Ney), Kyriakos Tapakis (Oud), Vagelis Karipis (Percussion) and Dimitris Tsekouras (Upright Bass). Recorded by legendary audio engineer George Kariotis over two days, the EP is a testament to each player’s unique musical voice and their ability to forge a common language out of musical traditions found at opposite ends of the earth.

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Future Lullaby

30th December 2022

Future Lullaby - EP is a collection of four heartfelt songs written and produced by Arjuna Oakes and renowned composer John Psathas.

The pair met in 2020 when Arjuna was a recipient of the NZ Arts Foundation’s inaugural spring board award which came with a mentorship from any of their alumni, and Arjuna chose John as his mentor. The two quickly became friends and started making music together, soon discovering that they had a unique creative partnership. Though their approach to making music differed, they shared a collective understanding on how to make musical ideas hit home emotionally. The collaboration created four beautiful tracks all embedded with complex themes and heartfelt raw emotion. The 2nd track Safe Way To Fall (released as a single earlier this year) was chosen to be performed by the NZSO along with Arjuna and John in June 2023. Arjuna and John have plans to create more music together in the future, this is just the beginning.

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Final Days

14 October 2022

Final Days is the second collaborative EP from friends and frequent collaborators Arjuna Oakes and Serebii, released on Innovative Leisure records (Badbadnotgood, Allah-Lahs).

Arjuna Oakes and Serebii, a.k.a. Callum Mower, met while playing sold out shows together, but they knew then that it was just the beginning of something bigger. They were serving as hired guns in a popular surf rock band, touring their native Aotearoa New Zealand in mid-size venues, tearing it up, helping others realize their musical vision. That was great, but the friendship forged between the two of them in the process was the real bounty: “We got on like a house on fire,” says Mower. “And we’d end up sticking together through festivals or hanging out at parties.”

“Just like a brother,” Oakes jumps in.

Back in their base of Wellington, Oakes and Mower kept hanging out and playing together—except this time they were making music more like what was calling to them personally. When Oakes was working on his solo work—jazzy chill-hop with an alt-rock twist—he would call on Mower to pop in to help with some of his velvet-y production skills. And when Mower needed a killer voice or a compositional tweak on something he was working on—often psych-infused grooves—he had Oakes on speed-dial. It wasn’t long before they realized that they should be working together in earnest.