The Festive Dozen 2015: Yoko-Zuna - This Place Here

It’s taking pleasure from the small things in life that keeps us smiling, isn’t it?

One of the biggest buzzes – from the smallest of treats – I got during the year happened every second month or so, when discovering a freshly wrapped bulging CD-sized package safely stowed away in my letter box, courtesy of NZ Musician magazine. Upon discovery, sometimes before I’d even made it all the way up the driveway, I’d excitedly open said package, completely blind to the delights (or otherwise) of the music the magazine had sent me to review. And who doesn’t like getting new music (in physical form) and a nice surprise in the post?

More often than not it was something I was vaguely familiar with, so I might have already formed some kind of opinion. But on the occasion back in September, when the debut album/CD of young Auckland jazz-hoppers Yoko-Zuna turned up there, I simply stared blankly back at it, scratching my head. That release, This Place Here, would quickly go on to become one of my most thrashed albums of the past few months … pretty much locking itself in as one of the blog’s albums of the year.

Here’s the title track for that work:

(The Festive Dozen is a fairly randomly selected year-end collection of clips featuring the tunes which featured most prominently on the (generally pop-loving) iPod playlists of everythingsgonegreen at various stages throughout 2015) ...