Connan Mockasin

New Zealand songwriter Connan Mockasin crafts spiraling psychedelic pop tunes laced with sweetness and disorientation, drawing influence from 1970s soft rock, smooth jazz, and little-known acid-damaged acts spanning several decades. Beyond his own catalog of solo releases, he frequently collaborates and produces for others, contributing tracks to Charlotte Gainsbourg, joining the sleazy glam funk outfit Soft Hair, and issuing joint material with his father as the 2021 album It's Just Wind. That same year also brought his largely instrumental solo effort Jassbusters Two.

Born Connan Hosford in the coastal settlement of Napier, he encountered music early through his father’s guitar playing. At age five he laid down his first recording, an occurrence that aligns with the playful, inventive, and experimental character of his later output. In 2004 he launched the band Connan & the Mockasins, issuing a pair of independent EPs and performing in New Zealand before relocating to England. Finding the group format too restrictive for personal expression, Hosford disbanded it and returned to New Zealand to pursue solo work under the Connan Mockasin moniker.

At his mother’s urging he began self-producing an album, commandeering his parents’ house during their workday to shape his debut, Please Turn Me into the Snat, a fully realized collection of inventively eccentric psychedelic pop. After sharing stages with Crowded House and Micachu & the Shapes in 2010, his music reached label owner, producer, and DJ Erol Alkan via friend and collaborator Sam Eastgate of Late of the Pier. Although Alkan initially envisioned releasing several tracks as an EP, he became enamored with the full recording and chose it as Phantasy Sound’s inaugural album. In 2011 the project appeared as Forever Dolphin Love on Phantasy Sound and Because Music, the latter edition including a bonus disc of live material. In 2012 Connan Mockasin wrote and performed on Charlotte Gainsbourg’s “Out of Touch,” then toured New Zealand in support of Radiohead.

His follow-up, Caramel, continued the narrative thread of Forever Dolphin Love and surfaced in November 2013. In 2015 he and Blood Orange’s Devonté Hynes created the opening chapter of Mexican Summer’s Myths Series, capturing a set of semi-improvised pieces in Marfa, Texas. The following year he joined British musician Sam Dust, previously known for his LA Priest solo work, to form the glammy, experimental sleaze-pop duo Soft Hair, which delivered a self-titled album in 2016. For his subsequent solo endeavor, Mockasin sustained his conceptual bent by completing a five-part homemade absurdist film titled Bostyn 'n Dobsyn, a project he stated had originated two decades earlier. The film was accompanied by his next album, 2018’s Jassbusters, also the name of a fictional group within the story.

In subsequent years he contributed to sessions with MGMT and James Blake, then in 2021 issued It's Just Wind, a wholly improvised recording made with his father several years earlier. November 2021 saw the arrival of his fourth album, Jassbusters Two, a jazzy, drifting collection that moved further from pop structures toward understated vocals or fully instrumental pieces.