Hello everyone,

Today I share with you my new album, French Politics by The Hectet. You can listen to it through whichever service you use, and you can buy it here:

The Hectet - French Politics

In case you forgot, we are playing a gig at Vogelmorn tonight, which I am very excited about. We are playing a couple new tunes, which are quite ambitious. I will also be singing Just Don’t Want To Be Lonely, based on the incredible version by Blue Magic.

I will try to explain the process of making this album. I studied French in school and spent a very impressionable month staying with a lovely Tunisian-French family in Vivières and going to school in Villers-Cotterêts when I was 15. The boy I was staying with was cool and older than me. He took me to parties and I had many wonderful new experiences with his friends and family. Because I was in northern France in April, my school was constantly dragging us into a bus to visit battle sites from WW1. “All our boys” etc. A few of these places really stuck with me, however.

In my late teens and early twenties I developed a Marxist world view, which has given me a keen interest in most things, but particularly history and political-economy. In around 2022, during the lead-up to the French presidential election that year, I found out that it was very difficult to find accurate and in-depth reporting on French politics in English. France has a very well-developed media system, where politicians etc. at all levels are interviewed on the radio and TV almost constantly. Whereas, a cabinet minister in Aotearoa can scrape through a whole term with maybe a single appearance on Q&A. I found listening to these interviews with people like Ian Brossat et al. to be a great way to improve my French and learn about what’s going on.

What struck me in these programmes was their profoundly different political culture and attitudes. French Politics is, largely, an exercise in comparative political analysis; an attempt to see New Zealand society through the lens of French political discourse and my relationships to both.

In 2023, I visited France a couple of times on tour with The Teskey Brothers, and had three weeks in Paris in 2024 while Lily was touring, bookended by a few days in London on either side. On this latter trip, I had gotten to thinking about music again, finishing the writing for Here Comes The Hectet at a piano studio in Montmartre. I saw lots of artworks that inspired me to try to combine my art and life, a daunting process that I had known to be inevitable for some years.

While I loved walking around Paris, I also felt an embarrassing insecurity and frustration with my level of spoken French, and an intense desire to belong. These feelings were key to the creation of this album. While briefly in London, I felt refreshing ease and confidence, catching up with lovely friends and family.

In January of 2025, I had recently recorded the first Hectet album, and completed my Honours degree. I spent a wonderful and therapeutic few days at April Brimer’s house coming up with the initial musical ideas for this album, doing puzzles and going out on my bicycle. I wanted the compositions to be less piano-centric, so I brought my Ensoniq SQ1 Plus and my tambourine to work with.

Soon after that, I started my first full-time job and the recording had to be booked for early-June, instead of late-July, to accommodate everyone’s availability. This meant that the work to develop these ideas, write them down, and arrange them for the group, had to be done in a very short and intense time-frame.

We recorded over two days (1-2 June 2025) at my parent’s house in Days Bay. Ben Lemi recorded the music very thoughtfully, with all of us doing live takes in one room. This style of recording produces a great live effect , but is very difficult. I found it sometimes challenging to express my ideas to the group, but I’m glad that I tried, as it turned out to be the dialogue of these differing forces that made the music how it is.

It goes without saying that I was very inspired by these friends and musicians: Phoebe Johnson, who played double bass; Jasper Holloway, who played guitar; Abey Sparks, who played drums; and Lily Shaw, who played saxophone. This was my first time recording with Abey, with whom I see eye to eye on many things musically, and it was my first time including saxophone. Lily’s signature tone was really perfect for these melodies and feelings.

I spent a long time (for me) not finishing the album. Instead, I clung to the rough bounces from the sessions throughout the winter months before recording my minor synth over-dubs in December. In early January of this year, I spent the morning of a 40-degree day in Melbourne at Cory Champion’s studio, working with him on the initial mix before we messaged about revisions for the rest of the month. Cory had contributed some equipment and ideas on microphone use/placement, and mixed the previous album. He did a wonderful job on this, and is very supportive and straight-up to work with.

Dave Cooley has mastered many albums that I love, and was very encouraging to me during the mastering of this and the previous record. It’s wonderful to be on the same page.

I had a realisation about the album artwork one morning. I love Ursula Bradley’s paintings and we had both been thinking about France in a certain way. Her depiction of a monument covered in scaffolding and construction wrap is perfect for this music. Though we are cousins, I met her for only the second time while in London after my trip to Paris. I called her up and she graciously agreed for the painting to be used.

A couple months ago, I admitted to myself that I was putting off releasing this music, under the guise of sending it to labels. So I set a date and here we are.

I am very excited for you all to hear this album. I think it’s great and I can’t wait to let you know about my new ideas and projects.

All the best,

Hector