Heavenly pop album celebrates music of New Zealand music icon Martin Phillips

New songs by New Zealand music icon Martin Phillips will ring out in early 2025, more than six months after his death.

A group of Kiwi musicians have collaborated to make the album, which is based on a collection of recordings and song fragments that Phillips had been working on for decades.

Friend and musician Dianne Swann told Morning Report that some of the songs were started almost 40 years ago.

"Martin had the idea of going back and recording them, but when he started looking at the songs he realised he needed … to tweak them a lot."

Phillips died in July aged 61 after a long battle with liver disease.

The album, Spring Board: The Early Unrecorded Songs, will be released by UK label Fire Records in February.

Swann said the album had been recorded over the last 18 months. She sings on three of the album's 20 tracks.

"I haven't heard the whole album yet. One of the songs I did sing on is called 'I Don't Want to Live Forever' and it's a very beautiful song, quite poignant."

Swann said news of the album's release would be "very bittersweet" for all those close to Phillips, who formed The Chills in 1980 sister Rachel Phillipps on keyboards, Jane Dodd on bass, guitarist Peter Gutteridge and drummer Alan Haig.

The band soon built a devoted New Zealand following, before branching out overseas and finding success in Europe and the US.

"You always want to be putting music out if you're a musician and a songwriter, that's your whole thing," Swann said.

"Martin worked really, really hard through sickness to finish it. I would say it meant a lot to him."

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