They’re solo with new tunes to share

Prior to his time with Kids of 88, McCarthy played bass alongside Joel Little and Jaden Parkes in Goodnight Nurse. Since wrapping Kids of 88, he’s moved to Los Angeles and released a debut album, a gentle electro masterpiece, as Boyboy.

Speaking with Stuff late last year, McCarthy said it took making the move overseas for him to really reach new heights as a solo artists.

‘‘I felt like I was maybe suffering the small community that is the New Zealand music scene.

‘‘It’s a blessing and a curse – it’s very nutritional to be able to grow something, but maybe the roof of the greenhouse is not very tall. You can reach a limit.’’

Meanwhile, Arts is now one fifth of the supergroup Leisure, co-founder of A Label Called Success, and is gearing up to release his debut album as HIGH HØØPS, a name he’s been making music under for near on five years.

Contrary to the pop-heavy nature of Kids of 88, Arts says the beauty of HIGH HØØPS comes in the way his personality is built into it. ‘‘It’s very me. I guess it’s like a play on different energies. Some tracks are really up and lively and dancey, then some songs that are really nice and baked, smoked out and lazy. It really is an extension of what I enjoy listening to.’’

Describing his forthcoming debut album Seasons On Planet Earth as ‘‘a cathartic trolley of tunes’’, Arts says it ‘‘pays homage to these different lives within the last four or five years’’.

‘‘It’s got this cross-section of all these different moments in my creative output. And they’re all seasonal, there are some sunny ones and there are some wintry ones. In a genre sense, it’s a little bit of R’n’B, a little bit of disco, and it’s nestled in this electronic world.’’

It prompts the question: has the Arts and McCarthy friendship survived not only the disbanding, but the pursuing of these entirely new projects?

‘‘He lives over in LA so we don’t talk as much as we used to, but he’s making music and he’s gone through some different creative wavelengths, too,’’ Arts says. ‘‘Seeing as we went through this massive Kids of 88 stage together, we were always going to come out of it with a new perspective. As human beings we’re still mates, but it’s almost like, creatively, we had to prove ourselves in our own way. It’s been cool watching him do his thing, and I guess it’s likewise for him. It’s all nice.’’

As for whether or not there’s a song from the Kids of 88 era Arts still loves listening to, he says there’s just one.

Tucan, the first single from the pair’s second album.

‘‘I didn’t think I’d have a favourite because it was such a hard and fast time, and I almost wanted to move on and go, ‘OK that was fun.’

‘‘[But] when we made Tucan, it was like this sign off, saying this is more so the real us.’’