Pickle Darling’s new album, Bots: “A lot of my life leaks into the recording”

On September 5, Pickle Darling (Ōtautahi’s Lukas Mayo) has a new album coming out. It will be their fourth in six years and, judging by the three tracks already released, it’s going to be another lo-fi joy from one of the country’s most inventive artists. 

Lukas says that Bots—more on the title soon—”was assembled from fragments”. As with all their music, it’s a home-recorded affair.

“I have the Logic Pro project file in front of me and just attack it in lots of different directions at once, as opposed to trying to capture a song. So a song could be made up of fragments recorded years apart. Though I’d imagine in 2025 that’s probably how every single bedroom producer makes music. I definitely don’t like to hide the production behind any cleverness though, I’m more excited about showing the seams, letting the hiss in, letting the clicks in, things like that. I only have one mic and don’t have a soundproof room so a lot of my life kind of leaks into the recording.”

As a result, Lukas says that Bots is “a little more chopped up” than their earlier albums. 

“My own tastes still kind of bring it in line with the rest of my discography so I can’t pretend it’s a radical shift, but my approach was definitely a lot different. I wasn’t thinking in terms of writing songs, I was more trying to think of each track as a kind of recording/production piece. The ‘songs’ kind of emerged through the actual production, if that makes sense.”

So if their process has evolved, how different will the music itself be? Lukas isn’t sure. “Honestly when I’m making something it always feels like a big shift from a creative point of view, but who knows how much that actually comes across to the listener!”
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The official pre-release announcement calls it “an album built from fragments, from warped sounds and half-memories, stitched together into something that still somehow pulses with life.” That’s not necessarily a recipe that most musicians would want to follow, or could do well with. But Pickle Darling isn’t like most musicians.

Teasers: Songs and games we’ve already played
Four of the album’s eight songs are already streaming, most recently ‘Congratulations Champion’, which appeared on Spotify about an hour before we published this article and has the other three pre-releases compiled in as b-sides. A sort of Semi-Bot.

Poppy earworm ‘Massive Everything’ is one of the best songs of the year so far. “I’m a big fan of Robyn, 2000s Madonna, Donna Lewis, especially when they have these kind of empathetic pop songs. Especially Robyn. I wanted to write a love song that was clear and communicative and purposeful and didn’t hide behind any cleverness or poetry. The ‘massive everything’ was just my label for the kind of overwhelming weight that you have to quietly live with, how everyone has their own hidden wound that colours their entire life,” Lukas says.

Other influences will come through on the album. Lukas says, “When I was making Bots, I was listening to a lot of Four Tet, Burial, The Wrens/Car Colors, Madonna, Beth Orton, Pet Shop Boys…I feel like as a musician I’m always trying to be either Elliott Smith or Pet Shop Boys, I like those two extremes but I never want to be in between.”

Bots hasn’t only been teased by singles. Early May saw the surprise release of Pickle Darling: The Game, a fittingly lo-fi quest that invites you to “play as legendary NZ rockstar PICKLE DARLING as you navigate through a very normal ALBUM RELEASE day!!”

​The game’s a throwback to 8-bit gaming (remember the Commodore 64 or ZX Spectrum?) that pits you, as a heavily pixelated Pickle Darling, against your own insecurities and a few other things that get in the way of your new album launch. It’s fun and funny, and Lukas reckons it’s “pretty easy”. About 700 people have played it so far, and “if they didn’t finish it, shame on them!”

With a mild spoiler alert, I can tell you that the game’s funniest moment comes when Pickle Darling meets a personification of the New Zealand music industry.
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Pickle Darling: “Why do you hate me?” 
NZ music industry: “We don’t hate you. Why does every Christchurch band ask the same thing?” 

Does Christchurch have a chip on its shoulder? An inferiority complex? Or are the rest of us overlooking something down there?

Lukas says, “Ōtautahi has an amazing music scene. The standard is so high in general but I think it’s still kind of hidden away from the NZ music industry world. It’s no one’s fault, it’s just a matter of proximity and population, but it’s wild how underrepresented South Island musicians are in terms of industry support. I don’t wanna seem bitter though, everyone’s trying their hardest!”

Losing the Battle
Originally announced under the name Battlebots in July, the album was hastily rechristened Bots a few days later. Not ideal after artwork, merch and a first round of PR are all locked in. It sounds like the stuff of duelling lawyers at high noon, or at least a couple of threatening letters, but not the way Lukas tells it.

​“We were told by BattleBots that we couldn’t use the name! So we changed it. No beef at all!”

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Here’s five-and-a-half minutes of robots totally smashing each other. And sometimes throwing flames. I wouldn’t wanna beef with these guys either.

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Before the album’s name change, Battlebots was described as “a reference to clashing ideologies—internally and externally, between past and present versions, between the desire to create something and the frustration of the process. It’s a reflection of how our thoughts never settle, how music is never really about one singular thing, how an album can hold a hundred tiny conflicts at once”. After the change, Lukas’s glass-half-full take is that the new name is “quicker to say”.

The redesigned cover is wordless now. Its art continues a long-term partnership with Heather Marigold, who has illustrated every Pickle Darling album. Lukas says it’s “a woodcut print (I think that’s the term), and I think it’s my favourite album cover of mine. It feels kind of iconic, and I think the two hands remind me of a bunch of other iconic album covers; the Antlers, Godspeed, etc.”

It’s party time on the 27th
​You’ll get the chance to look beyond the cover and preview Bots at a Bandcamp listening party on August 27. After that it will be out for real on September 5 (vinyl/CD preorders are open, and my goodness I want one of those companion comic books), and we’ll have a review up just as soon as we can.