Favourite Five Recently Reviewed CDs
Five of the best albums from the recent postings at New Music From Elsewhere. Music too good to let slide into the archives. The Elsewhere place if you are looking for a quick fix of great and interesting albums.
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Elvis Presley: Way Down in the Jungle Room (RCA)
12 Sep 2016 | 1 min read
Golly gosh, the Beatles and Elvis Presley reviewed in the same week? Makes you wnder what century we are in. But the reissue of the Beatles album Live at the Hollywood Bowl (now equally billed as Eight Days a Week to link with the doco of that title) is the only official live album we have of them from their touring years . . . and this Elvis double CD are his final recordings, done at home... > Read more
Pitch Black: Filtered Senses (pitchblack.co.nz)
2 Sep 2016 | 1 min read
Longtime electronica artists Pitch Black out of Auckland were always in the vanguard of son et lumiere shows which could deliver punishing heart-hitting beats or drop the moods towards stateless, sonic landscapes of the mind. And also effortlessly bring in influences from dub and dancefloor. It has been some while since their last album – nine years during which the duo of... > Read more
Eva Prowse: Humid Nights (evaprowse.co.nz/Aeroplane)
29 Aug 2016 | 1 min read
Wellington singer-songwriter Prowse's debut album I Can't Keep Secrets made Elsewhere's best of the year list in 2010 and at that time we noted her performances with Fly My Pretties, her appearance on her father's excellent Trouble on the Waterfront album and so on. Since then however she fetched up in London where she turned her attention to electro-pop (as H & EVA with expat... > Read more
Crayford/Street/Weiss: East West Moon (Rattle Jazz)
7 Aug 2016 | <1 min read
Jonathan Crayford has long been considered one of New Zealand's finest jazz pianists and his range is wide, from Latin flavours to touring with Trinity Roots, playing acid-jazz with New York's Groove Collective, jazz-rock (albeit on acoustic piano) and this album which frequently has a profoundly classical weight and gravitas in many of the pieces. Joined by bassist Ben Street and... > Read more
Dinosaur Jr: Give A Glimpse of What Yer Not (Jagjaguwar)
1 Aug 2016 | 1 min read
Any band which refined and defined their sound and attitude over three decades ago is bound to have hit a burn-out/overly familiar factor some many years ago. Surely? But . . . Although Elsewhere has just written a retrospective piece about this musical idea (as much as a band) helmed by J. Mascis, we have to concede this new one sounds as thrillingly noisy, focused and as... > Read more