THE MAGAZINE FOR CURIOUS PEOPLE
Elsewhere is a concept and a place, and for many years Graham Reid has been going there for his wide angle travels, writing, music review columns and interviews with writers, musicians and artists.
Elsewhere is an ever-expanding on-line magazine for people curious about new music, different travel, interesting arts and much more. This site is dedicated to the diversity and possibilities of Elsewhere. It is an equal opportunity enjoyer. Subscribe here (it's free) for a weekly newsletter. Welcome . . .
Latest posts
Sons of Kemet: Black to the Future (Impulse!/digital outlets)
17 May 2021 | 1 min read
We'll be frank, the previous album Your Queen is a Reptile by this much acclaimed British jazz ensemble (around the peripatetic saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings) didn't quite do it for us. Got the politics and culture, admired the ensemble playing but, as we said, on a musical level it seemed to pull back when its antecedents would have soared. That however seems to be... > Read more
MARK WILLIAMS, SWEET TRIALS, CONSIDERED (1976): It was drag, and a drag
17 May 2021 | 2 min read
A bit later in life Mark Williams, originally from near Dargaville, could accept that the way he dressed – feminine clothes he'd made himself, eye-liner and make-up beneath a teased Afro bouffant – “almost looked like drag". "It was drag actually”. But that was later. At the time in the early Seventies when he started having hits,... > Read more
Sweet Wine
Casiotone for the Painfully Alone: Etiquette (2006)
17 May 2021 | 1 min read
If nothing else, you had to raise a smile at the nom-de-disque which American singer-songwriter Owen Ashworth adopted. It announces its lo-fi quality, and identifies its audience at the same time. Clever and funny. But also ineffably sad. And the songs on this quite remarkable album -- like short stories rendered as poetry and set to simple music -- managed to be all... > Read more
I Love Creedence
Elaine Brown: Seize the Time (1969)
17 May 2021 | 1 min read
In that period when rock joined hands with the revolutionaries (the late Sixties into the early Seventies), few could claim to so confidently occupy both sides: Brown was one of them. Born in Philadelphia, she moved to California in the mid-Sixties to wait tables, became a member of the Black Congress community orgainsation, wrote freedom poetry and songs, performed in... > Read more
MALCOLM BLACK REMEMBERED, IN HIS OWN WORDS (2021): Faith, hope and family
16 May 2021 | 3 min read
By Roger Shepherd's own account, his Flying Nun label released 75 albums, 78 EPs and 31 singles in its first decade to 1991. Amidst that landslide of vinyl (a new album every couple of months with singles and EPs in between) and the success of his praetorian vanguard – the Clean, Chills, Verlaines, Sneaky Feelings and others – some acts went past him:... > Read more
Chora(s)san Time-Court Mirage: Blues Alif Lam Mim in the Mode of Rag Infinity/Rag Cosmosis (Blank Forms/Soundcloud)
14 May 2021 | <1 min read
Chora(s)san Time-Court Mirage is an ensemble lead by the Swedish experimental composer Catherine Christer Hennix (b 1948) whose credentials are impeccable in that she studied with Stockhausen, collaborated with La Monte Young in New York and, almost inevitably given the minimalist milieu, then studied with Pandit Pran Nath. She's a mathematician and a visual artist as... > Read more
The Chills: Scatterbrain (Fire/digital outlets)
14 May 2021 | 1 min read
Three years ago, on the release of the Chills' album Snow Bound, Martin Phillipps noted people were saying “it sounded like the Chills”, his particular style evident almost 40 years after the band first appeared out of Dunedin. “If there is a reward that I would dreamt of, it is that,” he said. “That there's a signature style and [I'm]... > Read more
The Walls Beyond Abandon
MILTOWN STOWAWAYS, TENSION MELEE, CONSIDERED (1983): Forget about heat, feel the beat
10 May 2021 | 2 min read
Auckland's Unsung label, on which this album appeared, had previously released adventurous, category-defying and often very interesting left-field albums by Big Sideways and Avant Garage, and the 3 Voices album. The first two of those were loose ensembles which included musicians from classical, jazz, blues and rock backgrounds (and futures). 3 Voices was... > Read more
Elsewhere Art . . . Lester Bowie
10 May 2021 | <1 min read | 1
The late Lester Bowie was not just a great musician but a funny guy. Hence Donald Duck in this collage. One of Bowie's pieces was Miles Davis Meets Donald Duck for which he blew through a straw in water to create an effect which sounded exactly like that encounter. With his Brass Fantasy ensemble he covered Michael Jackson's Thriller and he moved beyond jazz to play... > Read more
Van Morrison: Latest Record Project Vol 1. (Warner/digital outlets)
9 May 2021 | 1 min read | 1
The few Van Morrison's biographies this writer has read could all be titled Bitter From Birth. He might have tapped into some beautiful Celtic soul and mysticism all those decades ago, but he's always been humourless and – even to the present day – harbours grudges (notably about how he was burned by the music business more than half a century ago).... > Read more
FIVE ODD ALBUMS I'M FOOLISH ENOUGH TO OWN (2021): Hey! Ho! Let's . . . not go there!
9 May 2021 | 4 min read
You know how it happens. An album leaps out you from a dump bin in a secondhand record store (or dumped out in some strange neighbour's rubbish when they are moved on by the landlord ) and you think . . . why not? To Elsewhere's shame (and secret pride) we have more than our fair share of such stuff (see the links at the end of this... > Read more
MICK, MAC and LU (2021): Jagger, McCartney and Lucinda Williams
8 May 2021 | 2 min read | 1
Steve Coogan does a passable parody of Mick Jagger, but Jagger is his own best imitator as his new video Eazy Sleazy with Dave Grohl proves. He rolls his eyes, that yawping mouth yelps out the tumbling lyrics like a Jagger impersonator. Ostensibly about coming out of lockdown, the thrashy song is as ambiguous as Street Fighting Man of 53 years... > Read more
Larry Morris: Amigos (LMM/digital outlets)
8 May 2021 | 1 min read
Larry Morris once said his best album was 5.55am of the early Seventies, which went unreleased at the time when he went to jail for a serious drug offense. He may be right, but listened to now (it is available on Spotify) it seems a bit MOR for a man who made his reputation in Larry's Rebels as a rock'n'soul singer, and alongside the likes of Bunny Walters, one of our... > Read more
Long Time Coming
Amy Shark: Cry Forever (Sony/digital outlets)
7 May 2021 | 1 min read
After seeing Australian Amy Shark's appearance at the 2018 Laneway where she was an exciting, sassy and mature rock artist who commanded the stage and the audience's attention, her debut album Love Monster was a considerable disappointment. It may have won her many, many awards over the Tasman, but it seemed to these ears aimed at a very young demographic (she was in her... > Read more
Favourite Five Recent Releases
Flying Lotus: Yasuke (Border/ digital outlets)
7 May 2021 | <1 min read
Given what we said about the last Flying Lotus which crossed our path – that the instrumental album of Flamagra was more satisfying than the original version with its heavy guests list – this one was going to attract our attention. Although this is the music to a Netflix anime series of the same name these mostly atmospheric pieces – 26 of... > Read more
Cheap Trick: In Another World (BMG/digital outlets)
6 May 2021 | 1 min read
On the basis of their thrilling show at the Auckland Town Hall about 40 years ago – with a wave of his hand Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen brought the crowd to its feet in defiance of the local mandarins who wanted to keep the volume low and the audience seated – this band will always get a fair hearing round my way. And they did even when the line-up... > Read more
Favourite Five Recent Releases
The Coral: Coral Island (Run On/digital outlets)
3 May 2021 | 2 min read
At this geographical distance from the UK it has always been the fact that we are familiar with those at the top of the British pop iceberg (Oasis, Blur, Pulp, Elastica etc) but not so much of those below the surface (Shed Seven, Ocean Colour Scene, Teenage Fanclub etc). While every album by the main players would get publicity and reviews, those others... > Read more
Nik Bärtsch: Entendre (ECM/digital outlets)
3 May 2021 | 1 min read | 1
Swiss pianist Nik Bärtsch has passed our way previously with his electric group Ronin whose Llyria album was in our best of Elsewhere list in 2010. And three years later we wrote equally approvingly (although conceding they were a difficult proposition) about the Ronin live album. As we mentioned previously, coming to an album on ECM has often meant... > Read more
DAN FOGELBERG. PHOENIX, CONSIDERED (1979): Truer than any tree that every grew. Really?
3 May 2021 | 3 min read
Even after a long lifetime of following music – often down blind alleys or into unnerving places – it always surprises me how many albums, artists and genres went past me. I got the whole Kraftwerk, Can, Neu! and Popul Vuh thing with diversions into Cluster and so on – but Sparks and Yellow Magic Orchestra went right on by. I have more albums by... > Read more
Elsewhere Art . . . Miles Davis III
3 May 2021 | <1 min read
Given his interest in what we once called "the fight game", it was inevitable that Miles Davis would be drawn to the outsized character of boxer Jack Johnson who caroused, openly went out (and home) with white women, enjoyed life living it large . . . and took out contenders and pretenders along the way. The collage positions images of Davis and Johnson around... > Read more