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 and be in to win CDs, DVDs, books and more. Welcome . . .
Latest posts
Matana Roberts: Coin Coin Chapter Four: Memphis (Constellation)
18 Nov 2019 | 1 min read
This extraordinary collision of free jazz, hard bop, spoken word, folk-blues and more is the fourth installment of sonic biographies by Chicago's multi-instrumentalist and classically-trained Matana Roberts who has worked with Vijay Iyer, Roscoe Mitchell, TV on the Radio and Godspeed You! Black Emperor and has been an artist in residence at the Whitney, is a longtime member... > Read more
As Far As the Eye Can See
Tinariwen: Amajdar (Anti/digital outlets)
18 Nov 2019 | 1 min read
Elsewhere has written about Tinariwen so often that we will come at this new album from another angle. The title apparently means “the unknown visitor” in their Tamashek language, but the visitors on this, their eighth album, are probably quite well known to our readers: Warren Ellis of Dirty Three/Bad Seeds appears on fiddle on five of the 13 pieces here... > Read more
Si Si Es: Ode to Holger/Spaced (bandcamp)
18 Nov 2019 | 1 min read
The platform of bandcamp (as with Spotify, soundcloud and other digital platforms) allows artists to put up their music and draw attention to it. Or not, in the case of New Zealand's seminal Eighties synth-pop band Car Crash Set. CCS were initially Nigel Russell and David Bulog, subsequently joined by producer Trevor Reekie on guitar. They were relatively... > Read more
Carla Dal Forno: Look Up Sharp (Kallista/digital outlets)
17 Nov 2019 | 1 min read
Melbourne-born and Berlin-based Carla Dal Forno is very much the independent artist we expect to hear from in the 21stcentury: drawing from tasting notes of pop history (depressive 4AD artists, Eno, This Mortal Coil, gloomy pop but not the full Goth) and wrapping her emotionally distant speak-sing vocals into them with music which is stately and often slow (which flags that... > Read more
I'm Conscious
Ori Barel: Centrifugal Force for Player Piano (Albany/digital outlets)
16 Nov 2019 | 1 min read
We expect by now few people come to Elsewhere expecting the always-familiar, so this album by American composer Ori Barel for player piano is one for those prepared for something elsewhere. Inspired by robotic art, the speed of technology and the musical reach from concert hall to free jazz, Barel has created “programmes” for the player piano using algorithms... > Read more
Centrifugal Force Part 2
Bert Jansch: Avocet 40th Anniversary Edition (Earth/Southbound)
15 Nov 2019 | 1 min read
The late Scottish singer/guitarist and songwriter Bert Jansch who co-founded the influential Pentangle and died in 2011, left a vast legacy of albums of which many are still coming to terms with. Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page -- as a young man then smitted by American blues guitarists -- has said of Jansch's self-titled debut album of '65, "When I first heard that album... > Read more
Osprey
Hayden Wood: Sixty Years On (Frenzy)
15 Nov 2019 | 1 min read
Despite the considerable collective musical knowledge at the table not one of us could place Hayden Wood, the subject of this new archive compilation by Grant Gillanders. Fortunately, as he always does on his Frenzy releases, Gillanders provides considerable information in the sleeve of this 26-song collection subtitled “the NEMS, Spin, Parlophone, Jam and Cherokee... > Read more
Cannons Plain
EPS by Yasmin Brown
14 Nov 2019 | 5 min read
With so many CDs commanding and demanding attention Elsewhere will run this occasional column by the informed and opinionated Yasmin Brown. She will scoop up some of those many EP releases, in much the same way as our SHORT CUTS column picks up albums by New Zealand artists, and IN BRIEF does for international artists. You can read her... > Read more
Dead Little Penny: Urge Surfing (digital outlets)
13 Nov 2019 | 1 min read
This Auckland-based three-piece of Hayley Smith, Simon Buxton and Sean Martin-Buss deliver up a frequently exciting mix of power pop-cum-shoegaze songs which are as melodic as they assertive. Smith has a voice which can sit effortlessly as a tuneful dream-pop element in songs like the guitar fuzz of U 4 Me and the drone of the thrilling surging intensity of Out of Body... > Read more
Lankum: The Livelong Day (Rough Trade/Rhythmethod)
11 Nov 2019 | 2 min read | 1
Many decades ago I wrote an essay for a glossy monthly about The Joy of Music. It was a celebration of how music of all persuasions can inform and enrich your life. I did however say that I could barely abide earnest folk music and reserved a special place in Hell for most Irish music which I found to be either irredeemably glum or mindlessly cheerful. Well, time... > Read more
The Famous Elsewhere Questionnaire
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE QUESTIONNAIRE: Olivia Foa'i
11 Nov 2019 | 4 min read
Some people rebel against their parents and become musicians, the only way a young Olivia Foa'i could have rebelled would by saying she was going to be a real estate agent. She grew up with music in the Te Vaka family of singers, dancers and songwriters, the waka/vaka helmed by her father Opetaia Foa'i. The Te Vaka story is extraordinary: taking a vision of... > Read more
R.E.M.: Murmur (1983)
11 Nov 2019 | 4 min read | 1
R.E.M. didn't invent the genre known as alt.rock or give their music that name, but they – along with Violent Femmes and others in the early Eighties -- came to epitomise it at a time when the musical landscape was awash with studio polished songs by Hall and Oates (Maneater), Michael Jackson (Billie Jean, Beat It), David Bowie (Let's Dance) and the Police (who were... > Read more
Mike Stern and Jeff Lorber Fusion: Eleven (Concord/Southbound)
11 Nov 2019 | 1 min read
Guitarist Mike Stern is the man Miles Davis fans loved to hate. Probably even today. That was because he brought the hard rock textures – which Davis wanted – to Miles' band at the dawn of the Eighties, captured on the double live album We Want Miles. He was in Blood Sweat and Tears before joining Davis and six years ago came to New Zealand to play... > Read more
Jeff Daniels: Switch Blade Sam (1959)
11 Nov 2019 | <1 min read
Rock'n'roll might have celebrated cars, dating, high school, the dance and other teenage concerns, but it also celebrated itself. Chief among those cheerleaders was Chuck Berry with songs like School Days (“hail hail rock'n'roll, deliver me from the days of old”), Roll Over Beethoven (“and dig these rhythm'n'blues”), Rock and Roll Music... > Read more
ANGUS McBEAN PHOTOGRAPHER, THE FIRST ICONIC BEATLES ALBUM COVER (2019): A snapper making it snappy
9 Nov 2019 | 4 min read
The Beatles' story is one of coincidence, chance, luck and irony. What were the odds of McCartney meeting Lennon and them hitting it off, of them meeting photographers in Hamburg who could document the young band before fame struck, of Brian Epstein being interested in a scruffy pop group playing in a cellar, of classically trained producer George Martin at the minor... > Read more
WIRED FOR SOUND: THE STEBBING HISTORY OF NEW ZEALAND MUSIC by GRANT GILLANDERS and ROBYN WELSH
8 Nov 2019 | 4 min read
Some lives encompass multitudes. Take that of Eldred Stebbing, a man in the vanguard of many aspects of the New Zealand recording and music industry, who died a decade ago next month at age 88. He was born when air travel was in its infancy, movies were silent, there were market gardens around Avondale where he lived and Auckland's... > Read more
The Talkies: Girl Band (Rough Trade/Rhythmethod)
8 Nov 2019 | <1 min read
Just as you might think when you see a pensionable age person with a brand new Smiley face tattoo, so you might look at the photos of the thirtysomethings on this album cover and after enduring their noise say something like, “Act your age” or “Are you serious?” This Irish quartet open their second album with the sound of singer Dara Kiely... > Read more
BOB DYLAN: TRAVELIN' THRU; THE BOOTLEG SERIES VOL 15 CONSIDERED (2019): Were we ready for the country?
7 Nov 2019 | 5 min read | 1
In retrospect, it was really no surprise that in the late Sixties as the psychedelic top spun wildly that Bob Dylan should return after an 18 month absence with simpler music on the albums John Wesley Harding, Nashville Skyline and Self Portrait, much of which had a country influence. The motorcycle accident in July '66 which literally took him off the road allowed him... > Read more
Mountain Dew
The Jam: All Mod Cons
7 Nov 2019 | 1 min read
If Liam Gallagher yearns for Oasis again and brother Noel still wants Paul Weller's career, then we need only go back to this '78 album by the Jam to hear Weller aspiring to be the post-punk Ray Davies. And largely succeeding. “To be someone must be a wonderful thing”, as the second track says. This third album by the Jam steered by... > Read more
ONE WE MISSED: Oddarrang: Hypermetros (Edition/digital outlets)
6 Nov 2019 | <1 min read
Here on their fifth album, this Finnish quintet with cello and trombone alongside drums, bass, acoustic guitar and synths embark on a measured instrumental journey between slo-mo jazz, atmospheric ambient music and rock with chamber music tendencies. Very Nordic we might say, and certainly the opening passages of a piece like Ohlop could seem... > Read more