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
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . BUTTERBEANS AND SUSIE: Dat ol' black magic?
23 Sep 2019 | 4 min read
These days we are used to artists taking a few years between albums – although some were surprised Blue Nile took seven years between Hats and Peace at Last. But for the Vaudeville comedy/song-and-dance duo of Butterbeans and Susie it was a full 30 years between their last songs for Okeh in 1930 (You Dirty Mean Mistreater among them) until their return to the... > Read more
David Kilgour and the Heavy Eights: Bobbie's a girl (Merge/digital outlets)
23 Sep 2019 | 2 min read
Earlier this year I had a very knowledgable young American student in a couple of my music classes. He knew the Velvet Underground and minimalists, a lot of the Band and Bob Dylan but also contemporary pop and r'n'b. He was also familiar with Flying Nun acts, notably the Chills and the Clean. When I set him on the path of a deeper exploration of the Clean he came... > Read more
Entrance
Jay Som: Anak Ko (Polyvinyl/Rhythmethod/digital outlets)
23 Sep 2019 | 1 min read
A glance at the photos of some musicians in the gatefold sleeve of the vinyl edition of this third album by Jay Som alerts you to the idea that “she may not be from around here”. At a guess you'd say she was from the Philippines and her actual name being Melina Duterte would confirm that. In fact she is of a Filipino family but born in... > Read more
RECOMMENDED REISSUE: Straitjacket Fits: Melt (Flying Nun, vinyl and CD)
23 Sep 2019 | 1 min read
Wrapped in a striking cover (by the group's drummer/artist John Collie at a guess, my original copy has no notes), Melt was Straitjacket Fits' second album and the last with Andrew Brough who contributed the terrific, dreamy pop of the melodic Down in Splendour. Record company people and fans at the time rightly thought that could have been their breakthrough... > Read more
Listening: Stoned Is (1968)
23 Sep 2019 | <1 min read
You don't have to be too smart to figure out from the first 30 seconds that this track was recorded in '68. The surprise might be is the band didn't come from San Francisco but were out of Boston. The band only recorded one album for Vanguard – all tracks written by singer/organist Michael Tschudin, this one sharing a co-credit with one Gilbert Moses... > Read more
CONGRATULATION MR BEETHOVEN AND THE APO (2019): Sharing a birthday year
23 Sep 2019 | 1 min read
The Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra looks like having a big double-banger bash in 2020 when it celebrates its own 40thbirthday (life begins at 40, right?) and ol' Ludwig Van's 250th. Beethoven has sent his apologies, he won't be able to make it when the APO presents four concerts of his music – The Classicist, The Romantic, The Revolutionary and The Radical –... > Read more
Sulfate: Sulfate (Prison Tapes/digital outlets)
22 Sep 2019 | 1 min read
Sulfate is keyboard player Peter Ruddell of Auckland's famous “guitarless guitar band” Wax Chattels, a trio which delivers a sometimes melodic and often exciting noise live – and although that wasn't quite captured on their self-titled 2018 album it certainly pushed the envelope and was rightly shortlisted for the Taite Music Prize this year. If Wax... > Read more
THE APRA SILVER SCROLLS 2019: And the finalists are . . .
21 Sep 2019 | 3 min read
When you look back and try to identify pivotal years in New Zealand popular music one stands out: 1965. That was the year that youth culture – in the wake of the Beatles, Stones, Cilla, Dylan and many others – became a driving force. Young people had the money for concert tickets, records, entry to dances and so on . . . and so New Zealand musicians could... > Read more
Paolo Russo: Imaginary Soundtrack (Odradek)
21 Sep 2019 | <1 min read
In a world awash with ambient music styled for as-yet-unmade movies, atmospherically evocative and cinematic sounds not to mention bona fide film scores, the title here seems a bit unimaginative if not cliched. However this classically trained Italian composer, pianist and multi-instrumentalist (bandoneon, recorders, contrabassoon) has something larger but... > Read more
Volapyk/Mumbo Jumbo
Efterklang: Altid Sammen (4AD/Rhythmethod/digital outlets)
21 Sep 2019 | 1 min read
As with so many Scandinavian art music/rock bands, the Danes behind Efterklang bring some considerable influences from classical music (contemporary and traditional) to what they do. So baroque-pop and chamber music inclinations sit alongside intimate ambience, the broad scope of soundtracks, a symphonic grandeur and work with choirs or orchestral... > Read more
Supertanker
The Famous Elsewhere Questionnaire
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE TEACHERS' QUESTIONNAIRE: Jane Egan of Gisborne Girls High School
21 Sep 2019 | 4 min read
When the organisers of last year's annual Vodafone New Zealand Music Awards were considering the landscape of local music they wanted the awards to acknowledge the past, the present and the future. The past is taken care of with the winner of the Legacy Award, the present is acknowledged on the night and the future is . . . Well, that is largely in... > Read more
IAIN MACMILLAN PHOTOGRAPHER, CREATING AN ICONIC ALBUM COVER (2019): Four for the road
20 Sep 2019 | 4 min read
As most Beatle fans know, the group debated for weeks over what their final studio album should be called. Among the titles thrown around were All Good Children Go To Heaven and Four in The Bar. One of the more serious contenders was Everest which had a double meaning, it was obviously the name of the mountain but also -- in a more prosaic version and the... > Read more
Rachid Taha: Je Suis Africain (Believe/digital outlets)
20 Sep 2019 | 1 min read
The late Rachid Taha – who died in September last year – has made intermittent appearances at Elsewhere but we single out this posthumous release for an example of this Algerian-born, France-based artist who drew influences from traditional Algerian rai, French poets, punk and post-punk, various African styles and electronica. He was political, collaborated... > Read more
THE BEATLES: ABBEY ROAD REMIXED AND EXPANDED; PART ONE (2019): Here come the sun kings, again
20 Sep 2019 | 4 min read
It is a sad irony that the last album the Beatles recorded, the polished smooth Abbey Road and arguably best produced album of their career, would not be the one to act as a coda to their lifespan and the decade they defined. That belonged to Let It Be -- the music recorded earlier in 1969 under less than ideal conditions with the band fraying at the edges and centre. It... > Read more
The End
The Nick Moss Band: Lucky Guy! (Alligator/Southbound)
20 Sep 2019 | <1 min read
Blues aficionados probably only need to read one word here: Alligator. That's the long-running label out of Chicago which seems to constantly unearth hard rockin' artists, increasingly a number of white musicians alongside greats like Joe Louis Walker, Shemekia Copeland and a catalogue which started in '71 with albums by Hound Dog Taylor and the House Rockers, Son Seals... > Read more
Me and My Friends
Miles Davis: Rubberband (Warners)
19 Sep 2019 | 1 min read
After almost three decades at Columbia, in the mid Eighties Miles Davis quit in a huff, as he told it to Elsewhere at the time. They had a hot new young trumpeter who was less problematic (Wynton Marsalis, who dissed fusion and therefore much of Davis' recent work) and so Davis headed off into a contract for Warners. When he turned up for Warners he... > Read more
Angie McMahon: Salt (AWAL)
18 Sep 2019 | 1 min read
This album-length debut (11 songs over two sides of vinyl) pulls together a few of this powerful, mature and vocally gripping twentysomething Melburnian's previous singles. But as Angie McMahon doesn't seem to have damaged our charts with any of them we can just take this as a complete and discrete work – and frankly her singles sound more like... > Read more
Oh Sees: Face Stabber (Castle Face/digital outlets)
16 Sep 2019 | <1 min read
You have to be dedicated or aurally nimble to keep up with California's Oh Sees who have explored post-punk, garageband rock, psychedelics, prog, jazz-rock, art noise and so much more across more than 20 albums (many under variants of their Thee Oh Sees imprimatur) since that late Nineties. And done it through a merry-go-round of members with singer-guitarist John Dwyer... > Read more
THE BEATLES, ABBEY ROAD (2009): A classic from the cover on in
16 Sep 2019 | 10 min read | 1
Four decades ago the Beatles released Abbey Road, the album that marked the end of their career even though the inferior Let It Be would appear later, a sad coda to decade which they defined. Producer George Martin loved Abbey Road and considered it “Sgt Pepper, Mark II . . . it was innovatory but in a controlled way, unlike The Beatles and Let It Be which were a... > Read more
The Beatles: Come Together
L'Epee: Diabolique (A Recordings/Southbound)
16 Sep 2019 | <1 min read
L'Epee is something of a psychedelic/drone/shoegaze supergroup. The small print of brianjonestownmassacre.com perhaps alerts you to the presence of mainman Anton Newcombe . . . but here too are Lionel and Marie Liminana of the Liminanas, and actress/model/singer Emmanuelle Seigner (Ultra Orange and Emmanuelle, and fiftysomething Mrs Roman Polanski). They combine for 10... > Read more