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
Billie Eilish: Happier Than Ever (Interscope/digital outlets)
1 Aug 2021 | 1 min read
Anyone who thinks contemporary pop is just working familiar tropes – and let's be honest, much of it is – should turn their attention to recent releases by the likes of Squirrel Flower, Merk, Jane Weaver, Virginia Wing, and Billie Eilish whose 2019 debut When We Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? was an astute, subtle and largely understated and downbeat outing... > Read more
Elsewhere Art . . . John McLaughlin
1 Aug 2021 | <1 min read
Frankly this was a bit of a throwaway but anyone who knows of the career of John McLaughlin (Mahavishnu Orchestra etc) would get the joke. This was used to illusrate an article about a live album which acted like a career synopsis and allowed me to offer that overview of his work. The article is here. There is more on the remarkable John McLaughlin at Elsewhere,... > Read more
Diamond Field: Diamond Field (Sofa King/digital outlets)
1 Aug 2021 | 1 min read
Hey Andrew, the Eighties just called and said, “Job well done”. This shamelessly enjoyable album helmed by expat Kiwi, longtime NYC-based Andrew B White (musician, producer, album cover designer) pretends to be nothing more than the pleasure principle as filtered through Pat Benatar/Flashdance (as presented by fellow expat Miriam Clancy), Howard Jones-styled... > Read more
I'VE BEEN EVERYWHERE, MAN (2021): The song for all people and places
30 Jul 2021 | <1 min read
It's a well-known fact -- as concertgoers will acknowledge -- that If you have a lyric which mentions a place the audience there will applaud like chimps on speed when you sing it . . . or (better?) you can change the place name to wherever you are and the audience will applaud like gorillas on P! Less cynically and more usefully . . . place names are easy rhymes.... > Read more
EPs by Yasmin Brown: Graeme James, Yvois, Hannah Jadagu, Ali Barter
29 Jul 2021 | 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
Kikagaku Moyo and Ryley Walker: Deep Fried Grandeur (Husky Pants/digital outlets)
29 Jul 2021 | 1 min read
Although the name of the Japanese psych-rock band upfront here may not be familiar (we were underwhelmed by their Masana Temples album), many will know of American singer-guitarist Ryley Walker whose reference points are in the experimental Anglo-folk of Bert Jansch, Tim Buckley and John Martyn (and of course Nick Drake) as well as Astral Weeks-era Van Morrison (alluded to... > Read more
EPs by Yasmin Brown: Louis Baker, Womb, Phodiso, Lucy Gooch
29 Jul 2021 | 1 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
Elsewhere Art . . . New Zealand jazz
29 Jul 2021 | <1 min read
There was a time when it seemed every jazz album by a New Zealand singer was just more of the same old standards . . . and as I often said to some of them, if you do something by Sinatra you're inviting a comparison you just can't win. But still they came. I can't remember exactly what prompted this collage but I think it accompanied a few local jazz albums . . .... > Read more
Salmonella Dub: Soul Love Trippa (Salmonella Dub/vinyl release)
26 Jul 2021 | 1 min read
The mighty Salmonella Dub out of Christchurch who, alongside Pitch Black, paved the way for dance-electronica and magnificently produced soul-infused dub-dance were trailblazers. Without them the path for the likes of Fat Freddy's Drop, Black Seeds, Shapeshifter and many others might have been more difficult. After a dozen or so albums, many EPs and scores of remixes... > Read more
Helen Reddy: Angie Baby (1974)
26 Jul 2021 | 1 min read
The damn fine Australian singer Helen Reddy could be convincingly MOR (I Don't Know How to Love Him from Jesus Christ Superstar), kinda country (Delta Dawn) and standing proud (I Am Woman). But this song was just downright weird. It's one part odd fantasy and one part escapism then it gets very strange when the neighbour boy comes around and . . . Well, as the... > Read more
THE ROLLING STONES: BETWEEN THE BUTTONS, CONSIDERED (1967): A laugh turned to farce?
26 Jul 2021 | 4 min read
The shorthand for the Rolling Stones' recording career before Exile on Main Street is usually reduced – even by Stones' fans – to something like this: some blues and r'n'b covers albums with a few originals thrown in, Aftermath in '66 where they wrote everything themselves and so is a classic (it's not, it's flawed like most Stones' albums), the substandard foray... > Read more
My Obsession
Mahi's West Coast Venison Hot Pot
26 Jul 2021 | 1 min read
This recipe was provided by Jayson Hussey, aka Mahi which means "work" because he was always working. He was the chef at the luxurious Franz Joseph Glacier Country Retreat near the Franz Joseph Glacier in New Zealand's South Island when I first met him, and that was about 15 years ago. He'd worked a number of places picking up ideas as he went and has doubtless... > Read more
GUEST WRITER BILL DIREEN writes about a project to save books from being disposed of by the National Library of New Zealand
25 Jul 2021 | 2 min read
Mass book disposals are being carried out by the National Library of New Zealand/Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa (the wellsprings of knowledge). If allowed to continue, a fine research library will be gutted. This will deprive New Zealanders of a research portal to their roots. Scholars will have no access to published studies about the rest of the world.... > Read more
RECOMMENDED RECORD: Squirrel Flower; Planet (i). (Polyvinyl/digital outlets)
25 Jul 2021 | <1 min read
From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this one which comes on orange vinyl, has an eight-page booklet of lyrics and offers a download code . . . . This second album by American Ella Williams (aka Squirrel Flower) is one of those slow-grow albums which exists between alt.folk and indie.rock as she and her small band... > Read more
Don Cherry: The Summer House Sessions (Blank Forms/digital outlets)
24 Jul 2021 | 1 min read
Trumpeter Don Cherry – step-father of Neneh and father to Eagle Eye – was right there in the avant-garde jazz movement on albums in the Fifties with Ornette Coleman (the presciently titled Something Else!!!, Tomorrow is the Question!, The Shape of Jazz to Come and Free Jazz among them). He had a long association with Coleman (one of his sons is David... > Read more
The Famous Elsewhere Questionnaire
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE JAZZ QUESTIONNAIRE: Mike Booth
23 Jul 2021 | 6 min read
Trumpeter, arranger, composer, educator and much more, Mike Booth has been a pivotal figure in New Zealand music, notably in jazz. His CV includes time in the Rodger Fox Big Band, the funk outfit Collision, more recently with John Key on his Dune Dancing album, Sola Rosa's terrific Chasing the Sun and in the past month with Frank Gibson Jnr and others... > Read more
Rangitoto
GUEST ENSEMBLE TARARUA talk about their groundbreaking debut album Bird Like Men
21 Jul 2021 | 4 min read
Our ensemble is made up of four established artists -- Al Fraser, Ariana Tikao, Ruby Solly and Phil Boniface (see our biographies below) -- who are leaders in their various fields. Our evocative music combines taonga pūoro, waiata, karakia and pūrākau (story) with a strong southern Māori influence, with the western instrumental elements of cello... > Read more
Tūtūmaiao
Auckland Jazz Orchestra: East of the Sun (AJO/bandcamp)
19 Jul 2021 | 1 min read
With CD sales in free-fall and jazz a minority music, why would the AJO (with singer Caitlin Smith) even bother with a professionally packaged, gatefold sleeve release like this? Yet this is much more than a vanity project but a warm showcase of these talented players recorded over a couple of days and mastered by Steve Garden (of Rattle). In the line-up are... > Read more
Harbour Lights
Alice Coltrane: Kirtan; Turiya Sings (Impulse!/digital outlets)
19 Jul 2021 | <1 min read
The wheel turns again, and -- more often today than just a few years back -- we are hearing spiritual music entering the consciousness. Last month soulful singer Durand Jones said he wanted his music to heal people, a not uncommon sentiment right now. And hardly surprising in these days of uncertainty. Elsewhere has reviewed quite a few ambient, spiritual albums... > Read more
ELVIS COSTELLO. LOOK NOW, CONSIDERED (2018): Songwriter Elvis Bacharach meet bandleader Burt McManus
19 Jul 2021 | 2 min read
Falling between his innovative mash-up/mix-up Wise Up Ghost with the hip-hop group The Roots (and don't call it self-sampling) and his latest Hey Clockface with its spoken word passages, Middle Eastern allusions, a French ensemble and guitarist Nels Cline, this very recent double vinyl acquisition – pulled from the shelves at random -- found Costello... > Read more