Absolute Elsewhere
Subscribe to my newsletter for weekly updates.
JAMES HUNTER INTERVIEWED: The hard way to the top (2008)
22 Dec 2008 | 15 min read
At 46, James Hunter from Colchester in Essex is an overnight soul-singing sensation who took a couple of decades to get to where he is. But for most people he seemed to appear out of nowhere with his breakthrough album People Gonna Talk in early 2006. Hunter’s effortless blend of Sam Cooke-styled soul with soft reggae rhythms and his snappy original songs found immediate critical... > Read more
James Hunter: The Hard Way
WILLARD GRANT CONSPIRACY'S ROBERT FISHER INTERVIEWED (2008): Strange bedfellows: economics and music
22 Dec 2008 | 12 min read
For a band which has released eight albums the alt.country/indie.rock band Willard Grant Conspiracy has - like Calexico, Giant Sand, Lambchop and others - rarely broken into mainstream consciousness. Despite favourable reviews for live shows and albums, WGC remains the private passion of small but significant audience. Yet those who have discovered them can be slavishly loyal and will... > Read more
Willard Grant Conspiracy: Evening Mass
KASEY CHAMBERS AND SHANE NICHOLSON INTERVIEWED 2008: The family that plays together . . .
22 Dec 2008 | 4 min read
Backstage after a performance for invited guests and a camera crew in a studio room at the Sydney Opera House, Kasey Chambers and her husband Shane Nicholson are greeting fans and well-wishers. Just minutes before they had unplugged after an intimate and affecting set -- with their small band which includes Kasey’s father Bill on guitar -- and now they are the centre of a more celebratory... > Read more
Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson: No One Hurts Up Here
KRAFTWERK'S RALF HUTTER INTERVIEWED (2008): The werk ethic
22 Dec 2008 | 10 min read | 1
Ralf Hutter -- founder of the innovative German electro rock pioneers Kraftwerk rarely does interviews. And when he does speak to the press he sometimes doesn’t make it easy. One reporter tells of the constraints being placed on questions: the first being no asking about Kraftwerk. Kraftwerk are, shall we say, different: their Kling Klang studio in Dusseldorf has no phone, no... > Read more
Kraftwerk: Pocket Calculator (from Computer World, 1981)
JOHN ZORN INTERVIEWED (1990): No ordinary noisemaker
20 Dec 2008 | 5 min read
John Zorn doesn’t sound like your typical New Yorker. His speech is slow and measured, not quite the expected machinegun rattle of words. Then again, composer and saxophonist Zorn is no ordinary New Yorker – and no ordinary composer either. Take his two most recent albums as a sampling from a career which has seen him come screaming from the sidelines as “avant-garde... > Read more
PETER FRAMPTON INTERVIEWED (2001): From headlines to sidelines
20 Dec 2008 | 9 min read
From where Peter Frampton was standing he could see everything. It was 1976 and the angelic, halo-haired singer-guitarist from Kent was on top of the world. His new album was selling spectacularly. As one writer put it, in 1976 two significant events happened in America: the country celebrated its bicentenary and Frampton Comes Alive! was released. In that year, the double live... > Read more
Peter Frampton: Show Me The Way
BLEND, THE LEBANESE ROCK BAND INTERVIEWED (2004): Hard rock at the flashpoint
18 Dec 2008 | 4 min read
Jad Souaid is late and apologetic, he had a minor traffic accident on the way and in this city -- Beirut, the capital of the Lebanon -- that means handing over papers and having them checked. It all takes time. Beirut -- which was blown apart in a protracted civil war between Muslims and Palestinians, and Christian factions for 15 years from 1975 -- still lives with the legacy of its recent... > Read more
Blend: Communicate (featuring Natacha Atlas)
PJ HARVEY INTERVIEWED (2001): Enjoying a cheerful misery
18 Dec 2008 | 13 min read
It‘s the day before their 2001 Big Day Out appearance and Polly Jean Harvey and her band are in the Playground rehearsal rooms in Newton. They are running through a real-time rehearsal of their set which is being timed to the second. They have 55 minutes on stage and Harvey wrote out the song list in the van on the way here only an hour ago. It‘s the first time they‘ve... > Read more
PJ Harvey: A Place called Home
FRANK ZAPPA (1940-93) REMEMBERED 15 YEARS ON: Straight and Bizarre
15 Dec 2008 | 2 min read | 1
“Frank was my Elvis. His example encouraged me, made me feel it was okay to go my own way, to not do the things the way the authorities told me to. As soon as Bart is able to shave he’ll have a little moustache and goatee just like Frank Zappa’s.” -- Matt (The Simpsons) Groening “Frank Zappa was the most untalented bore who ever lived” -- Lou... > Read more
Frank Zappa: I'm the Slime (from Over-nite Sensation, 1973)
DAMON ALBARN OF BLUR INTERVIEWED; BRITPOP v USA (1993): England Made Me
15 Dec 2008 | 9 min read
Somehow it seemed inevitable that an English musician would talk about clothes. These people work in a world where a photo shoot can be as important as the album of the moment. And right now with the 70s revival, bell-bottoms, chokers and an Afro are being analysed as “cultural signifiers.” Every music has its own pair of trousers. So hello Damon Albarn of Blur, gorra new... > Read more
Blur: There's No Other Way
YOKO ONO INTERVIEWED (2008): Art for art'$ $ake
8 Dec 2008 | 7 min read
“If there’s such as things as [a genius], I am one” -- John Lennon, 1970 In the late Sixties when... > Read more
RICHARD THOMPSON INTERVIEWED (1991): Small and imperfectly formed career
7 Dec 2008 | 5 min read
About the time Bob Mould, formerly of Husker Du, was telling NME he’d seen Richard Thompson performing and felt so scared he should quit, Thompson himself was once again carting his band through tiny venues in the stages and Canada. This was the man Mat Snow in Q magazine said had “spent 20 eventful years lapping up critical acclaim while neatly sidestepping commercial... > Read more
BOB MOULD of HUSKER DU INTERVIEWED (1991): Flying solo at last
7 Dec 2008 | 5 min read
Bob Mould outlines a few of the projects he’s been involved in recently and then laughs: “See, that’s what happens when you quit your band – you get to do all the fun stuff.” As a member of the power trio Husker Du (“along with REM, the most influential rock band of the 80s,” according to Bleddyn Butcher in NME), Mould crafted some of the most... > Read more
LARRY HENLEY INTERVIEWED (1993): The world beneath his wings
1 Dec 2008 | 14 min read
On this slightly hung-over weekday morning Larry Henley doesn’t look the kind of man whose words have touched a generation. He speaks with a quiet, modest and slow-drag Texas accent and seems too self-effacing for someone whose song lyrics have been recited at funerals and marriages, during intimate moments by way of love or apology, and which have spawned innumerable lesser... > Read more
SCREAMIN JAY HAWKINS INTERVIEWED (1991): Coffin-rocking, wine drinking skull shaker
23 Nov 2008 | 6 min read
The man on the phone with the curiously quiet voice gently sets the record straight quite quickly. He’s never considered himself a singer he says. But after 35 years of making records and giving the world one of the most outrageous stage shows ever, then what is he? “I’m a big mouthed screamin’ man who uses a lot of flamboyance in his shows,” he says seriously.... > Read more
THE BEACH BOYS IN DECLINE: Sucking in the Seventies?
22 Nov 2008 | 3 min read | 3
Without wishing to appear nasty, it has to be said some people outlive their artistic viability. They exist in the present, but actually live in the past. If chief Beach Boy Brian Wilson had died in 1970 we would still hail him as a genius on the basis of Pet Sounds . . . and would speculate on what other greatness he might have achieved. But let's be brutally frank: Brian's... > Read more
HARRY SMITH'S LEGACY REVISITED 2007: His grave is being kept . . . clean?
21 Nov 2008 | 2 min read
In 1952, the 29-year old Harry Smith -- an archivist and film-maker whose innovative work bears comparison with the genius of Elsewhere favourite Norman McLaren -- selected 84 songs from his collection of thousands of fragile 78rpm discs and -- through Moses Asch of Folkways Records -- released them as three double albums on the then-new LP format. Those albums -- of folk, blues,... > Read more
SONIC YOUTH'S THURSTON MOORE INTERVIEWED (1990): Corporate greed and the politics of music
14 Nov 2008 | 6 min read
So, here’s a poser. What’s the link between The Carpenters’ vapid saccharine pop and the abrasive guitar pop grind of Sonic Youth? The correct answer, of course, is “who cares?” There is a link, however. In the same week as Sonic Youth’s Goo album -- which includes Tunic (Song For Karen) – was released here The Carpenters’ Greatest Hits was... > Read more
DAVID BYRNE INTERVIEWED (2005): A well rounded man
13 Nov 2008 | 4 min read
The two years before his 2004-05 tour were hectic for David Byrne, former frontman for Talking Heads and a multimedia artist with almost a dozen solo albums to his credit. He lived in Scotland while working on the soundtrack to Young Adam, quit as head of the world music label Luaka Bop he founded in 1990, split with his wife, and was been involved in many art projects, including one using the... > Read more
CAN: A CONCEPT, A CULT, A BAND; As only the Germans can
13 Nov 2008 | 3 min read
By definition most people miss cult acts. And to their tuned-in loyalists that makes them even more special. There is nothing like the whiff of martyrdom, or being ignored or misunderstood, to elevate a musician’s reputation among the faithful. Like most people, I missed Can in the late 60s/early 70s. No matter, the albums are out there. Again. Can’s credentials as... > Read more