Cultural Elsewhere
Subscribe to my newsletter for weekly updates.
THE ART AND IMAGERY OF FLYING NUN (2021): From record shelves to gallery walls
23 Aug 2021 | 4 min read
Although late 70s punk invigorated New Zealand music like an angry defibrillator, its most significant legacy – not denying great bands and singles – was the do-it-yourself ethic which handed control to musicians. Independent artists and record labels in the early 80s confronted the complacency of a music establishment relying on international artists and... > Read more
SIMON THACKER. GUITARIST ON DUTY AGAIN, AND ON SCREEN (2021): Pashyanti and Aishwarya, as you will
16 Aug 2021 | 1 min read
Scottish guitarist Simon Thacker has been a longtime interest/favourite at Elsewhere after we came across him (or he, us?) almost a decade ago. Not many young musicians from a small rural village outside of Edinburgh gravitated to blues artists like Skip James and Blind Willie McTell, worked their way through African and flamenco music, followed the threads back to Rajasthan, the Bauls and... > Read more
TARARUA'S JOURNEY ON THEIR BIRD LIKE MEN ALBUM (2021): Taonga pūoro to the future
5 Aug 2021 | 2 min read
A year ago in a conversation Ruby Solly -- the Pōneke/Wellington-based taonga pūoro artist, singer, writer and film-maker – mentioned how she was of the third, contemporary generation of musicians using traditional Māori instruments. After the kaumatua whose knowledge Richard Nunns, Brian Flintoff and the late Hirini Melbourne drew on as the... > Read more
Pikipiki
Richard Nunns: Mahi (Rattle/digital outlets)
11 Jan 2021 | 1 min read
When the histories of the Maori cultural renaissance of the 20thand 21stcentury are written, two musicians will stand proudly alongside the great orators, leaders, artists and writers. They are the late Hirini Melbourne (who died in 2003) and Richard Nunns who, with the guidance of kaumatua, freed traditional Maori instruments (taonga puoro) from the museum cases and brought them back into... > Read more
A LANDSLIDE OF PROVOCATIONS FROM RATTLE (2020): Five albums in five days?
29 Nov 2020 | 4 min read
In its first 15 years after it was launched, the Auckland-based label Rattle was averaging just one release a year. In 2021 the label will celebrate its 30thanniversary and since the late 2000s the release schedule has really hit a cracking pace of albums which cover avant-garde music, classical (traditional and contemporary), jazz, taonga puoro, quasi-pop and everything else which rarely... > Read more
RUPERT THE BEAR AT 100 (2020): Happy birthday little man
7 Nov 2020 | 2 min read
On Sunday, November 8 2020, Rupert the Bear turns 100. To commemorate the occasion Paul McCartney is reissuing the animated film Rupert and the Frog Song in which he voiced Rupert. Produced by McCartney and directed by animator Geoff Dunbar, the 1984 film has been polished and restored with a new audio mix. This is all well and good if you care about it, but what is absolutely... > Read more
MORE PROVOCATIONS FROM RATTLE (2020): Cutting edge to centre-frame
10 Oct 2020 | 4 min read
As Rattle approaches its 30thanniversary with something around 160 releases of albums in handsome covers, it is enjoyably impossible to categorise easily what the label does. The shorthand would say Rattle – with more than 40 music award nominations, almost half of which were winners -- captures interesting music from Aotearoa New Zealand, be it contemporary art music, jazz, taonga... > Read more
Johnstone/Leamy/Garden: Chalk Dogs (Rattle/digital outlets)
16 Sep 2020 | 1 min read
The previous album by Neil Johnstone (synths) and Sam Leamy (guitar) – with taonga puoro player Al Fraser – was the extraordinary Panthalassa which was a powerfully impressionistic series of pieces which conjured up the ancient, fathomless oceans of eons long gone. It was, as we noted, so evocative as to be cinematic. And it is little surprise that here – with... > Read more
Matthew Marshall: Fragments (Rattle)
25 Jun 2020 | 1 min read
The Rattle label has recently brought back to attention some of the avant-garde music made in New Zealand in the Eighties. But this one from recordings in Radio NZ's archives is very different, although equally welcome. These solo, acoustic guitar pieces by Matthew Marshall were all recorded in the mid-Nineties and they are of works by New Zealand composers from the Fifties to that... > Read more
Desdemona's Song (Lilburn)
MARCEL MARCEAU INTERVIEWED (2001): It's all talk, talk, talk . . .
15 Jun 2020 | 7 min read | 1
Within minutes, literally fewer than five, Marcel Marceau is back in the unadorned dressing room at Sydney's Capitol Theatre and, still in full pancake makeup, enthusiastically giving an interview after another thunderously received performance.The speed at which this private audience has been expedited and the sheer rush of words from a man whose reputation is built on silence suggests there... > Read more
RAVI SHANKAR INTERVIEWED (1998): In the house of the master
13 Apr 2020 | 19 min read | 1
2020 is the 100th anniversary of Ravi Shankar's birth and although tributes had been planned, most have been put on hold. We repost this [ and this personal essay] as our tribute . The apology couldn’t be more profuse. Three times Sukanya Shankar giggles self-consciously and says, “It's my fault,” each time following it with a litany of “sorry,... > Read more
Ferocious: Ferocious (Rattle)
9 Mar 2020 | 2 min read
It should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed Bill Direen's diverse musical and literary career that he should record an album for Rattle. He was there before punk, was briefly on Flying Nun then embarked on a career of music (with the Builders/Bilders etc), writing (prose, poetry, journals), theatrical presentations and much more. In the Eighties he flirted with the... > Read more
Extraordinary Day
Various Artists: Mansfield (CYP/digital outlets)
20 Feb 2020 | 1 min read
Anyone who endured Katherine Mansfield short stories in high school or is cynical about the growth industry of books, theses, research projects and such around this famous New Zealand author might like to set aside prejudice for this collection. Another project by Wellington singer-songwriter Charlotte Yates – following similar collections of words by Witi Ihimaera, Hone Tuwhare and... > Read more
HENRYK GORECKI, THE SORROWFUL SYMPHONY (1993): Capturing the spirit of the age, and marketing
16 Feb 2020 | 9 min read
When Billboard magazine – the bible of the international music industry – put classical music on its cover in September '92 with the heading “It’s Cool Again!” there was only one mention of Polish composer Henryk Gorecki in the 18-page insert supplement. And that reference was only to say that despite a stagnant market (unit sales in Britain down 20 per cent... > Read more
Gorecki: String Quartet #2 Opus 64, Il Deciso: Kronos Quartet
ARVO PART, TABULA RASA (2020): The sound of angel wings
2 Jan 2020 | 4 min read
The story is such an improbable cliché it can only be true: one night in the late 70s while driving between Stuttgart and Zurich, the famous jazz producer Manfred Eicher heard music on the radio so entrancing he had to pull over to listen more closely. Eicher – founder of the ECM label which has a reputation for music of often profound austerity – was so enthralled by... > Read more
Arvo Part: Tabula rasa (for two violins and prepared piano)
A FURTHER PROVOCATION OF RATTLES (2019): Still shaking the tree to its roots
27 Nov 2019 | 4 min read
On paper the idea seems implausible and if it were a pitch for a movie the resulting film would either be a comedy, farce or tragedy. It goes like this: “We're going to start a record label which will be at the high end of production values. The recordings will be presented in full colour hardcover CD sleeves with photos and liner notes. None... > 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 league Parlophone label... > Read more
ROBERT FREEMAN PHOTOGRAPHER: CREATING ANOTHER ICONIC ALBUM COVER (2019): The rubbery result of a happy accident
28 Oct 2019 | 3 min read
Many people will know the story behind the cover of the Beatles' 1965 album Rubber Soul, a distorted image which by chance captured the slightly woozy atmosphere around marijuana and the Beatles' changing music at that time. This was the album which rescued the band from being hidebound by Beatlemania. The previous album Help! had hinted at new possibilities: Lennon's brutally honest... > Read more
Nowhere Man (Beatles backing outtake)
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 – in March next year... > 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 inspiration -- the brand of... > Read more