Favourite Five Recent Releases

Five of the best albums from the recent postings at Elsewhere. Music too good to let slide into the archives. The Elsewhere place if you're looking for a quick fix.

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Tamikrest; Tamotait (Glitterbeat/digital outlets)

11 May 2020  |  1 min read

Hard to believe that Elsewhere could miss this new album, released last month, by the extraordinary Tamikrest whose sub-Saharan blues we have championed right from their debut Adagh 10 years ago to their previous release Kidal (named for the town in Mali where they formed) in 2017. As we've mentioned previously, these players are a generation below the influential Tinariwen and Etran... > Read more

Modern Studies: The Weight of the Sun (Fire/Southbound/digital outlets)

8 May 2020  |  1 min read

We're all allowed private passions and music which seduces us in a way we suspect others might enjoy but unfortunately never discover. And so it is with the British quartet Modern Studies whose previous two albums Swell to Great and Welcome Strangers (as well as an interesting remix of Swell to Great by Tommy Perman as Emergent Slow Arc) we have taken quiet delight in. The... > Read more

Run for Cover

Reb Fountain: Reb Fountain (Flying Nun/digital outlets)

4 May 2020  |  1 min read  |  1

Anyone who has paid attention to the remarkable career of Reb Fountain would not be surprised by this album which isn't – as some seem to be reading it – a major departure for her. The opening lines on the first song Hawks and Doves (which fades in, surreptitiously sneaking into your emotional space), are “changes, I've made some changes . . . ”. Perhaps... > Read more

Don't You Know Who I Am

Fiona Apple: Fetch the Bolt Cutters (Epic/digital outlets)

4 May 2020  |  2 min read

This one of the best albums released so far this year, and we'll get back to that. But first, this . . . When music writers offer reference points for an album, they can fall at a couple of hurdles. First, the references will only be useful if the reader knows them. Saying something sounds like Dark Side of the Moon or Like a Virgin might be a safe bet, but with this new album... > Read more

Shabaka and the Ancestors: We Are Sent Here By History (Impulse!/digital outlets)

21 Mar 2020  |  1 min read

Shabaka Hutchings – of The Comet is Coming, Sons of Kemet and other evolving UK jazz/funk ensembles alongside this one – has advanced a strand of retro-Afrofuturism which links to Sun Ra, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Don Cherry and others. And given those references it is fitting that the group – back after their Wisdom of the Elders in 2016 –... > Read more