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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Primitive Art Group: Primitive Art Group 1981-1986 (Amish Records/digital outlets)

21 Oct 2024  |  3 min read

From the late Seventies to the mid-Eighties, the Primitive Art Group in Wellington carried the banner for improvised music sometimes, often erroneously, referred to as free jazz. Because they didn't tour and their albums – as well as records from the numerous spin-off projects by the group's five members – were in limited editions (300 copies), they didn't make much of an impact... > Read more

Lannie's Revenge

Courtnay and the Unholy Reverie: Mercy (digital outlets)

18 Oct 2024  |  2 min read  |  1

Every now and again when Elsewhere discovers an album which has been out there for a little while – up to a month maybe – we review it as ONE WE MISSED. Perhaps we also need to do something similar about those we get to very early, like singer/songwriter and blistering guitarist Courtnay Lowe out of Taranaki. She first came to our attention in March on the album Hold My Gun... > Read more

Lost at Sea

Best Bets: The Hollow Husk of Feeling (digital outlets)

14 Oct 2024  |  1 min read

A couple of weeks ago Elsewhere noted – not for the first time – how conservative and complacent a wide swathe on local music was. It was as if, as we said, the songs were obliged to come with guys playing an acoustic guitar around a campfire on a beach at sunset. (And bugger me, that very week a hugely popular local band delivered their new video which ended with almost exactly... > Read more

Delaney Davidson and Barry Saunders: Happiness is Near (digital outlets)

14 Oct 2024  |  1 min read  |  1

Delaney Davidson has been enormously prolific in the past decade: at least half a dozen albums under his own name, production work for Marlon Williams, Tami Neilson and Troy Kingi, guest appearances and collaborations. He fitted all these in around touring and appearances in television documentaries. Davidson's collaboration with Barry Saunders' on 2019's Word Gets Around brought... > Read more

Man of Few Words

Thurston Moore: Glow Critical Lucidity (digital outlets)

7 Oct 2024  |  1 min read

When Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth separated after more than 20 years of marriage, for the indie.kid generation it was as if their own parents had broken up. Moore and Gordon seemed to have had it all: a life together making music and art, being creative, hanging out with the hippest of the hip and so on. Well, infidelity rarely plays out well as Moore discovered, and... > Read more

Hypnogram