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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Various Artists: The Ann Arbor Blues Festival 1969 (Third Man/digital outlets)

1 Aug 2020  |  5 min read

As we well know, history is telescoped by time: something which happened 20 years ago ago can be fresh in the memory but also thought to have been contemporary with something from 10 years previous. Long gone decades implode and blur. We can easily forget, for example – given just how familiar we have become with the blues – that this was a marginal music in the early... > Read more

RECOMMENDED RECORD: Bob Dylan; Rough and Rowdy Ways (Sony)

27 Jul 2020  |  2 min read

From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this one . . . .  When Elsewhere interviewed Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth 30 years ago (was it really that far back?) something came up in passing: Sonic Youth's cover of George Harrison's Within You Without You on an indie-rock Beatles tribute album Sgt Pepper Knew My Father. “We... > Read more

Jon Hassell: Seeing Through Sound/Pentimento Vol 2 (Ndeya/Border)

27 Jul 2020  |  1 min read

The sequel to trumpeter/sonic experimenter Jon Hassell's 2018 album Listening to Pictures/Pentimento Vol 1 which Elsewhere recommended, this is a further exploration of territory which Hassell had previously considered Fourth World music: a kind of self-defined area which includes ambient music, allusions to tribal chants or ritual music, low and surreptitious electronica, and evocative... > Read more

Scofield/Swallow/Stewart: Swallow Tales (ECM/digital outlets)

11 Jul 2020  |  1 min read

Anyone who has even a modest collection of ECM jazz albums will have encountered bassist Steve Swallow, most often on albums with his longtime partner Carla Bley but also with vibes player Gary Burton, and with guitarist John Scofield with whom he has an almost intuitive understanding born of four decades of playing and recording together. This album of Swallow's compositions is a salute to... > Read more

The Beths: Jump Rope Gazers (Carpark/digital outlets)

10 Jul 2020  |  2 min read

This fiery Auckland rock band are proof of the value of getting out of the practice room and a few local gigs . . . and into the wider world to get your road miles up. When they first emerged a few years ago and were embraced enthusiastically by their friends and peers, the Beths actually had some considerable way to go. Their songs felt undernourished, they could be hesitant on stage and... > Read more