Music at Elsewhere
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Master Musicians of Jajouka/Bachir Attar: Dancing Under the Moon (Glitterbeat/digital outlets)
29 Jul 2022 | <1 min read
Elsewhere freely concedes this 110 minute double album will be a test for most. But having one of their earlier albums (recorded by Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones) an Essential Elsewhere Album, and having mentioned them in the context of Ornette Coleman, who recorded with them a decade later, it would be remiss not to acknowledge this. The Master Musicians tap into an ancient trance... > Read more
Stephen McDaid: Trail Maps (bandcamp)
28 Jul 2022 | <1 min read
From a seaside village in County Donegal, 46-year old Stephen McDaid grew up playing bass in his dad's country and western band, moved into the metal and alternative scene in Dublin, moved to New Zealand in 2006 and has been playing in covers bands and My Famous Friends in Christchurch. Trail Maps is his debut album of originals recorded in a couple of takes on acoustic guitar. He's... > Read more
Martin Courtney: Magic Sign (Domino/digital outlets)
25 Jul 2022 | 1 min read
For some musicians, the most interesting thing they do is the interview: there they get to blabber on about their struggles, divorce, fears, emotional state, loneliness, social concerns, global warming and so on. Uh-huh. The album they're promoting is often just the consequence of all that -- or even incidental --and as we've called it here many times, “the album as... > Read more
Brett Adams: Black Clouds in Stereo (Rattle/bandcamp)
24 Jul 2022 | 1 min read | 1
If music were a sport, Auckland guitarist Brett Adams would be the one making quick, impressive, ground-gaining plays which bring the crowd to its feet before he slips the ball neatly to someone else who gets it over the line. While heroes are carried on shoulders Adams is quietly jogging back to the changing shed where he'll again be awarded Most Valuable Player by his teammates.... > Read more
Sleep on the Wing
Pacific Heights: The Waters Between (digital outlets)
24 Jul 2022 | <1 min read
If guitarist Brett Adams approaches the studio as a laboratory for experimentation on his debut solo album Black Clouds in Stereo, Pacific Heights sees it as a test kitchen where ingredients are mixed, refined, balanced then plated up. Pacific Heights is songwriter, producer and Wellington academic Devin Abrams (formerly of Shapeshifter), whose 2016 album The Stillness was a seamless... > Read more
RECOMMENDED RECORD: Tami Neilson: Kingmaker (Neilson/digital outlets)
18 Jul 2022 | 3 min read
From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this one which comes with a beautiful and framable cover insert sleeve, the lyrics and the essay by Dr Jada Watson in a typeface size you can read. And on scarlet vinyl also. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . Although Covid thwarted Tami Neilson's 2020 American... > Read more
SHORT CUTS: A round-up of recent New Zealand releases
18 Jul 2022 | 3 min read
Facing down an avalanche of releases, requests for coverage, the occasional demand that we be interested in their new album (sometimes with that absurd comment "but don't write about it if you don't like it") and so on, Elsewhere will every now and again do a quick sweep like this, in the same way it does IN BRIEF about international releases. Comments will be brief.... > Read more
Emily Fairlight and The Shifting Sands: Sun Casts A Shadow (Fishrider/digital outlets)
15 Jul 2022 | 1 min read
Emily Fairtlight's previous album of 2018 recorded in Austin came under the unpromising title Mother of Gloom, but as we noted in our generally favourable review – “more elegantly monochrome than downright 'doom-folk' (her description)” – it didn't live down to that definition. But on this album with Mike McLeod (aka The Shifting Sands), the folk here is distilled... > Read more
WIT
Joy X Libeau: No Rules for Ghosts (bandcamp)
15 Jul 2022 | 1 min read
This Christchurch duo of Hideto Kobayashi (Joy) and Natalie Joselen perhaps play their most obviously referential – and therefore weakest – song up first on this otherwise impressive six song, 33 minute debut album. The trip-hop opener Human, good though it is – and you are immediately taken by Joselen's voice – is so perilously close to Portishead it might prompt a... > Read more
Priya 2022
Various Artists: Nude Tuesday Soundtrack (digital outlets)
12 Jul 2022 | 1 min read
The jury will always be divided over whether a soundtrack should be able to stand independent of the images it accompanies. And “soundtrack” has become a very flexible description. Some are simply collections of songs (many already released) and so exist in the same world as any other compilation. We're thinking of everything from Footloose and Saturday Night Fever to Yesterday... > Read more
Time of the Season, by Moniker w Reb Fountain
Sharon Van Etten: We've Been Going About This All Wrong (digital outlets)
11 Jul 2022 | 1 min read
Also on her sixth album as is Angel Olsen on Big Time – and having collaborated with Olsen on last year's heroic single Like I Used To -- Sharon Van Etten also embraces emotional catharsis. Where that single was a chest thrust against a rainstorm, this album is sometimes the cloak pulled tight as she strides into the cold night of doubt to embrace hope and redemption.... > Read more
Angel Olsen: Big Time (digital outlets)
11 Jul 2022 | 1 min read
On previous albums American singer-songwriter Angel Olsen has traversed broad territory from subdued, downbeat Brill Building pop to alt.country, glacial rock and influences from Fifties ballads. But her heart often expresses an ineffable sadness, an emotional torpor brought on by life's defeats. She writes from an unalloyed honesty, and – raised in a foster family, moving through the... > Read more
Tanya Tagaq: Tongues (Six Shooter/digital outlets)
7 Jul 2022 | <1 min read
Elsewhere was pleased to introduce readers to the Canadian Inuit artist Tagaq many years ago as far back as 2006, and publish a fascinating interview with her in advance of her Taranaki Womad appearance five years later. We do concede however she is not an easy proposition for her throat singing and sonic experiments, and were hardly surprised when she teamed up with Bjork and the Kronos... > Read more
Gunter Herbig: Flower of the Sea (Rattle/bandcamp)
24 Jun 2022 | 1 min read
While it doubtless expanded understanding, it wasn't necessary have any prior knowledge of the music of the philosopher Gurdjieff to enjoy the interpretations of his songs by electric guitarist Gunter Herbig on his previous album Ex Oriente. Similarly this new programme of pieces by John Cage, Isaac Albeniz, Carlo Domeniconi, Peter Sculthorpe and Douglas Lilburn. The Cage opener In a... > Read more
Dream (by John Cage)
Shearwater: The Great Awakening (Polyborus/bandcamp)
22 Jun 2022 | 1 min read
For more than a decade we have dipped into the beguiling and extraordinary – if sometimes bewildering and even infuriating – catalogue of Shearwater, the Austin band lead by Jonathan Meiburg (also of Okkervil River). Although one we missed a few years ago – which is a pointer to their Anglo-framed drama – was their cover of Bowie's Lodger album. You can certainly... > Read more
Black Seeds: Love & Fire (blackseeds/bandcamp)
17 Jun 2022 | 1 min read
If Barnaby Weir didn't exist it might be very difficult to create him. The Wellingtonian is a musician, producer, songwriter and guitarist. Okay, that might describe quite a few people. However he has also been a DJ and presented radio programmes, is the mainman behind the long-running Black Seeds (coming close to its 25thanniversary) and has his hand on the tiller of Fly My Pretties... > Read more
Steve Wells: Songs for Summer Rain (digital outlets)
17 Jun 2022 | <1 min read
This artist's name will be familiar if you remember the hugely popular rock band Fur Patrol who had a number one single with Lydia in 2001 and relocated to Melbourne. They started at the bottom over there, but still toured and recorded. Guitarist Wells quit the band in 2004 and went to Paris with his family where he started a successful career as a fashion photographer. But here he is... > Read more
Memory Foam: Steel Magnolias (bandcamp)
12 Jun 2022 | <1 min read
Coming out of the gate like a dragster in flames intent on setting a land-speed record, this album by an Auckland five-piece is a collision of flat-tack and driving drumming, metal-edge guitar and Yuko Miyoshi's declamatory, yelping post-punk vocals It will certainly not be to most people's taste. But their confrontation is admirably energised (if somewhat incoherent) and inescapable... > Read more
Horsegirl: Versions of Modern Performance (Matador through Rhythmethod/bandcamp)
4 Jun 2022 | 1 min read
Sometimes you just want to hear an enthusiastic young rock band played loud by those who know their history but play like they just discovered this joyful noise. Meet Horsegirl, three teenage women from Chicago (singer/guitarist Penelope Lowenstein still in high school) which means – to get some perspective here – they weren't even born when the Strokes reinvented sleazy VU/New... > Read more
Homage to Birdnoculars
Rhombus: After Party (Rhombus/digital outlets)
3 Jun 2022 | <1 min read
Now this is unexpected. The last time we heard from Wellington's dub, drum'n'bass-cum-electronica outfit Rhombus would have been almost 15 years ago. The two CDs I have -- Bass Player (2002) and their self-titled release of 2008 – are on the shelf alongside the likes of Chelsea, Phelps and Munroe, Recloose and others giving that electronic vibe in the early 2000s. But here are... > Read more