Music at Elsewhere
Subscribe to my newsletter for weekly updates.
Brian Eno: The Ship (Opal/Border)
16 May 2016 | 1 min read
In a recent interview Brian Eno noted he is a different person these days, and in fact – like all of us – has been a series of different people. Which rather suggests he is constantly leaving past selves behind . . . and he has seemed to have done that aesthetically by moving into different territories of art, installations, painting, music for specific purposes and so on.... > Read more
I'm Set Free
Kokomo: Batten Down the Hatches (kokomo.co.nz)
16 May 2016 | 1 min read
Those who don't "get it" or take any time with the blues tend to dismiss it as all sounding the same. Certainly there can be superficial similarities, but it is an idiom with an infinitie capacity for reinvention. Every old black bluesman has a descption of the style -- "Blues is the truth", "Blues is a feeling") and so on -- but ironically it was John Lennon... > Read more
Too Many Words
Pacific Heights: The Stillness (Warners)
16 May 2016 | 1 min read | 1
Pacific Heights is the alias of Wellington producer and songwriter Devin Abrams who was a longtime member of electro-legends Shapeshifter. But here – the first outing under his own name in almost a decade – he pulls back the thumping Shapeshifter beats for an album (with guest vocalists) which shifts between dreamy neo-soul and electro-ambience, the latter tracks like the... > Read more
Airborne ft Deanne Krieg
Tom Cunliffe: Howl & Whisper (Lyttleton/Southbound)
16 May 2016 | 1 min read
The heroically hipster-beared, London-born Tom Cunliffe -- who has lived around New Zealand for decades, currently resident in Auckland -- admits coming to singwriting fairly late. Although he'd learned piano and violin it wasn't until he was 19 -- a decade ago -- that he picked up a guitar and hooked into the lineage of Dylan, Simon, Cohen et al. He's assimilated all that well and... > Read more
There's Your Lord
RECOMMENDED REISSUE: 3 Voices; 3 Voices (ohorecordings.com)
16 May 2016 | 1 min read
The early Eighties were a remarkable time for innovative, daring and genuinely avant-garde music in New Zealand. In short succession there were albums by Avant Garage and Big Sideways (on the short-lived Unsung label) as well as spin-off projects such as Don McGlashan and Ivan Zagni's Standards (on Propellor), Low Profile (Festival), Zagni with Steve Garden on A Selection of Trouble Spots... > Read more
You Were There
Anohni: Hopelessness (Rough Trade)
9 May 2016 | 1 min read
Formerly Antony (of Antony and the Johnsons), Anohni here fully embraces not just his femininity but leaps straight into brittle and often dazzlingly appropriate electronica from Hudson Mohawke and Oneohtrix Point Never. And – still often deploying that gorgeously aching, soulful voice — becomes more overtly political than she has been previously. The piece Obama here... > Read more
Watch Me
IN BRIEF: A quick overview of some recent international releases
9 May 2016 | 2 min read | 1
With so many CDs commanding and demanding attention Elsewhere will run this occasional column which scoops up releases by international artists, in much the same way as our SHORT CUTS column picks up New Zealand artists. Comments will be brief. Grant Lee Phillips;The Narrows (YepRoc/Southbound): This former frontman/writer for Grant Lee Buffalo has released a string of excellent... > Read more
San Andreas Fault, Grant Lee Phillips
RECOMMENDED REISSUE: The Mint Chicks; Crazy? Yes! Dumb? No! (Warners)
8 May 2016 | <1 min read
Has it really been a decade since this fizzing crunch of rock, pop, electronica and metal was unleashed? With it the Mint Chicks picked up album of the year, best group, best video, best cover art and even best music video (for the title track). Now re-presented as a double vinyl (with download code), the lo-fi C?Y!D?N! still sounds like timeless adolescent enthusiasm, bottled... > Read more
Wire: Nocturnal Koreans (Pink Flag/Southbound)
2 May 2016 | <1 min read
Few, if any, British post-punk bands have been as consistently inventive as Wire who began life as fascinatingly minimalist outfit (on three defining albums in fewer than two years after late '77) and evolved into something akin to an indie pop-rock/art project. For their recommended 2013 album Change Becomes Us, they revisited ideas from their earliest days in a challenging... > Read more
Forward Position
Guy Wishart: West by North (Southbound)
2 May 2016 | 1 min read
Even though it has been many years since we last heard from Auckland singer-songwriter Guy Wishart -- who won the Silver Scroll in 1990 -- these mostly melancholy songs suggest a man who has been through some emotional pain in recent times. Throughout these 12 new originals -- essayed by a terrific country-rock/folk-rock band -- there are image of broken dreams, departure, death, darkness,... > Read more
River Red
Tim Hecker: Love Streams (4AD)
25 Apr 2016 | <1 min read | 1
On this, his third album, Canadian electronica artist Hecker – again recording in Reykjavik with an Icelandic choir – reaches across six centuries, drawing inspiration equally from 15th century choral works and 21st century ambient music post-Brian Eno. The mysterious and glowing cover image captures the mystical contents where elements of electronic minimalism from the... > Read more
Music of the Air
Dodson and Fogg: Walk On (wisdomtwinsbooks)
25 Apr 2016 | 1 min read
Imagine this if you will: A world where Marc Bolan wasn't killed in 1977 when his car hit a tree. That instead he took time out, trimmed down, cleaned up and left London for some more benign pastoral environment to replenish himself. In his time away he reconnected with his folk-framed Tyrannosaurus Rex style but brought to it the same pop economy of the best of T. Rex (songs like... > Read more
No One on the Phone
Various Artists: The Active Listener Sampler 41 (activelistener)
25 Apr 2016 | 1 min read
Elsewhere can probably do no greater favour to break your ingrained listening habits than recommend you sign up to The Active Listener, one of those niche-market labour of love projects by Wellingtonian Nathan Ford . . . whom we interviewed here about his wonderful service in which he collates his own psychedelic view of the music world in these compilations. They are always a delight... > Read more
Turkish Psyche by Orgasmo Sonore
Santana: Santana IV (Santana IV)
25 Apr 2016 | 1 min read
While there was understandable anticipation for this reunion of (almost) all of the original Woodstock era band, this one reminds you Santana songs were often the vehicle for his autograph guitar work, the playing of keyboard player Gregg Rolie and the crisscross Latin rhythms from the percussionists. But even accepting that, there is something cheesy if not sleazy and creepy about the... > Read more
Freedom in Your Mind w Ronald Isley
King Crimson; Live in Toronto (DGM/Southbound)
22 Apr 2016 | 1 min read
Of course it's a bloody double-live. And it comes with a request at the start for the audience to refrain from recording, photography etc “and we'd like to have a good time and please join in and have a party with King Crimson”. (Why would you just not edit that stage announcement out?) Recorded on November 20, 2015 (we be specific because KC obsessives know and care... > Read more
Sailor's Tale
IN BRIEF: A quick overview of some recent international releases
18 Apr 2016 | 2 min read
With so many CDs commanding and demanding attention Elsewhere will run this occasional column which scoops up releases by international artists, in much the same way as our SHORT CUTS column picks up New Zealand artists. Comments will be brief. Haelos; Full Circle (Matador): In which this British electronica trio step lightly between British trip-hop, Pet Shop Boys pop and... > Read more
Bob Mould; Patch the Sky (Merge/Southbound)
18 Apr 2016 | <1 min read
After their bands broke up Bob Mould and Frank Black (of Husker Du and the Pixies, respectively) rediscovered their love of pop structures, although didn't sacrificing much in their former outfits' intensity or volume. At times on this pleasingly familiar, ear-blistering outing Mould again comes off close to hardcore power-pop (the thrilling End of Things and Pray For Rain).... > Read more
Pray for Rain
Parquet Courts: Human Performance (Rough Trade)
18 Apr 2016 | <1 min read
The weird pop opener here Dust (“Dust is everywhere. Sweep”) reminds you this band's singer-songwriter Andrew Savage was once in the Zappa-influenced electronica outfit Fergus and Geronimo. PC's bent take on pop and rock is all over this quirky collection which sometimes sounds like Television, Velvet Underground or Devo schooled on Mad magazine, or Jonathan Richman's... > Read more
One Man, No City
Moon: The Orbitor (Golden Robot)
18 Apr 2016 | 1 min read
Every now and again we in New Zealand are reminded just how Australians make hard rock . . . and not just of the Rose Tattoo kind. This impressive eight-song debut has its foot on the accelerator from the start line and Moon run like a finely tuned, well-oiled machine for the full 29 minutes. You'd guess this might be a product of some hefty touring for years through tough Aussie pubs... > Read more
Taking a Right
Mice on Stilts: Hope for a Mourning (bandcamp/Aeroplane)
11 Apr 2016 | 1 min read | 1
A couple of years ago in a music lecture I made light-hearted comments about prog-rock of the Seventies (maybe I said “pretentious” or “bloated”) and after the class a nice young man approached me. He was into prog and good-natured enough not to have taken umbrage . . . but did suggest I listen to Mice on Stilts, an Auckland ensemble in which he sometimes... > Read more