The Famous Elsewhere Questionnaire
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THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE HIGHLY PERSONAL QUESTIONNAIRE: Wailing Urei
21 Oct 2022 | 2 min read
As we mentioned when we reviewed the album Is It Me? by Wailing Urei it came at us without much context other than it was a home recording by Kyle Newman from London. But the album was an intriguing sonic landscape – a bit disturbing, melodies in there though – and so we wanted to know more. So here is what he made of our questions . . . . Where did you grow up, and... > Read more
Barcodes on a Flickering Screen
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE HIGHLY PERSONAL QUESTIONNAIRE: Motte
26 Aug 2022 | 4 min read
Last week one of the more extraordinary New Zealand albums arrived, it was Cold + Liquid by Motte (Anita Clark) and of it we said her “floating vocals [were] like a siren call in the manner of the late Julee Cruise or the quieter end of Cocteau Twins' Elizabeth Fraser” and that “her melodic violin lines often have a visceral scrape in this deliberately disconcerting context,... > Read more
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE HIGHLY PERSONAL QUESTIONNAIRE . . . Brett Adams
8 Aug 2022 | 4 min read | 1
Guitarist/songwriter Brett Adams has had a long and distinguished career from the early Mockers to the Julie Dolphin in Britain with his partner Dianne Swann. On their return to New Zealand he and Swann became the core of the Bads and Adams a go-to player on numerous sessions and tours. He's recently been seen in the band for Tami Neilson but has also just released the first album under... > Read more
The Sky Beneath (from Black Clouds in Stereo
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE HIGHLY PERSONAL QUESTIONNAIRE: Joy and Nat, of Joy X Libeau
18 Jul 2022 | 5 min read
Now these people are interesting. Performing and recording as Joy X Libeau they are Hideto Kobayashi (aka Joy) and Natalie Joselen out of Christchurch. Their smart and highly melodic trip-hop debut album with nu-soul influences is No Rules for Ghosts and here at Elsewhere we warmed to it immediately because it is sophisticated, cinematic in places and evidence of what can be achieved by just... > Read more
Daylight
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE QUESTIONNAIRE . . . Yuko Miyoshi of Memory Foam
3 Jul 2022 | 2 min read
The debut album Steel Magnolias by the Auckland five-piece Memory Foam very quickly landed in our Favourite Five Recent Releases for the sheer energy and post-punk/No Wave fury of the band's delivery. But there were also sharp songs – although in our review we admitted we had no idea what singer Yuko Miyoshi was on about at times. However we liked what we'd heard so much we... > Read more
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE SONGWRITER QUESTIONNAIRE: Lara Robertson of Tall Folk
21 Jan 2022 | 3 min read
Lara Robertson is one half of the Dunedin rather tall folk duo called Tall Folk alongside Jack Ringhand. Because their debut album Wiser is so impressive we invited each of them to answer two different Elsewhere questionnaires. Jack from the US got the highly personal version and Lara here answers the songwriter version. Although, of course, each could have answered the other.... > Read more
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE HIGHLY PERSONAL QUESTIONNAIRE: Jack Ringhand of Tall Folk
19 Jan 2022 | 4 min read
Elsewhere readers will know that we have sung high the praises of the Dunedin-based folk duo Tall Folk (whom we noted in our review are indeed very tall folk). Jack Ringhand and Lara Robertson not only have exceptional solo voices but nail down classic country-folk sounds on their excellent original songs on their debut album Wiser. We invited Jack to answer this questionnaire and Lara... > Read more
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE BLUES QUESTIONNAIRE . . . Tom Rodwell
22 Nov 2021 | 9 min read
With Wood & Waste, Auckland singer/guitarist and songwriter Tom Rodwell gave us one the most interesting, engaging, witty and thoughtful albums of the year. He is nominally a blues musician – that's his background as you will see – but the album roamed freely into the Caribbean and West Africa, pulled together the swamp sound of Tony Joe White and laidbackk JJ Cale, the... > Read more
Keep on Knockin'
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE COMPILER'S QUESTIONNAIRE . . . Rob Mayes of Failsafe Records
4 Nov 2021 | 16 min read
Rob Mayes was a musician in Christchurch, however his more abiding legacy to New Zealand music was the fact he recorded dozens of local artists (and Kiwi bands who passed through town) on his Failsafe label. The label was prolific in the Eighties and NIneties but Mayes has been living in Tokyo for the past 11 years where he works in audio mixing for film. He recently worked on the... > Read more
Tell You Tomorrow, by Dolphin (1995)
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE HIGHLY PERSONAL QUESTIONNAIRE . . . Luke Buda
22 Oct 2021 | 4 min read
To describe Luke Buda as “of the Phoenix Foundation” – which we have doubtless done in the past – is to diminish him. He gets up to much other musical mischief. He has another band Teeth, there have been film soundtracks (among them Hunt for the Wilderpeople with other Foundation members), production work (notably Dave Dobbyn's Harmony House on which he also... > Read more
Private Message
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE HIGHLY PERSONAL QUESTIONNAIRE . . . Tipene
13 Oct 2021 | 5 min read
There are plenty of very good albums and every now and again one which is excellent. But there are rather fewer which you would describe as “important” This is what Elsewhere said recently about Heritage Trail , the second album by Tipene Harmer (just Tipene to his public) which, as this is being written, sits in our Favourite Five Recent Releases. “There is a... > Read more
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE QUESTIONNAIRE: Meredith Wilkie and Kyla Dyresen of the Rocky Bay Midnights
1 Oct 2021 | 6 min read
We'd never heard of the Rocky Bay Midnights from Waiheke Island, Auckland until a very polite and professional e-mail message from the band's singer-songwriter Meredith Wilkie introduced them. Listening to the first two songs on their debut album Songs About People We Know made us immediately curious: here were strong and empowered songs with smart lyrics, great arrangements and playing... > Read more
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE HIGHLY PERSONAL QUESTIONNAIRE . . . Kendall Elise
27 Aug 2021 | 6 min read
Now in a sense we have passed this way before with Auckland singer-songwriter Kendall Elise. Three years ago we interviewed her when she released her debut album Red Dirt. Her tour supports for the likes of Tami Neilson, Larkin Poe, Gin Wigmore and Bic Runga tell you something about where she is on the musical spectrum: intelligent story-telling country-kissed songs which on that album... > Read more
A Kingdom
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE HIGHLY PERSONAL QUESTIONNAIRE: Monty Bevins
16 Aug 2021 | 3 min read
It's been three years since singer-songwriter last released his music (the EP Traveller) but forgive him, he's been busy. In the interim he took that EP title seriously and toured constantly then two years ago settled down into fatherhood and recorded his debut album, the fittingly titled Time to Bide, at Lee Prebble's Surgery in Wellington. Some men take fatherhood in their... > Read more
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE JAZZ QUESTIONNAIRE: Mike Booth
23 Jul 2021 | 6 min read
Trumpeter, arranger, composer, educator and much more, Mike Booth has been a pivotal figure in New Zealand music, notably in jazz. His CV includes time in the Rodger Fox Big Band, the funk outfit Collision, more recently with John Key on his Dune Dancing album, Sola Rosa's terrific Chasing the Sun and in the past month with Frank Gibson Jnr and others in the New Bop... > Read more
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THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE HIGHLY PERSONAL QUESTIONNAIRE . . . Louis Baker
11 Jun 2021 | 3 min read
Louis Baker has been one of the country's most feted, awarded and successful artists of the past decade, despite only one album and one EP in that time. He was nominated for three Silver Scroll (songwriting) awards, a couple of Tuis (New Zealand Music Awards) and won a Red Bull scholarship to New York. His smart, sophisticated and soulful style has won him a huge audience (as has his... > Read more
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE HIGHLY PERSONAL QUESTIONNAIRE . . . noemienours
23 Apr 2021 | 8 min read
The mysteriously-named noemienours from Sweden is in fact the very interesting Noemie M Nours (aka Noemie Dal) who has a PhD and is a freelance translator fluent in French, German, English, Swedish and Dutch. She came to Elsewhere's attention when she sent a short and polite email asking if we'd be interested in writing about her fourth album Tardigrade Bounding . Her name and the... > Read more
Slow Walker
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THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE HIGHLY PERSONAL QUESTIONNAIRE . . . Merk
16 Apr 2021 | 4 min read
Some albums are enjoyable, some are accomplished and some are important. It's the rare one – such as Infinite Youth by Auckland's Merk (Mark Perkins) – which is all three. A beautifully realised collection of songs around the loose theme of facing the threshold of adulthood while wanting to cling to the innocence and heartbreaks of childhood and teenage years it deals with love,... > Read more
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE HIGHLY PERSONAL QUESTIONNAIRE . . . Francisca Griffin
13 Apr 2021 | 4 min read
Francisca Griffin has not only been a longtime Elsewhere subscriber (reason enough for us to be interested?) but has had a very long association with Dunedin music, right back to her days in the rather wonderful Look Blue Go Purple, an all-women band in the Flying Nun boy's club. Back then she was Kathy Griffin then Kathy Bull after her marriage to the Chills' Martyn Bull, who died in mid... > Read more
THE FAMOUS ELSEWHERE HIGHLY PERSONAL QUESTIONNAIRE . . . Mark Lockett
9 Apr 2021 | 3 min read
Jazz drummer Mark Lockett has appeared previously at Elsewhere, notably on a couple of quite different albums: The Buck Stops Here with the Australian saxophonist Paul Van Ross and on Redaction with taonga puoro player Richard Nunns. His debut album Sneaking Out After Midnight (recorded in New York) was also on the Rattle label almost a decade ago. His new material betrays the influence... > Read more