THE MAGAZINE FOR CURIOUS PEOPLE
Elsewhere is a concept and a place, and Graham Reid goes there for his wide angle travels, writing, music review and interviews with writers, musicians and artists.
Elsewhere is an on-line magazine for new music (we filter out the mundane and spotlight the more interesting albums), different travel, arts and more. It is dedicated to the diversity and possibilities of Elsewhere. It's an equal opportunity enjoyer. Subscribe here (it's free) for a weekly newsletter. Welcome . . .
Latest posts
Nubya Garcia, Odyssey (Concord/digital outlets)
14 Oct 2024 | 1 min read
It seems a very long time since this exceptional British saxophonist's 2020 debut album Source, which was in our best of the year releases. Her music has undergone numerous remixes (one by Mark de Clive-Lowe) and she's done guest spots (Nala Sinephro, Ezra Collective among them), but this ambitious album is a step in a different but equally rewarding direction. On... > Read more
Set It Free (ft Richie)
ADVENTURES IN MODERN RECORDING by TREVOR HORN
14 Oct 2024 | 2 min read
Acclaimed and award-winning producer Trevor Horn probably long ago resigned himself to the fact that the first paragraph of his obituaries would invariably mention Video Killed the Radio Star by the Buggles. It was a massive one-off hit for Horn and others, a studio band which never played live but – with the video which was the first played on the new MTV channel... > Read more
UP WHERE I BELONG? The delight and drawback of luxury accommodation
14 Oct 2024 | 1 min read | 1
To the best of my recollection the words “upgrade” and “Mr Reid” have never appeared in the same sentence. Certainly I have stayed in some luxurious hotels -- Sorrento’s Grand Hotel Cocumella (pictured) gets passing mention here to make you envious -- but I knew about them in advance. Yes, a couple of times I have been in that part of the... > Read more
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... > 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... > Read more
Man of Few Words
Bruce Woolley and the Camera Club: Video Killed the Radio Star (1979)
14 Oct 2024 | 1 min read
Whenever the story of the Buggles' hit Video Killed the Radio Star is told, two things are invariably mentioned: the clip of it was the first song to be played on MTV in 1981 and that the Buggles -- real one hit wonders and merely a studio band -- never played live. However there is more to the story and it is told by chief Buggle/songwriter and famous producer Trevor... > Read more
ONE HAND CLAPPING, a doco by DAVID LICHFIELD
14 Oct 2024 | 2 min read
The lives, music and world of the Beatles – together or solo – is starting to fill whole corners of large libraries, not just a shelf or two. It is no exaggeration to say that every month, if not every fortnight, another book arrives, some better than others. There have been a few biographies of Paul McCartney (and also Barry Miles' generous book, ghost... > Read more
Soily
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . TUCKER ZIMMERMAN: He who never went away is back
11 Oct 2024 | 4 min read | 1
It seems no matter how many diverse artists you seek out, follow their influences into obscure corners or go down blind alleys to chivvy out little-known singers, there's always someone whose name you have never heard before. What makes it worse in the case of Belgium-based, American-born singer-songwriter Tucker Zimmerman – now in his Seventies – is that he... > Read more
Lorelei
HERBIE HANCOCK, REVIEWED (2024): Lessons in fun and how to rockit
9 Oct 2024 | 3 min read | 1
A few weeks ago we interviewed the great Herbie Hancock and asked, politely, what possesses a man of 84 to go on the road and get up on stage to play for a couple of hours when he could comfortably be at home. He laughed and said something about paying the mortgage, then offered, “it's a privilege to be able to express myself with a great band and to play music... > Read more
Goodspace: Let's Talk About Death (digital outlets)
7 Oct 2024 | <1 min read
We saluted Goodspace/Jefferson Chen for his inventive album launch at a foodhall which we wrote about. Now lets turn attention to what's on the menu. Recorded at the Lab, Roundhead and his own studio, this album reflects Chen's considerable abilities and musical interests from the lightly boiling bass and percussion which drives She Don't Need You (which also gets... > Read more
Nests
Memorials: Memorials Waterslide (digital outlets)
7 Oct 2024 | 1 min read
This impressive debut by Britain's Verity Susman and Matthew Simms cleaves close to classic, upbeat pop heading towards psychedelia with Susman's seductive vocal delivering venturesome lyrics which compliment the twisting melodies: “Turning back to an imaginary hearse, two white horses pulling towards the door. You’re too late to write the book” on the... > Read more
Horse Head Pencil
Bob Dylan: You Belong To Me (1994)
7 Oct 2024 | 1 min read | 2
The idea of "possessing" your lover isn't a pleasant thought these days: the subtext is spousal abuse, just plain creepy stuff and not a few killings you read about on page five. But there are a few songs where that idea of possessive passion has a wistful, oddly lost and sympathetic quality on the part of the singer. At one end it is someone asking Ruby not to... > Read more
Favourite Five Recent Releases
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... > Read more
Hypnogram
Favourite Five Recent Releases
Dam Native: Kaupapa Driven Rhymes Uplifted
7 Oct 2024 | 1 min read
It's interesting to look at how this classic New Zealand album fared on release in late 1997: it just scraped into the top 40 and only lasted four weeks on the charts. That doesn't sound impressive at all until you consider that today we have a separate chart for local artists (actually a few) and so Dam Native was up against the best the world was throwing at us:... > Read more
Bright Eyes: Five Dice, All Threes (digital outlets)
7 Oct 2024 | 1 min read
Here's an interesting and somewhat relevant comparison: bear with us. John Lennon's 1970 God on his Plastic Ono Band album was a renunciation of previously held beliefs (Elvis, Kennedy, mantra), the litany ending with “I don't believe in Beatles”. It was his farewell to Beatle John, the 1960s and being reborn. It was hard for many to take, but he was... > Read more
El Capitan
GUEST WRITER RICHARD FOSTER unravels the bewildering debut album The New Sound by Geordie Greep
5 Oct 2024 | 7 min read
One of the driving themes of Anthony Powell’s roman-fleuve, Dance to the Music of Time, is the contrast between those characters driven solely by power and those more in tune with life’s more sensual pleasures. Inevitably, time and fate catches up with each protagonist and the reader can ponder if their fates are justified or not. The New Sound,... > Read more
Holy Holy
Favourite Five Recent Releases
RECOMMENDED RECORD: Geordie Greep: The New Sound (digital outlets)
4 Oct 2024 | 1 min read
From time to time Elsewhere will single out an album we recommend on vinyl, like this one which comes as a double album in a gatefold sleeve with the all the lyrics (which are necessary, there's a lot of them!). Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . Most genres of music have their identifiers: in country it can be beer, Jesus,... > Read more
Blues
Taka Nawashiro: Lifescape (digital outlets)
4 Oct 2024 | <1 min read
Now mostly based in New York where this album was recorded, guitarist Nawashiro from Saitama, Japan won the John Coltrane Award when he graduated from The School of Jazz and Contemporary Music in 2020. He has a smooth, swinging and inventive style although the namechecking of Pat Metheny in his PR doesn't quite stack up. There is a beautiful fluidity to his playing... > Read more
6 to 11
IN PRAISE OF THE MIDDLE-SIZED (2024) The pleasures of the 10 inch record
1 Oct 2024 | 5 min read
As a vinyl format, the 10'' (10 inch) record was a tasty thing between the 7'' 45rpm single and the 12'' 33rpm album. And you could get a lot onto the 10'' when the playing speed was 33. In the Forties and Fifties it was the favoured medium for many jazz artists – especially vocalists and bands, not so much the bebop crowd. And early rock'n'rollers discovered... > Read more
Perseus, by Diem Redux (Nic Roughan mix)
Ezra Collective: Dance, No One's Watching (digital outlets)
30 Sep 2024 | <1 min read
Britain's jazz-cum-world music ensemble Ezra Collective have gone from strength to strength in the past three years, their 2022 album Where I'm Meant To Be won the Mercury Prize which I believe the first time a jazz group has picked up that award. Guests on that album included Sampa the Great and Emile Sande. On this double album – after a short dubby intro... > Read more