THE MAGAZINE FOR CURIOUS PEOPLE
Elsewhere is a concept and a place, and for many years Graham Reid has been going there for his wide angle travels, writing, music review columns and interviews with writers, musicians and artists.
Elsewhere is an ever-expanding on-line magazine for people curious about new music, different travel, interesting arts and much more. This site is dedicated to the diversity and possibilities of Elsewhere. It is an equal opportunity enjoyer. Subscribe here (it's free) for a weekly newsletter. Welcome . . .
Latest posts
QUEEN IDA. COOKIN' WITH QUEEN IDA (1989): Getting that bon temps rouler-ing
20 Sep 2021 | 2 min read
Before Ry Cooder "discovered" Cuban music for a mainstream audience with the Buena Vista Social Club (album/tour/film) there was cajun which was enormously popular for a while and artists like BeauSoleil, Wayne Toups (who came the New Zealand), Jo-El Sonnier and other became well known. An off-shoot of the cajun connection was zydeco which also emerged out of... > Read more
Low: Hey What (SubPop/digital outlets)
20 Sep 2021 | 1 min read
The American husband-wife team of Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk have built their alternative credentials over three decades now from a kind of slowcore guitar and casually melodic sound (elevated by Parker's terrific vocals, which in another context, could be profitably deployed in alt.country) and towards an increasingly experimental sound of distortion, surface noise,... > Read more
Elsewhere Art . . . Robert Graettinger
20 Sep 2021 | <1 min read
Our on-going WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . pages allows us to introduce unusual artists or albums, and sometimes another view of a familiar name. There are some pretty oddball characters covered there, and one is this fellow, Robert Graettinger. The heading on my piece was The Ghoul of Third Stream because he was a two-metre tall musician/composer described by Art... > Read more
Timba MM: Outstanding (Naxos/digital outlets)
20 Sep 2021 | <1 min read
Cuban music out of Montreal, and why not? This band of Cuban and Canadian musicians -- an eight-piece, but only six pictured on the cover, but an additional nine Cubans on the sessions – bring to a boil a boisterous Afro-Cuban/Latin sound of horns, percussion, guitars, son, samba flamenco and jazz. Although grounded in traditions –a Yoruban prayer also... > Read more
Del Bahia
THE DESSNERS, BON IVER AND THE BIG RED MACHINE (2021): With a little help from their friends
19 Sep 2021 | 2 min read
The Dessner twins in the American band The National, certainly put themselves about a bit. Paris-based guitarist/producer Bryce is a Yale-graduate composer whose work has been performed by the Kronos Quartet, Paris' Ensemble Intercontemporain and various American orchestras. He's worked with Steve Reich, Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood (the National sometimes... > Read more
Motorists: Surrounded (digital outlets)
19 Sep 2021 | <1 min read
We known absolutely very little about this Toronto-based three-piece. But after enduring the angst of Imagine Dragons ("I find myself in pieces, there are pills on the table" in the opener of their latest album) and a bunch of other artists whining about their lives or creating some fake image of themselves, there was something refreshing (if a bit early... > Read more
ARTIST, AUTHOR AND CAKE-MAKER ROSS MURRAY INTERVIEWED (2021): Muki, Pickles and an upside-down cake
18 Sep 2021 | 4 min read
Mt Maunganui's Ross Murray is one of Elsewhere's favourite illustrators and artists whose work has reached far beyond these shores. His clients have included Lonely Planet, NASA, Disney, Rolling Stone Magazine and The Washington Post, and among many at home, Garage Project. His distinctive graphic work evokes the landscapes and cultural life of Aotearoa New Zealand,... > Read more
Kendall Elise: Let the Night In (bandcamp)
18 Sep 2021 | <1 min read
We have been very keen on Auckland singer-songwriter Kendall Elis to the point of interviewing her when her debut album Red Earth arrived, and then again for this one when she answered some more personal questions, and her answers were very interesting. Although nominally along the folk-country axis (she's nominated for the second time in the Country Music Awards... > Read more
Rachel Magoola: Resilience, Songs of Uganda (Arc Music/digital outlets)
18 Sep 2021 | <1 min read
Ugandans have certainly needed to be resilient: in living memory there was the mad despot Idi Amin and subsequent disruption, the HIV epidemic, the civil war lead by the Lord's Resistance Army (more mad bastards), economic collapses and food shortages, Covid . . . Politician Rachel Magoona has raised money for healthcare and the education of girls, and along... > Read more
Sunsuuni
GREAT LOST KIWI SINGLES: Rock follies
18 Sep 2021 | 11 min read | 10
They are found at the back of cartons at record fairs, under beds in long abandoned houses and sometimes stored lovingly -- but rarely played -- in the collections of the obsessives. They are great, and not that great, rare Kiwi singles with an interesting story behind them -- often more interesting than the music. Here are some examples, more as they come to light. .... > Read more
Peter Cape: Coffee Bar Blues
THE EXPERIMENTAL GUITARS OF AOTEAROA SERIES (2021): Twang bang and spanky you, man
17 Sep 2021 | 2 min read
Further to saxophonist/facilitator Jeff Henderson's series of interesting improv albums under the collective title Jazz from the Underground Nightclubs of Aotearoa on the new Kiwijahzz label, our attention was drawn to another series . . . Experimental Guitars of Aotearoa, the first volume of which was released in 2019 (who knew?) and the second last year (ditto).... > Read more
Some Other Time (Malcolm, O'Connor)
Proteins of Magic: Proteins of Magic (digital outlets)
16 Sep 2021 | <1 min read
PoM is New Zealand singer, songwriter and visual artist Kelly Sherrod who studied at Elam in Auckland, played bass in Dimmer (touring at home and in the US), moved to Nashville for a while and now back home should be out promoting this debut album when supporting Dimmer. But . . . Although some of those dates have been postponed, this is a hypnotic album... > Read more
Hopeful Symphony
Marcin Wasilewski Trio: En Attendant (ECM/digital outlets)
13 Sep 2021 | <1 min read
Although this trio have recorded recently with Joe Lovano and under their own name, you can't help but wonder if the subdued mood here is a response to the death in 2018 of trumpeter Tomasz Stanko who this group had a long, profitable and beautiful relationship with. Even their treatment of the Doors' Riders on the Storm is taken at a melancholy, thoughtful... > Read more
Bruce Aitken: The Face Vol 1 (digital outlets)
13 Sep 2021 | 1 min read
Although he grew up in Invercargill and Wellington, drummer Bruce Aitken's career has largely been off-shore so his name is barely known here outside of musicians' circles. After playing in bands here from the Sixties into the Eighties he started to move, physically and musically: Sydney to Afghanistan and as a longtime resident in Nova Scotia; touring with the Irish... > Read more
John Cale: Mercenaries (1980)
13 Sep 2021 | 1 min read
Born of its political era and John Cale's peculiarly damaged consciousness at the time, this menacing live recording captures an embittered spirit, a rare rage and a grim humour. As Mikal Gilmore noted in Rolling Stone at the time, the Sabotage/Live album this comes from is "without apology, and more importantly, without ideology, something of a rough and ready... > Read more
(from vinyl, some enjoyale surface noise and pops)
THE BEATLES. LET IT BE COVER, COPIED AND PARODIED (2019): Can you dig it, dig it . . .
13 Sep 2021 | 2 min read | 1
You can't help but note that after their quickly knocked-off debut album Please Please Me (and its cover taking even less time), the Beatles' album covers were considered and became iconic. All except those for their movies. The cover for A Hard Day's Night was just a montage of uncredited stills from the film, Help! was shot... > Read more
Elsewhere Art . . . free jazz
13 Sep 2021 | <1 min read
As with anyone who has done their share of marching, there's always the memory of the clenched fist and the demand that someone be freed. So when it came to writing something about militant, black American free jazz from the late Sixties/early Seventies this image just sprang back. I wanted the thing to look like it was a poster battered by events at the time (the... > Read more
THE LOVIN' SPOONFUL. THE VERY BEST OF THE LOVIN' SPOONFUL, CONSIDERED (1984): From daydreams to dark clouds
13 Sep 2021 | 2 min read
Many bands of the Sixties whose hits have endured had remarkably short lives, far more brief than their legacy might suggest. When previously writing about The Mamas and The Papas we noted that their career with the seminal line-up lasted only 20 months, but in that time they had half a dozen hit singles. And when this collection of hits by The Lovin'... > Read more
PERE UBU, REISSUED AGAIN. AND NOW AGAIN? (2021) The roads more or less traveled
12 Sep 2021 | 1 min read
Because we have always been very keen on the outsider sound of Pere Ubu (and have interviewed their mainman David Thomas a couple of times, here and here), just four years ago we wrote at length about their vinyl box set Drive, He Said 1994-2002 – the third in a reissue series -- which included the albums Raygun Suitcase, Pennsylvania, St Arkansas and a... > Read more
Stinky Jim: It's Not What It Sounds Like (bandcamp)
12 Sep 2021 | <1 min read
For three decades now Stinky Jim (Jim Pinckney) has been championing and playing a kind of outlier/outsider dub reggae and mix-up culture through his bFM radio show Stinky Grooves, some excellent compilations on his label Round Trip Mars which released SJD, Tourettes and many others (we recommend the old Sideways collection for newbies, long an Essential Elsewhere album) as... > Read more