Favourite Five Recent Releases
Five of the best albums from the recent postings at Elsewhere. Music too good to let slide into the archives. The Elsewhere place if you're looking for a quick fix.
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Moana and the Tribe: Ono (vinyl, digital outlets)
4 Nov 2024 | 2 min read
It was so long ago when I first met Moana Maniapoto (Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Arawa) -- then Moana Jackson -- that I can only guess it must have been the late Eighties. It was at some unprepossessing venue in South Auckland and for the life of me I can't remember what it was all about. Maybe we were judging a band competition? I just remember her then-husband Willie Jackson being an... > Read more
Tū, with Jani Lauzon
The Smile: Cutouts (digital outlets)
28 Oct 2024 | 1 min read
It only seems like yesterday (it was January) when we wrote about the new album by The Smile -- the band of Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood with drummer Tom Skinner – and acclaiming it as very strong independent entity outside the Yorke-Greenwood's original outfit Radiohead. That album Wall of Eyes (when added to their debut A Light For Attracting Attention) drew us to conclude that was a... > Read more
Instant Psalm
Primitive Art Group: Primitive Art Group 1981-1986 (Amish Records/digital outlets)
21 Oct 2024 | 3 min read | 1
From the late Seventies to the mid-Eighties, the Primitive Art Group in Wellington carried the banner for improvised music sometimes, often erroneously, referred to as free jazz. Because they didn't tour and their albums – as well as records from the numerous spin-off projects by the group's five members – were in limited editions (300 copies), they didn't make much of an impact... > Read more
Lannie's Revenge
RECOMMENDED RECORD: Dr Tree, Dr Tree (WallenBink)
21 Oct 2024 | 3 min read
From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this which comes as a double with an extra record of previously unreleased material, in a gatefold sleeve with important liner notes and credits. Check out Elsewhere's other Recommended Record picks . . . . Given the resurgence of jazz in the Seventies after pop and rock had... > 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 with almost exactly... > Read more