Further Outwhere
Sounds beyond songs, ideas outside the obvious, possibilities far from popSubscribe to my newsletter for weekly updates.
Gerald Cleaver: The Process (577 Records/digital outlets)
23 Aug 2024 | <1 min read
Drummer/techno artist Cleaver is an unusual figure on the 577 jazz label out of New York. Most of the label's catalogue is free flowing and often challenging jazz but, as we found with Cleaver's previous release 22/23, his electronica and avant-soul is quite engaging. This time out the title here is the clue: it is an album – just two tracks, one five minutes, the other 37 –... > Read more
The Process (preview)
MORE JAHZZ FROM THE KIWI UNDERGROUND (2024): Jahzz it is and jazz it be
18 Aug 2024 | 2 min read
The on-going releases of left-field local jazz, improvised music and outlier sounds continues apace. The bandcamp site for Kiwijahzz lists 11 volumes of Jazz From the Underground Nightclubs of Aotearoa as well as albums like Neil Duncan's Phantom Tones and others. Mostly live albums around saxophonist Jeff Henderson and fellow travelers like bassist Eamon Edmundsen-Wells and drummer... > Read more
Loopnotloop, by Dodecoglodytes
The Temple: Vastness Vastness (digital outlets)
5 Aug 2024 | <1 min read
The Temple is the nom de disque (if we might come over all Paris Olympics) for Peter Liley, Nathan Carter (who performs as Alter Natural) and Jack Woodbury. Composer/producer Woodbury and saxophonist/composer Liley have appeared at Elsewhere with the excellent Unfathomed Waters on Rattle (which found a home in our Further Outwhere pages), Woodbury also with his electroacoustic release inst.... > Read more
Justin DeHart: Towards Midnight; New Zealand Percussion Vol 2 (Rattle/digital outlets)
22 Jul 2024 | 1 min read
American composer and percussion player Justin DeHart – currently an associate professor at the University of Canterbury – is taking New Zealand percussion music to the world through this series on Rattle of works he has commissioned and performs. If the title of his previous volume Landfall suggested the Allen Curnow poem Landfall in Unknown Seas (and Douglas Lilburn's musical... > Read more
Infinite Mind Part II: Noam
Marc Chesterman: Koala Time (digital outlets)
23 Jun 2024 | <1 min read
Experimental musician Marc Chesterman has appeared previously at Elsewhere on the soundtrack to Florian Habicht's film Woodenhead (and Woodenhead Reimagined) and his own Jean's Piano in which he sampled phrases played on a very old piano which we liked very much: “A lovely and unexpected harmonious blend of old and new,” we said. This album could not be more different.... > Read more
Dreamin'
Room 31: Crazy Town (digital outlets)
5 Jun 2024 | <1 min read
Okay, no one would argue this is easy, especially for those whose tastes run to pop tunes or even jazz with sustained melodies. But for others this – on Positive Elevation, a sub-label within New York's willfully experimental 577 Records – is an enjoyably challenging, sometimes spiraling, energetic mash-up of electronics and baritone sax by Greg Sinibaldi and more... > Read more
What You Thought Were Departures Are Actually Entrances
Karl Sölve Steven and Rob Thorne: Black Coast Vanishings (Rattle/digital outlets)
20 May 2024 | <1 min read
A slow year for the otherwise prolific Rattle label out of Auckland which usually clocks up at least a dozen releases annually and sometimes considerably more. But this album is their first of 2024, and the year is getting close to the halfway point. No one need have seen the recent documentary series from which these 13 pieces were adapted by the two co-writers Steven and Thorne (on... > Read more
Undertow
Dadson/Shearer/Allen/Johnson: Day Breathes Night (AFR/digital outlets)
19 Oct 2023 | <1 min read
Recorded in November 2021, this eight-piece collection brings together key figures in improvised experimental sound: Phil Dadson (From Scratch, here on various percussion); electronic artist Rachel Shearer; percussion player Simon Allen and Hermione Johnson on prepared piano. This is not as challenging and formidable as that might sound, certainly more accessible than much improvised free... > Read more
Gonium History
ALAN BROWN, PROFILED (2023): Dream weaver of sounds
1 Aug 2023 | 1 min read
Pianist, composer and sonic explorer Alan Brown of Auckland has appeared at Elsewhere many times previously, sometimes when he was on the periphery of jazz. But mostly in his incarnation in the world of exploratory ambient music which, over a series of album we have thought to place in our Further Outwhere pages, a space reserved for those who head off without a map and rely on their own... > Read more
Defiant Gardens
Jeffrey Alexander and the Heavy Lidders: Spacious Minds (Arrowhawk/digital outlets)
18 Jun 2023 | <1 min read
The name of the band, the album title and the blitzed-out artwork are the clues: psychedelic music lives here, starting with a 36 minute, leisurely exploration of Grateful Dead's Dark Star. This mostly instrumental, live album from Philadelphia's Alexander and his latest musical companions was recorded on a sunny afternoon in New Jersey and as it unfurls it is quietly transporting, often... > Read more
Sequoia Seed Escape Pod
Louise Campbell: Sources (digital outlets)
17 Jun 2023 | <1 min read
Another for our Further Outwhere pages is this evocative collection of pieces for clarinet and electronics by a composer-performer and inter-disciplinary artist from Montreal. These soundscapes are inspired by the St Lawrence Seaway. As you might guess from hearing the four lengthy pieces on this debut release (the other five are brief evocations of birdcalls), this music has been used... > Read more
Playing Guitar Gear
Wailing Urei: Is It Me? (bandcamp)
17 Oct 2022 | 1 min read
As regular readers of Elsewhere know, we find our music where we will – deep trawl, accident, suggestions, record company emails, pals – but obviously not everything takes our attention. But something about a modest email from “London born and raised Kyle Newman” -- his politeness possibly? – sent us to a bandcamp link and . . .... > Read more
Sleep
Steve Tibbetts: Hellbound Train; An Anthology (ECM/digital outlets)
4 Oct 2022 | 1 min read
Although not as well known as Marc Ribot and Bill Frisell, guitarist Steve Tibbetts has had a long career as an experimental and exploratory guitarist. Part of the reason for his low profile is that he – unlike Ribot and Frisell – doesn't appear on other people's albums or even play live that much. Like the classical pianist Glenn Gould, Tibbetts prefers the recording studio and... > Read more
Nick Storring: Music from 'Wéi' 成为 (Orange Milk Records/digital outlets)
9 Sep 2022 | <1 min read
Cellist/composer Nick Storring is based in Toronto and this six-part collection was created as choreography music to accompany a dance piece by his frequent collaborator Yvonne Ng. That said, its ambient quality, the sometimes deftly discordant approach and the subtle use of sounds dug from the innards of the pianos – as well as the electronic manipulation of the upright and grand... > Read more
Part III
MOTTE, rotor, LILEY AND WOODBURY (2022): Exploring the dark waters beneath
20 Aug 2022 | 2 min read
In the dark waters west of atmospheric ambient music, where avant-garde impressionism appears on the horizon, are sounds of no fixed genre. Here be melodies, ethereal voices, cinematic sweeps of synthesisers and strings, strange creaks, crackles and a sense of anxiety. This is the soundscape investigated by artists on international labels such as Mute (Nick Cave and Warren Ellis),... > Read more
To The Surface (Liley/Woodbury)
Collapsed Clouds: Seventh House Music Vol 7 (Rattle/bandcamp)
10 Jul 2022 | <1 min read
Another on the Rattle Seventh House imprint of releases which fit into our Further Outwhere pages, where we place “sounds beyond songs, ideas outside the obvious, possibilities far from pop”. Some of the musicians here will be familiar to Elsewhere/Further Outwhere readers: pianist Stephen Clothier, composer Ross Harris, Neil Johnstone (here creating the synth soundscapes),... > Read more
Clouds Imagined
Jeff Henderson: The Charming Clarinet (iiii/bandcamp)
27 Jun 2022 | 1 min read
Multi-instrumentalist Jeff Henderson – last mentioned in these pages as part of UHP (Upper Hutt Posse) – must have one of the largest catalogues of anyone in this country: he has been releasing batches of live recordings which range from solo performances through duets and those with the band Trioglodytes. A very hard man to keep up with, and what is notable also is just how... > Read more
Lip Sticks
Sunn O))): Metta, Benevolence (Southern Lords/bandcamp)
14 Jan 2022 | 1 min read
The wall of sound and distortion which bands like Japan's Boris and Seattle's drone metallers Sunn O))) deliver is not for everyone. Although in the case of the latter it was for the late Scott Walker who recorded Soused with them. It was the meeting of outliers who went even further outwhere. We liked it but don't play it a lot.. These three pieces were recorded in John Peel's old... > Read more
Wadada Leo Smith/Henry Kaiser/Alex Varty: Pacifica Koral Reef (577 Records/bandcamp)
10 Jan 2022 | 1 min read | 1
Guitarist Alex Varty said this recording from 2018 – a 55 minute improvised piece – began life as what looked like a painting more than a score by trumpeter/composer Wadada Leo Smith who refers to his graphic work as “Ankhrasmation”. “Ankhrasmation is a musical language, as opposed to a musical notation system,” Smith told music journalist Frank J. Oteri... > Read more
Pacifica Koral Reef preview
Jeremy Mayall, Yotam Levy: Elemental Stasis (Rattle Seventh House Vol 6/bandcamp)
20 Dec 2021 | 1 min read
Rattle has enjoyed a remarkable year, even by its own high standards. The launch of the Seventh House imprint of experimental and improvised collaborations has delivered albums which are more rewarding than that challenging description might suggest. This final release for the year features soundscapes by Waikato-based pianist/composer Mayall and Israeli-born cellist Levy on 10 pieces... > Read more