Music at Elsewhere

Oh Sees: Face Stabber (Castle Face/digital outlets)

16 Sep 2019 | <1 min read

You have to be dedicated or aurally nimble to keep up with California's Oh Sees who have explored post-punk, garageband rock, psychedelics, prog, jazz-rock, art noise and so much more across more than 20 albums (many under variants of their Thee Oh Sees imprimatur) since that late Nineties. And done it through a merry-go-round of members with singer-guitarist John Dwyer as the sole constant... > Read more

Charli XCX: Charli (digital outlets)

16 Sep 2019 | 1 min read

It seems a quaint old time when artists had to perform on others' albums under pseudonyms or anonymously. Now just about every pop and r'n'b album is a celebrity collision and – ironically under just her own name – here singer-songwriter, multiple award winner and nominee, Charli XCX (Charlotte Aitchison from Essex) is a collaborator nonpareil. Across these 15 songs in 50... > Read more

L'Epee: Diabolique (A Recordings/Southbound)

16 Sep 2019 | <1 min read

L'Epee is something of a psychedelic/drone/shoegaze supergroup. The small print of brianjonestownmassacre.com perhaps alerts you to the presence of mainman Anton Newcombe . . . but here too are Lionel and Marie Liminana of the Liminanas, and actress/model/singer Emmanuelle Seigner (Ultra Orange and Emmanuelle, and fiftysomething Mrs Roman Polanski). They combine for 10 songs which brings... > Read more

La Brigade des Malefices

Pitch Black: Third Light (Dubmission/digital outlets)

14 Sep 2019 | 2 min read

Most often known for their deep and profound electro-dub -- which often evokes the darkness of the New Zealand bush and power of the ocean-battered coastline -- here on their sixth album Pitch Black (Paddy Free and Mike Hodgson) surprise with a deliberately underplaying opening piece, The Silver World. Its sonic landscape includes crackling, gentle swathes of electronica and a disembodied,... > Read more

The Lake Within

Cosmo and the Cosmonaut: Ultra Mega (Monkey)

13 Sep 2019 | 1 min read

It's not often Elsewhere gets a letter in crayon (see below) from an artist to accompany their CD and promo sheet. Then again, the author was an eight year old (Cosmo) and his expat Kiwi dad (NIgel Braddock aka the Cosmonaut) wrote the press release and laid down the elemental electrobeats for the 10 songs behind the little guy's raps about climate change (The World is Burning), favourite... > Read more

I Like Water

Mermaidens: Look Me in the Eye (Mermaidens/Flying Nun)

6 Sep 2019 | 1 min read

This Wellington band's previous album Perfect Body in 2017 was a canny blend of vibrant and melodic indie-rock, shiny but fuzzed-up pop and some dreamy vocals by Gussie Larkin and Lily West over the chiming, ambient guitars. This, their third album, pushes the envelope just that little bit further on cleverly constructed songs such as She's Running which comes with a layering of synths,... > Read more

She's Running

ONE WE MISSED: Misled Convoy: Sixteen Sunsets (digital outlets)

4 Sep 2019 | 1 min read

With a new Pitch Black album on it way, Elsewhere was in touch with Mike Hodgson – one half of that innovative New Zealand electronica duo with Paddy Free – and he mentioned an earlier album of his. It turned up recently (under the name Misled Convoy) and although released in November last year we bring it to attention here because it is a typically classy, engaging and layered... > Read more

Poles Apart

Katie Thompson: Bittersweet (Quirky)

2 Sep 2019 | 1 min read

It's been a while since we've heard the aching soul-folk and chiming country-rock of Katie Thompson, not since 2011's impressive Impossible in fact. And like that album, this seems to have been crowdfunded (with some well known musicians in the list) which confirms she is a self-starter with a wide and deep support base. As she deserves. Co-produced with Ben Edwards in his homely... > Read more

West Coast

RECOMMENDED REISSUE: Various Artists: Disco Not Disco (Strut vinyl)

2 Sep 2019 | <1 min read | 1

When this excellent collection of music – which is exactly as the title says – appeared on CD in 2000, it (and a subsequent volume) went past most people. But it was terrific collection of music which had refined New York dancefloor sounds and Kris Needs' essay explained it all. But as always it is in the grooves and there they were Yoko Ono's Walking on Thin Ice re-edited,... > Read more

Blue River Baby Band: Blue River Baby (Fire Flower/digital outlets)

2 Sep 2019 | 1 min read

Released in late July when Elsewhere was busy, this debut album is out there for this Wellington band's national tour (see dates below). Recorded live at Lee Prebble's Surgery studio, these eight songs morph between ballads and reggae-funk, psychedelic rock and soul (on the searing Crazy Town), and more. Fronted by the powerful vocals of Ivy Padilla (think somewhere between Renee Geyer... > Read more

Rupa: Disco Jazz (Numero/streaming outlets)

1 Sep 2019 | 2 min read

Sometimes the contents of an album are just as described by the title, as with this '82 album by Indian singer Rupa (born Sukla Biswas) who graduated with a BSc but whose auditions as a singer on All India Radio fired her with optimism, even though she was turned down a couple of times. She was finally accepted by AIR and . . . If only this album's story were that simple: the... > Read more

Jyoshna: Unity Hours III (jyoshnamusic.com)

28 Aug 2019 | <1 min read

Elsewhere has long been enthusiastic about the music of ex-pat Jyoshna, who was Joanne LaTrobe when in the acoustic trio Turiiya in the mid Eighties. Although she recorded this album on the Kapiti Coast with local musicians while back in New Zealand for teaching and currently lives in Ireland, her spiritual journey has taken her through the music and esoteric philosophies of India. And... > Read more

Starlight

Chris Prowse: Sweet the Bleep (Proco/digital outlets)

27 Aug 2019 | <1 min read

Something rather different this time from guitarist/songwriter Prowse whose two previous albums – Trouble on the Waterfront and There Goes the Shiner – reached back to New Zealand's political past (the '51 waterfront strike and John A Lee's stories respectively). Here he offers 10 gentle electric guitar pieces inspired by the landscape (the opening trilogy... > Read more

Love You Long Time

Tom Ludvigson and Trevor Reekie: Roto (Southbound)

26 Aug 2019 | <1 min read

The duo at the core of Trip to the Moon here embark on more uncharted territories with Tom Ludvigson on piano and synths, Trevor Reekie on guitar, e-bow and various effects for half a dozen pieces improvised in the studio and recorded on the spot without resorting to overdubs. While we may not know how many other similarly spontaneous pieces failed to make the final cut for whatever reason,... > Read more

Catch 23

Sam V: I Made This While (Y$O)/streaming services)

25 Aug 2019 | 1 min read

This Auckland artist with serious r'n'b chops and rap in his armoury here presents a collection of 11 pieces which not only roams freely across genres (with some sampled funk and such) but sometimes within the same piece. As on the appropriately entitled opener Jumble.2 which sounds exactly that as it pops from funk to AutoTune-soul then rap (“running away from the linear”) and .... > Read more

YBN Cordae: The Lost Boy (Atlantic/streaming outlets)

25 Aug 2019 | 1 min read

On a curated playlist for artists to watch in 2019, the 21-year old Cordae Dunston – aka YBN Cordae – out of North Carolina was included with the explicit Kung Fu from his YBN:The Mixtape. That mixtape picked up artists from the YBN collective (Young Boss N*ggaz) and this is Cordae's debut album which credits 18 other producers, numerous Cordae co-wrote these with many others,... > Read more

Tom Ludvigson and Gianmarco Liguori: Espiritu Santo Variations (Sarang Bang)

19 Aug 2019 | 2 min read

The island of Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu is something of a tourist destination these days, notably for divers who can enjoy the clear waters and abundant tropical marine life. But while it boasts a beautiful name (Holy Spirit or, more loosely, sacred spirit), it wasn't on many outsiders' radar in the mid Seventies when the population of the islands in the archipelago was no more than 90,000.... > Read more

Various Artists: And Now A Word From Our Sponsor (Frenzy)

17 Aug 2019 | 1 min read | 1

What a remarkable line-up of local talent on this CD: from singer Pat McMinn and jazz pianist Crombie Murdoch in the Fifties through Larry's Rebels, Dinah Lee, Ray Woolf, Hogsnort Rupert, Tommy Adderley, Alison Durban and others in the Sixties up to John Hanlon, Jenny Morris, Tim Finn with Don McGlashan and Eddie Rayner, John Rowles, the Warratahs, the studio genius Mike Harvey, Bunny Walters,... > Read more

not for broadcast outtakes

Sleater-Kinney: The Center Won't Hold (Mom+Pop/digital outlets)

16 Aug 2019 | 1 min read

The previous album No Cities to Love by US alt.rockers Sleater-Kinney – their return to the frontline after a decade away – was such a thrilling, confrontational, bruising and yet melodic scalpel taken to personal and socio-political issues that it was impossible to turn away. And as we said in our review at the time, it “reminds you how faint-hearted, insipid and just... > Read more

Clairo: Immunity (Fader/digital outlets)

12 Aug 2019 | 1 min read

First let's say this, when graybeards bemoan young artists getting enormous attention on the back of just a single or two, this writer is forced to remind them that exactly the same happened for the favourite artists of their era: Beatles, Stones, Cilla Black, Animals et al. So we shouldn't be dismissive just because this 20-year old American singer got over 30 million streams on You Tube... > Read more