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
RECOMMENDED RECORD: Search for Yeti: Dark So Soon (digital outlets/vinyl)
20 Jan 2025 | 2 min read
From time to time Elsewhere will single out a recent release we recommend on vinyl, like this one by a three-piece from Wellington/Te Whanganui a Tara which comes in a gatefold sleeve with lyrics and extensive liner notes (including the names of scores of people who joined their PledgeMe fundraising effort) and on coloured vinyl. Check out Elsewhere's... > Read more
What You Mean to Me
Turda, Romania: The salt of the earth
20 Jan 2025 | 5 min read
Our driver Mihai turns the van down a narrow street, we bump across a broken parking area and he announces we are there. Where we are is a bit harder to be exact about, but we have driven an hour or so south of the city of Cluj-Napoca in northwest Romania to get here. Which is where we want to be to take in a most extraordinary sight. We turn a corner, walk down... > Read more
GUEST MUSICIAN VINCE WAIDE OF SEARCH FOR YETI introduces their debut album Dark So Soon
20 Jan 2025 | 3 min read
Search For Yeti came together about five years ago, consisting of myself, Sean Barker, and Luke Marlow. It’s always one of the hardest things to describe a band sound, but we’ve tended to lean toward 'atmospheric indie rock' as a descriptor (or ‘sometimes noisy, sometimes not’). Myself and Luke were the main songwriters in a previous Wellington... > Read more
Fear of Drowning
Primal Scream: Come Ahead (digital outlets)
20 Jan 2025 | <1 min read
For most of their career Primal Scream have been The Band That Might Have Been. But their career has been too haphazard. However this David Holmes-produced instalment comes promisingly with soul, funk and black spirituals, reference points imported from 1991 Screamadelica, but without the ebullience of that career-defining album. Bobby Gillespie and longtime... > Read more
Love Insurrection
JIM PEPPER, REMEMBERED (2025): A man comin' . . . an' too soon goin'
20 Jan 2025 | 3 min read | 2
It is a rare jazz musician who can score a rock-radio hit -- but saxophonist Jim Pepper was a very rare jazz musician indeed. Of Kaw and Creek descent, Pepper was born in Oregon in 1941 and described himself as an "urban Indian". He spent much of his early life between family homes in Oregon and Oklahoma and although he grew up listening to big band jazz... > Read more
Ya Na Ho
THE SPIRIT OF ROMA (2024): Classical guitar by Simon Thacker, cello by Justyna Jablonska and more
20 Jan 2025 | 2 min read
Elsewhere has run literally hundreds of interviews with musicians and over the decades a few stand out: rarely the ones where someone is promoting an album or a tour, but rather those who have an interesting background and stories to tell. Among that rare company was Simon Thacker, a Scottish-born “guitarist without portfolio” as we called him. When we... > Read more
Ibrahim
Corrella: Skeletons (digital outlets)
20 Jan 2025 | <1 min read
The Blue Eyed Māori hitmakers return with an album which ticks the boxes between reggae and soul but neatly weaves through social observation and jazzy horns (the smart Power), politics plus yacht rock (the less than subtle Cookie), reggae on the march (War with “I shouldn't want to fight no more, but in the end, it's always been this way”) and moments of... > Read more
War
Bugotak: Kon Togethy (2006)
20 Jan 2025 | 1 min read | 1
We could fill the bottomless black hole that is From the Vaults with just oddball versions of Beatles songs. (So far we have been restrained, just Laibach, cartoon character Elmer Fudd and the Beatles Barkers *). But this track is irresistible. Bugotak is a Russian group which plays Siberian instruments, guitars, Chinese flutes and fiddles, and has George... > Read more
Peter Perrett: The Cleansing (digital outlets)
18 Jan 2025 | 1 min read
Peter Perrett's post-punk band The Only Ones had no greater champion in this country than the late Dr Rock, Barry Jenkin. But then again, after a conversion worthy of St Paul, he fell hard for the new sounds like Teenage Kicks by the Undertones and most things by the Buzzcocks. But he did always seem quite smitten by Another Girl Another Planet. Opening... > Read more
Fountain of You
FIVE OLD ASIAN ALBUMS I'M SURPRISED I OWN (2022): Go East, young man
10 Jan 2025 | 7 min read | 1
There's going to an enjoyable amount of guesswork here, not just how or why I have these albums – among many other Chinese, Japanese, South East Asian records – but when I got them and why. And of course questions about who a few of them are by. Any further clarification on these gratefully received. We can start with an easy one however . . . .... > Read more
THE ALBUM ART OF EXOTICA (2020): Bachelor pad images from a time before this
6 Jan 2025 | 3 min read
It was long ago and – for many in the US, UK and the rest of the Western world – far away and rather exotic. Hawaiian music was enormously popular from the Thirties onwards and for many people the restful sound of lap steel guitars evoked palm trees swaying in the breeze, the lap of the waves against the side of the outrigger and other such cliches poured... > Read more
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT . . . JOHN JACOB NILES: Murder, mountain music and a voice from the spheres
3 Jan 2025 | 3 min read
There's a fascinating, if brief, scene in Martin Scorsese's documentary about Bob Dylan, No Direction Home. It is of American folksinger, archivist and writer John Jacob Niles. He looks to be in his 60s as he sings to a small group of people and plays a large Appalachian dulcimer. The filmed scene probably took place in the late Fifties and Bob Dylan certainly knew... > Read more
THE GANTS, RESURRECTED (2024): The British Beat from Mississippi
31 Dec 2024 | 2 min read
In the years immediately following the Beatles appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964, literally scores of American bands adopted the Mersey Beat style (or what they thought it was) and many went further than just copying the Beatles' hairstyle but took on British-sounding names: the Buckinghams, Beau Brummels, Beefeaters, . . . Quite what effect the... > Read more
I Wonder
Dread Zeppelin: All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth (1990)
23 Dec 2024 | <1 min read
Christmas is upon us. And in the spirit of the day here is one of the funniest bands ever. Whoever thought pulling together reggae rhythms and Led Zeppelin riffery was an odd fish . . . but then they went one step beyond and fronted the band with an Elvis impersonator. This was classic rock-comedy . . . and their shows were hilarious. For this B-side however... > Read more
Mokotron: Waerea (digital outlets/vinyl)
23 Dec 2024 | 1 min read
Many decades ago the great Irish singer-songwriter Christy Moore – no stranger to the bottle – said something like this about the Pogues: “Great, just what the world needs, another bunch of drunk Irishmen”. As someone who'd seen how the world responded -- embracing the image of the chaotically boozy band -- you can understand his frustration.... > Read more
Reo Totahi
Keith's Christmas Tequila Cookies
21 Dec 2024 | 1 min read | 1
Keith offers this marvellous recipe which I can unequivocally recommend. His injunction that you should use only the best tequila is very important however -- as you will see if you read on. If, for some strange reason, this doesn't work out you might want to have someone make the whisky-infused Wicked Chicken just in case. INGREDIENTS 1 cup dark brown... > Read more
DEEPGROOVES; A RECORD LABEL DEEP IN THE PACIFIC OF BASS AND THE PEOPLE WHO GAVE IT A VOICE by PETER MCLENNAN
20 Dec 2024 | 4 min read
In the decade since Simon Grigg's exceptional How Bizarre: Pauly Fuemana and the Song That Stormed the World there have been many insightful books which address music, popular culture and the social climate of a period. Among them Nick Bollinger's memoir Gonville (2017) and Jumping Sundays: The Rise and Fall of the Counterculture in Aotearoa New Zealand (2022);... > Read more
Michael Kiwanuka: Small Changes
20 Dec 2024 | <1 min read
In one of those blink-and-miss it cameos, British soul singer Kiwanukahad momentary cameo in the Danny Boyle-Richard Curtis 2019 film Yesterday. Not that he needed the publicity, it arrived the same year his self-titled third album picked up the Mercury Prize. London-born to Ugandan immigrants, he had worked in studio sessions, released a couple of EPs, then came out... > Read more
Follow Your Dreams
Bob Dylan: The Christmas Blues (2009)
20 Dec 2024 | <1 min read | 1
No one would ask why Bob Dylan does something -- shilling for Victoria's Secret comes to mind -- or can be surprised by whatever it is. That said, the Yuletide album Christmas in the Heart in 2009 did catch everyone by surprise. Dylan croaking through Here Comes Santa Claus, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Little Drummer Boy, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas and other... > Read more
THE BEST OF ELSEWHERE 2024: THE EDITOR'S PICKS
9 Dec 2024 | 10 min read | 4
It is that time again when we reflect on the year that has sped by, and of course we single out albums that made it all so much better. As always these are not “the best” of the year because we couldn't hear everything and anyway, “the best” are those that you enjoyed the most. But here we remind you of those albums... > Read more