Perera Elsewhere - Fountain (Friends of Friends)

The Slow Music Movement
Sep 10
2 min read

Updated: Sep 12

This is the cover for Perera Elsewhere’s Just Wanna Live Some album, showing Elsewhere wearing colourful, peacock feather patterned attire and a black cap stands against a textured background, exuding a bold and confident mood.

Raised in the UK but now based in Berlin, Perera Elsewhere is a producer, lyricist, composer, DJ, sound artist and just for the hell of it plays the trumpet as well. She's also got some killer raincoats. Announcing herself in 2013 with the Afrofuturistic Everlast album, she's been dropping an album of uncompromising, saying something future soul and far-out pop every few years since. I like her.

Perera Elsewhere in colorful tie-dye outfit walks on an African street. Background shows two people near a wall and a table with items. Urban, casual vibe.

After the decidedly solo Home album, it looks like she's been phoning a few friends to join her in the studio this time round, and she's got quite the ear for choosing colourful collaborators to help populate her widescreen vision, and refreshingly they're all new to me, always good news.

On "Fountain" she invites Batila and Yaadikone over for tea, biscuits and to realise her soulful avant-folktronic vision; its genuinely heart wrenching vocal made all the better by the electroacoustic fusion surrounding it - a simple string picked refrain that threads an increasingly wayward electronic soundscape and dreamy backing vocals with its acoustic warmth. Things get a bit grimier and urban on "NGL", Elsewhere showing her vocal versatility by switching between tower block spitting and dream soul, both styles effortlessly riding the broken beats and late night mood.

Nadine Neven sticks her head around the studio door on "Vision" for a slightly more mainstream leaning modern R&B tune that still keeps it electronic credibility. It's party time on "Fuck Le System" with it's high tempo Afro-riddim encouraging you to drop all sorts of shapes whilst Côte d'Ivoire's top girl Andy S says in French what we're all thinking. S then shows her vocal versatility on "Time Will Tell" by rapping about who knows what (French readers let me know) over a militant marching hip hop beat that oozes attitude and border ignoring co-operation.

The album is out on October 24th, but make sure you check these singles now.