The Big Elsewhere (1996)

CD - PHCR-3051 (JPN)
Released on November 24

Produced by Paul Staveley O'Duffy
Mercury Music Entertainment Co. Ltd / A Polygram Company
© 1996 Mercury Music Entertainment Co., Ltd
© 1996 Mercury Records

Musicians are:
Vocals - Corinne Drewery
Keyboards - Andy Connell
Trumpets - Toshio Araki, Masahiro Sugasaka
Trombone and Bass Trombone - Yoichi Murata
Tenor and Baritone Sax - Takuo Yamaamoto, Osamu Koike
Flute - Hideya Takakuwa
Backing vocals - Melody Sexton, Leon Daniels
Guitars - Masayoshi Furukawa
Drums - Masaharu Ishikawa

Produced and Engineered by Paul Staveley O'Duffy
Horn Arrangement by Yoichi Murata
Assistants - Yutaka Uematsu (Burnish Stone Studios), Tatsuya Shimokawa (Digital Solutions), Yutaka Shimoyama (Victor Entertainment, Inc.)
Recorded at Burnish Stone Studios, JVC Studios, Tokyu Fun Studios in May 1996, Tokyo, Japan
Recording Co-ordinator - Kenji Sakai (CMC Inc.)

"The Big Elsewhere" concept by Swing Out Sister
Dream Text by Kenichi Egichi
Watercolour by Corinne Drewery
Photos taken from video clip of "Now You're Not Here"
Directed by Sonia Phillips
Art Direction and Design by Eisaku Ono (NANA)

Management: Bennett Freed for One Love Management

Yoichi Murata (Solid Bass) appears courtesy of JVC Records

To everyone at Mercury Records; a big thank you!

"38.3" she says, as she takes the thermometer from underneath the tongue. The sterile taste lingers in my mouth. She then reaches for the globe, accumulating some dust of months, and spins it before me. "38.3" she repeats in a deadpan voice like a roulette dealer from Atlantic City (her name would have to be Marge). "See, if it's the northern hem, you got Lisboa, Palermo, Athens and da-li-da." She then spins it in reverse. "And to the south, you got nothing, and nothing and...ho, Buenos Aires. Isn't that something? After nothing but water, what you finally get is some nice air...That calls for a pup snack, don't you think?" and adorns a knowing grin to this unexpected discovery. "Now, what you need to do, buster, is to haul yourself back down to the 36.5 zone, where the aires is much bueno. So's you got Taingier, Algier and then Frisco..." she says, not even realizing she'd just sidestepped the whole of Asia.

So that's what I do. I give in to her lips of command, reclining myself into a deep, deep siesta, and feeling her breath on the pillow beside me, and the cold towel she put on my forehead.

I lay there spinning the globe left to right, tracing the fingerprints in the dusty layer. Though, now that I've reached the 36.5 lateral, I see no on waiting for me. All I see is water, and nothing but. I call out and all I get is my own echo.

Suddenly, a steller's jay embracing porcupine flutters from out of nowhere. Her wings are pierced and bleeding by the other's spines. Her voice is hoarse from weeping. " How much I adored you, and longed to hold you; to feel the soft belly underneath those needles of yours. If this was how it was going to be...., I should have just held you, once and for all, feeling you closer, in the spread of my wings "

They then disappeared underneath the thick layer of clouds.

Just then, I feel someone breathing beside me, and I see a swirl of mulberry hair. I guess I'm at the 36.5 lateral, and ready to hold her, for once, in my arms.

Text by Kenichi Eguchi