This is the most exciting release Uranium City Records has ever put out. Somewhere in some barn up in the rural Thumb region of Michigan exists a quartet of string scrapers and improvisers that heretofore has remained unheard outside that barn. Joezef K discovered their racket while on a fishing trip in the summer of 2003 and thought them to be the best band to flesh out his ideas for a record based on Sam Shepard's 1972 rock play "The Tooth Of Crime." The resulting album proves to be one of the most rocking examples of free blues ever set to magnetic tape. It's been done faster, it's been harder, but it's never been done quite so beautifully.
The Shepard play tells the tale of Hoss, an aging rock star in a world where entertainment and street warfare have combined. Hoss is challenged by a newcomer, Crow, who battles with Hoss for fame. It is a tale of rock lived and died for, of rising stars to be feared and of stalwarts to be pitied.
From the lone amplified harmonica of the first track, evoking a sort of Little Walter-meets-Ennio Morricone vibe, we're off into unchartered sound territory. "Galactic Jack's Theme" sounds like Son House if Son House were a five-armed alien playing a juke joint on Jupiter and picked up by the Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico. "The Way Things Are" takes its lyrics from the first song of the Shepard Play, and even the Shepard stage direction ("It should sound like 'Heroin' by The Velvet Underground") before descending into a swirling whirlpool of noise as the string band detunes, retunes, feedbacks, feedforwards, falls into each other and on top of each other in an orgy of vibrating string madness. K's wife and 9 month old daughter play percussion. The 2 minute excerpt heard above is an edited excerpt...you can hear both a section from the beginning and from the end. "Hoss's Theme" is a free acoustic blues with the String Band and K playing variations on a Skip James idea that James never got around to playing. The five acoustic guitars in varying states of disrepair get a little heavy handed, but the shortness of the piece lends it an immediacy of despair...you know this is Hoss's requiem. The final blowout, "Crow's Theme/The Tooth of Crime," starts with some pained moaning and acoustic playing before being decimated by what sounds like vintage Philco console radios, the String Band on piano innards, electric guitars, acoustic guitars, tapes, harps, bass fiddles and whatever junk was lying around the studio. Certainly the noisiest piece on the album, with its moments of sheer shock, it also grooves to a pict and can be the most sorrowful, especially when that lone harmonica blows against the slow plucking of piano strings. This is the track that will most mystify at first and be replayed most: there's a lot going on that won't be unearthed early. Again, the excerpt is edited...you hear moments from the entire piece and not just a single slice.
Check this shit out...and for on the Shepard play, check out the excellent review/story of the Performance Group's production at Marshall Soules Website.
