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SXSW review: Blues Control
The eponymous (and second) album from the Queens, N.Y., band Blues Control, is the best music-to-write-to I’ve heard in a decade. I crashed on a whole mess of work last week to that record; its waves of distortion, deep focus piano and tape loop percussion were mighty conducive to extreme focus.
I don’t recall this material, or maybe it was songs from their earlier effort, “Puff,” making much of an impression at last year’s Siltbreeze Records showcase. Then again, there were about eight people there last year and we were all a little tired. This year,for reasons that absolutely pass understanding, the Soho Lounge is packed for what has to be some of the most willfully obscure music performed at this year’s South By Southwest. Heck, maybe every single one of these people is absolutely stoned out of his or her gourd, but it seems unlikely. Maybe they just hide it well — this is Austin after all.
Nevertheless, Blues Control’s rapturous drones are greeted with wild applause. Russ Waterhouse, his day-glow T-shirt and ball cap suggesting a refugee from a Hootie and the Blowfish cover band, strangled his four-string Ibenez like it owed him money, slowly coaxing out sheets of distortion the tonal color of smoked glass. With canned, distant rhythms in the background, he and keyboard player Lea Cho delivered a haze for the ages. Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in mud, and it feels so good.
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