Apr 9, 2008

A SCREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN Blues Control - Self-Titled CD, 2007

Blues Control's first LP, Puff, has been kindly reissued by Fusetron, much to the oblige of many folks who mighta missed out on the wax the 1st and 2nd times around. So, in light of this, and considering I already spilled my seed about Puff earlier in the life of FYC, I thought it might be good to talk a little about their strangely less-publicized plastic debut on Holy Mountain.
When someone tells you remarkable slop is gurgling out of the Brooklyn/Williamsburg contingent, first you doubt...then you're curious..and finally you bite. And of course, you're met with the kind of fashionably meandering schtick that too-often follows the hyperbolic swill of music critics. What can you do, really? In the zeal for platinum, some people will settle for fool's gold.
Blues Control is fool-proof.
Over the course of Puff's A & B, BC stretched out ideas and notions until gossamer, hypnotic, nauseating and ultimately kinda beautiful. Same went for the Riverboat Styx tape. But on their self-titled CD, Blues Control lay down songs. Not songs like most folk know'em; songs carved from the Faust mold. Blues Control seem to think of a song as a sequence of steps. There's a feeling of travel that comes with this disc. Not layovers and hostels travel; more like the distance between the bodega on the corner and the laundromat down the block. In between are all those cracked windows, passing cars, opening and closing doors. It's the sound of chances, of glancing encounters. Even the recording seem to place their sound everywhere at once, glowing under a million tiny spotlights.
I'm sure they have influences, some of which probably include illegal substances and assorted second-hand Svenska. Whatever. Some of my influences include chatpata relish, Mantronix, and pro-wrestling journalism; don't really say a lick about what I do, do it? So rather than gettin tangled in the roots, get yer maw around the fruits. I can think of at least two Brooklynites who'll be tickled plaid if you did. Go ahead. Ask any neighborhood man.

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