Blues Control

Blues Control

Valley Tangents

Drag City

***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.0 rating from Pitchfork. There’s a new muse at the house of BLUES CONTROL. Yes, mother nature! Now located in the Woodstock of east Pennsylvania, Lehigh Valley, Blues Control conceived Valley Tangents far from the madding crowds they’d previously swarmed with and composed among. Could this be the reason for the homegrown, natural feel of the music, with the metronomical hissing of summer mosquito-bots behind their signature Debussy via Guaraldi qua Bley qua Hornsby pianisms, and the playful juxtapositions of a full spectrum of rock colors: stadium, industrial, psych and prog (to name just a few)? And yet, Blues Control’s shape-shifting qualities could lead us to type them as a mystic lounge act, with spacey guitar leads, a clarion synth and the punch of real drums. Only to suddenly discover they were instead playing inside a world music bag, wrapping their mellow drug-mospheres around a crisp keyboard center, evoking heat and nature with waves radiating from seemingly formal western scales! The exotic and the classical, wedded together with a freedom the old masters couldn’t imagine. Of course, man has always yearned to smoke the grass on the other side of his society’s fence—like McCartney in the jungle playing his staid English beats while running through ebony and ivory scales, Blues Control are liable to superimpose the British blues over new waves just to feel the juice run down their legs. Upon hearing Valley Tangents, long-time listeners will surely attest that the band are increasingly capable of...

Blues Control

Riverboat Styx

Not Not Fun

Blues Control

Puff

Woodsist

***RE-PRESSED!!! Blues Control is Lea Cho and Russ Waterhouse, a piano, guitar, and tapes duo from New York. Puff is their first full-length record, after two cassette-only releases. "Puff is the work of two modern gris gris chefs, and the most righteously authentic stoner gumbo this side of Twin Infinitives or Jungle Rot. Glittery framed sunglasses and doper's remorse. The finest racket of 2007 so far."—James Jackson Toth

Blues Control

Local Flavor

Siltbreeze

A few years back, former Quiet Sun / Roxy Music / 801 behind-the-scenes mastermind Gill Manzanera--no relation to guitarist Phil Manzanera (whose real name is Philip Targett-Adams)--offered up a beguiling reminiscence of those heady days to the Swiss fanzine Sombre Reptiles: "What we were trying to do, you see, was harness the future into the present. However, we were severely at odds with technology, a ring modulator on a Fender Rhodes and a bit of funny business through an analog synth being about as far as one could go then. The work with Quiet Sun was the foundation, then later Phil and Eno built upon that within Roxy and if only Ferry had acquiesced to Brian having a go at 'Bogus Man,' I think the results would have been stunning (as well as longer-lasting). But alas, so then for 801, the decision was to incorporate the progressive and avant garde through a chamber of fusion (so to speak), the results of which are undeniable. Mind you, this was all during the burgeoning punk era, so it took a bit of time for some to settle in with what was happening. But isn't that the future, really; someone has to be the first out the door to know if the rest of us will need a jumper or not. It was all quite brilliant in that way, absolutely so, I should think." Hmm, well, that all sounds... quite English. Oddly enough, that sliver of quinine-sotted nostalgia could be used as a swab of...

Blues Control

S/t

Holy Mountain

As you may or may not know, it can sometimes get pretty hairy working at a record store when some smelly, denim-clad dude walks in asking for the blues. If you’re lucky, he’s at least wearing a belt when you point him over to the records that are now relegated to an open spot on the floor. That’s just one scenario; who doesn’t love those other blues fondly recalled with names like Blues Addicts and Blues Creation? And let’s not forget that other queen of the blues—Barbara from Just Farr a Laugh. Blues Control might just be the missing link between Van Halen and legendary experimentalist Henry Flynt. They are a duo. Lea Cho plays swank but grounded atmospheric keyboard parts (think Harold Budd), through which guitar player and manipulator of assorted junk-on-table Russ Waterhouse cuts, whittles and lays to waste. It’s a hazy, spaced world that exists between fuzzed distortion, jabbering electronics, and a lazy, stay-in-bed psychedelic glaze, with rhythmic keyboards pulsating below it all a la a guy named Florian—and you can choose which one you want. Oh yeah, I gotta mention the humid bikini-vibe that permeates the entire album. So, is there a blues angle to it? Yeah, but you’ve got to bury yourself in it or dig your way in. Come out stinking if you want.  “It’s like the soundtrack to Rainbow Bridge—if it were in the Caribbean!” —Tobjörn Axelrod, Bus Rider