3 SHADES OF BLUES
Dark Star
10”, Dhyana
There
is a certain mystery about 3 Shades of Blues, one that they play with and
that has become a toy for them. I guess word has come around the Acher-Bros
(of Notwist-fame) are playing with 3 Shades of Blues and that this band /
project is doing instrumentals that take up musical-standards and then push
them further and further towards the edge, but never over. Like leaning
over, always on the brink of falling over, in the imminent danger of
something awful happening, but it never does. So you get the feeling, that
there is something wrong here, but never can tell what.
On
their new 10”-record on Dhyana they tackle some flamenco/Shanty-type of
something (?), a blues-slide-riff and then some guitar/melodica-chords like
movie-score-something. Very basic stuff but really not easily described
because of their way of getting to the core of things and thus leaving it
all stripped and bare and distorted and undistinguishable. The real
highlight is the longer track on the second side. Starting with soundsamples
from the movie “Dark Star” an eerie guitar starts to wail and then the
drums start to whirl and the percussion sets in, and all that is the
overture to a truly great track that reminds me of one of my
all-time-favourite “bands”: Godspeed You Black Emperor!. At least when
the bass sets in to pound the rhythm, easy but very low and – well..
bassy, you’ll be won over. This is a track to really suck you into its own
world, four minutes away on a different plane of reality. I rarely ever
heard voice-samples fitting so perfectly and finely into music, and then
playing it backwards one time is a genius move. And finally they even manage
a successfull, satisfying outro. If I had known that the soundtrack to space
travel actually was guitars, drums and bass I would have gone to
Austro-Space much earlier. It is too late now, I guess.
