Blues Control

VINYL FORMAT. 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.