Description

Writerly Taste & Crossover Vision Forms Decadent LP by Spirituals Blues Guitarist Novelists famously use their day jobs for material-guitarist Tom Rodwell mines his crossover blues career with a writerly taste for the surreal on Wood & Waste, a decadent and charmingly outre collection. Wood & Waste is what used to be called a cult record – a set of warmly anarchic influences and timeworn qualities that is Tom Rodwell s trademark. His songs resemble ragged short stories, cobbled-together genres from an alternate history. The aim is to locate each song in a very specific room of it s own, with contrasting feels like layers of paint or old wallpaper. The album s centrepiece is She Got Me Boiling , a juggernaut of psychedelic calypso welded to mindless riffs on cannibalism that would make the Mighty Sparrow blush. Driven by a bass-heavy guitar pulse and animated carnival drums, it s a fiendishly irresistible piece of music, as is the absurdist one-chord freak-out Touch Me Like a Teddybear , featuring NZ free improv notorieties Jeff Henderson and Chris O Connor on drums. Improvisation is a key theme of Wood & Waste, where frequently a skeletal idea transforms into a fleshy dance rhythm. Keep on Knockin subverts a determined Bo Diddley beat with dissonant Mellotron in praise of Edward Hopper and William Morris. Plenty Time is a species of prog rhumba set in Roman Britain, indebted to Nigerian giant King Sunny Ade. An English artist moored in New Zealand, Rodwell s revival of blues music as a vehicle for dance has been supple enough to embrace rhythms from spirituals and calypso, and seen him support acts like Otis Taylor, C.W. Stoneking and Leon Russell. ( Beautiful tunes, beautiful groove-you don t hear that anymore, said Derek Trucks). A parallel career as a session player has seen him moonlight live and on record for artists as diverse as Lonnie Holley, Robert Lamm and Don McGlashan, as well as various avant-jazz projects. LP features download card.

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