So lately, I’ve been listening to this CD from Hazmat Modine a lot.
I am at a loss to describe what kind of music it is. One of the Amazon reviews calls it a little like “Tom Waits meets Squirrel Nut Zippers,” which is about half right, but there’s a lot of other weirdness going on, and the fact that I know very little about music and do not have the vocabulary to describe what I’m hearing is working against me. I think they’re classed as “world music” but that phrase conjures up the desperate back alley of the music store where Celtic harp music goes to die, and polka CDs breed under the shelves, so I’m leery of the term. Is there a better term? I mean, stuff like this really doesn’t belong wedged under 1001 Spanish Guitar Solos With Antonio The Crooning Chicken.*
Anyway, there’s Tuvan throat-singing.
I heard this band on some strange variant of NPR, fairly late, driving through like West Virginia, where they had dispensed with the usual NPR fare and were playing really really weird blues. Which this may also qualify as. I have heard no reference to them anywhere else, and am vaguely wondering if the NPR show may have been their big break or something, (and the Amazon reviews seem to confirm it!) so I’m spreadin’ the word.
So I recommend their CD “Bahumet,” quite a lot. The first three tracks are fanatastic, particularly the third one.
*Yes, I probably would buy that. That’s not the point!
