Blues Control - Puff (Woodsist LP)

Call it the internet version of peer pressure, and I'm an easily swayed kind of guy. Especially when I have a tenner burning a hole in my pocket. But really, nobody's said a bad word about the Blues Control Sound just yet, and in fact some real sophistos have chimed in with starry eyes about "Puff", so I figured, why not me? Plus, it's on choice brand du jour Woodsist, which you may know/may come to know as the vinyl imprint of another choice brand, Fuck It Tapes. In addition to this Blues Control, they've got vinyl sides out from Night Wounds, Raccoo-oo-oon, and Wooden Wand, so make some shelf space then would you? Or should I say...WOOD you? Ahahaha moving on.
Okay so this Blues Control, it's a duo of Lea Cho and Russ Waterhouse, the former on keyboards and the latter on guitar and electronics/tapes. I don't really know much about them or who else they played with and that's the way I'm wanting to keep it. The first side of "Puff" boasts two tunes. One indeed called "Puff" and another called "Always On Time", though it's tricky to pick out any sort of division between the two. Nevertheless, both tracks pull out magnificent crescendos from either effects boxes or Cho's keyboard out of smokey, stoned ramblings until fully-formed strong structures and skins are suddenly shed before your very eyes spectacles, in a way that'll having you throwing your head back like Kanye in the "Gold Digger" video (what was that move anyway? Never liked it) trying to figure out how this incredible - and most certainly - blues-based rhythm sparked up outta nowhere. "Always On Time" in particular has a real good elasticity to it, further stretching itself out of shape until the guitar and piano and brains melt themselves out of being. I know that, personally, it had my mind roaming. For example, was the Pink Panther supposed to be gay, or just a slippery cat who happened to be pink and somewhat effeminate? Who knows man.
The flip moves through three acts: "Behind the Skies", "End Zone" and "Call Collect". It all just bleeds into one gloriously zonked out dismantlepiece if you let it, which I just might thank you. Dig the twin harmonica/nasty crunching guitar riffing that kicks it all off. I don't want to call it shredding or anything because it isn't by definition, but holy man it shreds in the sickest of stoner rock-cut ways. All that with a thunderic rumble churning down low that sinks your stomach like a nostril full of rotten meat. And then all that gets bogged down into a celestial, near-ambient treatise, sublime all the way through - I don't want to say it's ethereal but holy man it's ethereal like a grade school crush is, no foolin'. One of the meanest, wah-est six-string blusters takes you out into the goopiest of nod-outs as heard in any later days, the kind that turns your muscles into jelly and nails the back of your head to the floor. I thought at first it was a locked groove whihc would've really lined my loins but it's close enough and the rest of the side is so slamming that I'm just tickled pink anyway. Tickled pink like a, uh, panther, so what does that say about me? It says I liked the record, doesn't it? Yeah, that's the ticket. I'll just go on the record as saying I wasn't writing out Valentines to Messrs Cho and Waterhouse from the first second of the needle drop, but it just got better and better and before you know, the needle ran out and I had just gotten off the phone with the guy who arranges to have marriage proposals spelled out in banners to be flown across the sky. Which is all to say it's one of those long-lasting sucks that'll keep changing flavors with every go-round; stay tuned for the chewy center coming up in twenty days time on Holy Mountain, in the form of a self-titled CD. Could hit just in time to be the soundtrack to summer heat waves and sweaty sleeping bags.

MP3:
Behind the Skies