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Hard Grind

by Little Axe

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Mississippi label Fat Possum has done much for the fusion of blues and another distinctly African American music, hip-hop, but this project sounds forced and phony. R.L. Burnside's elegant and trippy Wish I Was in Heaven Sitting Down and the compilation New Beats from the Delta both team urban Southern MCs with the label's crusty bluesmen and sound gritty and first-rate. But this meandering, formless sonic splatter painting is terrible, despite its expert cast.

Guitarist Skip McDonald, bassist Doug Wimbish, drummer Keith LeBlanc, and producer Adrian Sherwood are electronica pioneers, the guts of the band Tackhead, and sparkplugs for recordings by Ministry, African Head Charge, and Dub Syndicate. They have a grounding in funk, reggae, and rock that's given their earlier meta-music a human streak. So it's surprising there's almost no soul here. Gliding slide guitars, samples of black voices, and harmonica lines float through the mix, sliding against pumped snare drums, echo-treated cymbals, and programming. At best, in "Run Here Boy" and the rambling narrative "Blues Story II," the CD's nearest stabs at cohesive songs, a simmering, brooding mood rises, but it's broken by intrusions of dub effects, chanting, and glossolalia. What we hear are the signifiers of blues and none of its substance, mated with listless, shambling, ambient grooves. --Ted Drozdowski