WFMU’s Scott Williams has a splendid new Blast of Hot Air posting up this morning detailing the spectacular work of Big Blood. In a sea of mediocre folk karp and psyche sardines, Big Blood are an agile musical cetacean. Scott does a splendid job of exploring the pair’s musical origins, their recent work as the husband/wife duo Big Blood. Colleen and Caleb have a new release out with Michael Gira’s Young God imprint as Fire on Fire (mp3). Oddly enough, I stumbled across the WFMU post accidentally this morning, shortly after checking the Fire on Fire sample I’d starred a couple weeks ago based off an enthusiastic AnimalPsi update. I immediately recognized the similarities to Big Blood, but wasn’t able to deduce this meant the two projects were related. Stars apparently aligned, and my aimless web browsing dropped me directly into Scott W’s BoHA entry, a posting I probably would have skimmed over in my reader.
Here’s some of what Scott had to say about BB:
Big Blood is clearly in full thrall to whatever demon god of creativity squirrels around under the dirt up there in South Portland, Maine among the loons and the decrepit oil tanks. Rhythmically hypnotic, with a lot of melody and instrumental density; broadly considered a “psych-folk” band (fair enough), it has been suggested that Big Blood have actually tripped over some long hidden threads of indigenous Americana to discover a trove of musical and folkloric delights that somehow fossilized and disappeared, centuries ago. It sounds so “Evil Dead”, doesn’t it? It can be — but it can also be intensely and heartbreakingly warm and moving…
Big Blood - Oh Country (with the Bleeding Hearts) [5:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (3254)
(This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.)
The stars have aligned here, compelling me to pay closer attention to Big Blood, and Colleen/Caleb’s related musical projects in the future. Scott’s post graciously includes two brand new unreleased (and predictably splendid) tracks from Big Blood, in addition to a studio video recording of some sort. If you enjoy the psyche-folk in general, or have enjoyed the more popular offerings from the highly publicized freak-folk movement and enjoy off the radar music, you are obligated to use this opportunity to sample Big Blood. For another sample, check out one of my older podcasts, which culled a track from that ‘Space Gallery & Sahara Club’ release. Big Blood and Cerberus Shoal’s releases are still available for purchase at North East Indie. I would recommend (at least) ‘The Vim and Vigor of Alvarius B and Cerberus Shoal‘ (WFMU archive sample) and ‘Space Gallery and Sahara Club‘ (refer to previous sentence).
…and just so this post isn’t completely lacking in new substance, check out another youtube Big Blood offering after the jump.
[wp_youtube]KjgFmzqI59M[/wp_youtube]
Hey, thanks a lot for your kind words and picking up on the post, glad to see others getting the word out about Big Blood - who, incidentally, wish it to be known that they are actually living in sin, and not legally conjugally. Great video find too, thanks for that! –Scott