#blues control

Psychic Ills / Blues Control / Föllakazoid - The Hi-Dive, Denver, Colorado, March 7, 2013

Three bands that are no more — Psychic Ills (RIP Tres Warren!), Blues Control and Föllakazoid! Actually scratch that, Föllakazoid seems to still exist in some form or another, but they haven't been exactly prolific in recent years.

But hey, I'm not talking about now, I'm talking about then ... March 2013, to be exact, when I caught these excellent artists on an excellent triple bill at the Hi-Dive in Denver. And hey, Mile High City taper extraordinaire Lance Stack was there, too, and he's kindly uploaded all three sets to Archive.org for all of us to enjoy. (Lance's decades-spanning, ever-expanding stash of live recordings is genuinely awe-inspiring, definitely take some time to dig around in there).

Anyway, what a fun night ... Psychic Ills brought tunes from their then-new One Track Mind, which is still my fave LP of theirs, such a nice sleazy/stoney vibe; Blues Control delivered the sweet & strange sounds that the duo was known for, finding some kind of new age Suicide blend; and Föllakazoid got heavy with a rad selection of dark-toned motorik jams. Tune in, drift out.

Russ Waterhouse – 1 Minute 2 Midnight (Drag City)

It starts with cold digital silence and ends with a field recording of what sounds like people milling about a train station. Sandwiched in between these two extremes lie Russ Waterhouse’s (formerly of Blues Control) latest album. I remember Waterhouse first popping on my radar around the turn of the century. I seem to remember spray painted cassettes arriving in the mail. A few years later, I…