Ignatz – “Ignatz II ” – [(K-RAA-K)3]

A solid candidate for record of the year. Alien abduction blues! Trips
into the apocalypse! Finger-puckering brain-picking pluck, lightning
in a bong with a young man’s old toothless moan-a-long. Moody as
twilight, and tasting like lemon on your cut lips…this has a sting
that keeps bringing you back for more. Bram Devens is one krazy kat,
this meditations give me goosebumps and will raise more than a few
bluesmen from their graves so they can holler, “Now that’s what I
was talking ’bout, gawdammit!” There is one beautiful bliss-out
away from the stark sparks of the other tracks, “Hurling Incense” is
a sort of cycling cathedral of keyboards that rises in the sky to
clouds forming in the image of Terry Riley. But then its back into
the burn and churn with maybe the most raw of the cuts. I try to
follow his words at times, but the molten emotion just blots them
out before I can hold on to them. This is an album that will indeed
shake ‘em all down… Behold the holiness of the big hurt.

-Thurston Hunger