BLOOD AND TIME

Blood & Time is an offshoot of Neurosis, featuring band members Noah Landis, Scott Kelly and Josh Graham, who take country blues into some seriously dark territory. Like, country navy blues, perhaps? As with all the releases in Southern Records' consistently excellent Latitudes series this set was recorded as a specially commissioned session, designed to capture a band at its rawest - or at least as raw as a band is likely to get in a studio environment. The results here are especially bewitching. Considering the kind of time constraints you'd imagine were imposed upon such a session the music sounds wonderfully developed, with cavernous depths of instrumental textures bolstering up the kind of weary vocals you'd hear from a Michael Gira, or even a Mark Lanegan. The trio take on a cover of Townes Van Zandt's 'Rake', which is dealt with a grave intensity, before the instrumental piece 'Hydra' throws the band's sound down a bottomless well of reverb and spiky sound sculpting. Ace. (Boomkat)