Bill Orcutt - How The Thing Sings (2011)

Ex-Harry Pussy guitarist Bill Orcutt's 2009 side 'A New Way To Pay Old Debts' was an instant classic for those attuned to his brand of stomach-scrapingly raw, hoary blues improvisation.

Few could have expected the album to be subsequently issued on CD by Editions Mego, but the more you thought about it the more it made sense - though all-acoustic, Orcutt's music is every bit as extreme, violent and threshold-testing as that of, say, Florian Hecker, Russell Haswell or Mika Vainio. As if to prove it wasn't a token gesture towards eclecticism, Mego boss Peter Rehberg has signed a brand new album from Orcutt, and what an album it is.

For the most part it's in that visceral, coruscating style that he's best known for, all finger-bleeding fretboard assaults that manage to sound at once virtuoso and completely out-of-control, reaching a psychotic climax on 'The Visible Bosom'; but there are some more reflective passages too, hell, the title track might even be the most "chilled" thing he's ever recorded. The recordings (which took place at Orcutt's home studio in San Francisco in Spring of 2011) manage to tease every last drop of blood, sweat and tears out of Orcutt's playing. Brutal, bludgeoning but incurably romantic, 'How The Thing Sings' demands your steadfast attention. Mind-blowing.