75 Dollar Bill

Wood/Metal/Plastic/ Pattern/Rhythm/Rock

Brooklyn-based duo add horns and drones to their percussion’n’guitar desert grooves.

For their second album proper, Rick Brown and Che Chen have expanded upon their original blown-out DIY improv-blues sound, retaining that unholy mix of Mississippi juke-joint nastiness, Maghreb hypno-riffs and meditative jazz harmonics, but now with added trumpet, saxophone, contrabass and viola. Still centred around the heat-haze buzz of Che Chen’s quarter-tone Mauritanian guitar and Brown’s interlocking yard-sale rhythms – wrought from maracas, shakers and bells hit against a plywood crate that doubles as his drumseat – the expanded 75 Dollar Bill sound now feels deeper and heavier. At times, as on the minimalist low-end horn groove of I’m Not Trying To Wake Up, they sound like a vocal-free incarnation of Morphine, which rather limits their capabilities, but this is merely a quibble, as WMPPRR is one of the most powerful psychedelic releases to have come out this year.