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Sample Track 1:
"Bahamut" from Bahamut (Barbès Records)
Sample Track 2:
"Lost Fox Train" from Bahamut (Barbès Records)
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CD Reviews

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Boston Globe, CD Reviews >>


Siddhartha Mitter


Klezmer, New Orleans brass, Jamaican rocksteady, Southern blues, and maybe a dozen other direct influences bounce happily along together in the debut album from Brooklyn ensemble Hazmat Modine, a band of joyous pranksters who are also whip-smart musical historians. The harmonicas of leader Wade Schuman and Randy Weinstein front the operation, backed by everything from steel guitar to the rare claviola and contrabass saxophone. The evolving cast of "Hazmaticians," who ' ve been at this for seven years, think of their work as a celebration of American music and its ramshackle history of constantly melding influences. This statement of opposition to the tyranny of genre works -- partly because the story it tells is true and mostly because this is one tight, kicking band that has infused its recording with the energy of live performance. Unlike some other products of the hotbed of hipness that is Brooklyn, Hazmat doesn't trade on retro-chic but does the hard work of investigating how we came to swing the way we do. (Having a tuba helps.) And the appearance on three songs of the Tuvan throat singers Huun-Huur-Tu , whose contribution to Americana is nascent at best, mischievously subverts the whole enterprise.

ESSENTIAL "Everybody Loves You"

 10/24/06 >> go there
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