Bristol’s Future Blues Project return with new LP All Played Out and a ten-track set on which they once again explore the legacy and influence of the hundred-plus-years-old genre of the blues. As the name implies, this isn’t traditional Delta Blues, or blues-rock or anything retro in any sense. It casts perhaps the widest possible sonic net while still staying linked enough to the blues of yore that echoes of traditional sounds can be heard within it and the whole thing is anchored by the familiar baritone of regular vocalist (not to mention Bristol blues legend) Kirris Riviere on every track.
Opener All Played Out nods to its lineage through a funk-rock-y approach while singles Gotta and WYDT take 80s late night soulful and more purely 80s funky roads respectively. Third track Too Much Distraction rides a heavy reggae riddim however and at this point you might feel the only blues link here is in being music of the oppressed African diaspora. Perhaps it’s better to view it as the utmost apogee of an orbit though since next cut Too Soon returns to planet funk-rock in a way that almost recalls Living Colour and is followed by the lilting rhythm of No Life which chucks in a bit of blues guitar drawing the spirit of the band and the LP back towards a centre which you realise has held, after all. The blues is there again in the lurching rhythm of I’ve Lost You even if the superficial trappings are those of synth-soul. The bossa-nova-ish Same Sentence is another case in point – as the musical spirit of the LP once more leaps outwards geographically and culturally way beyond the confines of the American south to latitudes below the Equator but hold on – have they..? Is that..? Yep, it’s blues guitar alright. The final two cuts are the Rhodes-led, breakbeat powered chug of Try Get By and the sombre, initially beat-less (and then jazzy brush-work-powered) All Gone Wrong which finds Riviere and Michaela Fedeczo duetting in a way that echoes 1800s spirituals and gives way to a rap from El Maine halfway through. As stated earlier, it’s not traditional blues music but then the name ‘Future Blues Project’ never implied you were getting that. What it is is a a chance to reflect on the fact that however distant the roots, blues music’s branches spread far and wide indeed.
(Out now HERE)