Fire-bellied music from a distant era.
The Body are Rhode Island natives Lee Buford and Chip King, an avant-metal unit whose noise-and-sludge-nihilism has grown increasingly adventurous as they’ve sought to distance themselves from the insular genre-worship of their metal peers.
Their recent album for Thrill Jockey, No One Deserves Happiness, draws as much from Beyoncé and ‘80s dance as doom metal, and nails their mission to create “the grossest pop album of all time,” as they told FACT in March. It’s easily one of our favourites of 2016 so far.
Buford’s FACT mix has nothing to do with any of that, though. Instead, he’s put together a mixtape of spine-tingling blues from the 1940s and earlier, featuring Delta bluesmen like Charley Patton and Bukka White, gospel-fired guitarists like Rev. Gary Davis, and several recordings made by ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax, from the stark intensity of Arkansan folk singer Almeda Riddle to the rowdy group singing of unknown prisoners in Southern penitentiaries.
Content warning: they don’t call it the blues for nothing.
Tracklist:
Son House – ‘John The Revelator’
Almeda Riddle – ‘Bury Me Beneath the Willow’
Benny Will Richardson & Unidentified Prisoners – ‘It Makes A Long Time Man Feel Bad’
Willie Williams and Group – ‘The New Burying Ground’
Blind Willie McTell – ‘Don’t You See How This World Made A Change’
Charley Patton – ‘Shake It And Break It’
Big Bill Broonzy – ‘How You Want It Done’
Blind Boy Fuller – ‘I Cave My Pigmeat’
Blind Willie Johnson – ‘Trouble Will Soon Be Over’
Mississippi Fred McDowell – ‘I Wish I Was In Heaven Sittin Down’
Sleepy John Estes – ‘Everybody Oughta Make A Change’
Barbecue Bob – ‘Motherless Chile Blues’
Rev. Gary Davis – ‘I Can’t Bear My Burden By Myself’
Mississippi John Hurt – ‘You’ve Got To Die’
Josh White – ‘Lord, I Want To Die Easy
Bukka White – ‘I Am In The Heavenly Way’
Blind Blake – ‘Depression’s Gone From Me’
Big Joe Williams – ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’
Papa Charlie Jackson – ‘I’m Going To Where The Chilly Wind Don’t Blow’
Skip James – ‘Devil Got My Woman’
Laura Smith – ‘I’m Gonna Kill Myself’
Roy Acuff – ‘This World Can’t Stand Long’
