I have been recording other people’s musical output for 40 years or more, and never felt tied to or defined by one genre or the other. “Jack of All Trades, Master of None”, one might say. Conversely, it is just possible that my enthusiasm for, and experience in all types of music, particularly in recorded form, might enable me to import some of the things I learn in one neck of the musical woods into any other in the greater forest of art that lies out there.

Or I could just be full of crap, and treat every type of music I work on with the same rudimentary tools. Make everything louder than everything else, perhaps? Everything on 11.

Would that work on a Blues Album? I am pretty sure it wouldn’t – certainly not on a Blues Album that displays this much nuance and invention.

The tracks I got to work with, and the infectious enthusiasm and ideas from “the MD”, made my work of “adding the glitter” feel like I had been making Blues Albums all my life. I had not, of course, but this album transcends the boundaries of traditional Blues in a way that made me feel quite comfortable adding weird squelchy noises, then waiting for the response “Are you crazy? – that will never work!”, which never came. Just more encouragement to try more, even squelchier noises. Right up my Strasse.

The Blues underpins everything on this album, of course, but effortlessly so, in a way that adds to the genre, rather than repeating, repeating, repeating.

Delighted to have been a part of it!

Neil Ferguson
Berlin