Another Crayola for the Audio Pioneer
TastyBabySyndrome | "Daddy Dagon's Daycare" - Proud Sponsor of the Lit | 08/12/2007
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Chris Randall, of Sister Machine Gun fame, is no longer at the helm and representing the thing that moved a world starting to comprehend the Electro-driven minds in the Wax Trax laden 80s. He is not in the midst of Micronaut, either, the side-project of gear-laden tweeks and whistles that sounded and resounded as experimental sounds clicked and pinged throughout "here" and "there." On this album Chris Randall is instead Chris Randall, and here he finds himself really showing us where all those sounds came from in the past. The places filled with saxophone at the end of Burn, the raspy years of by-gone eras built upon his voice - you can really tell that Sister Machine Gun was Chris Randall with a microphone.
In The Devil His Due, Randall seems to be at peace with the thing he is making, finding himself away from the electronics he helped pioneer and away from the sounds he has cultivated for an ocean of years and doing something that you could always hear in his vocals. He is taking his sound and he is singing the songs that linger inside, making something that reminds me of a raspy blues club in the middle of nowhere pumping out sounds of the soul.
to me that's where Randall always belonged anyhow - he's always seemed like a blues singer that happened to excel at so many other things. And now, almost 30 years after-the-fact, he puts out something quite amazing.
When I picked up The Devil His Due, I was really surprised by what I found because I have always expected to find the blues in Randall's work but never so transparently showing. I was also amazed by the fact that this piece of work was so good and yet unheralded - it was as if Randall wanted to let his inside voice speak and see who might listen.
Being a fan for decades now, I was ready to hear what he had to say.
Amazingly concise in its creation, I kept listening to it over and over again.
The album basically consists of 12 songs that I can't say enough about, and really recommend to all types of listeners because this isn't Sister Machine Gun speaking. For people who want to explore the sound, not sure of what to expect, Positron Records has samples of every song on their website and it really needs to be listened to.
At the end of the day, Randall has succeeded so much because he knows how to make music and because he understands the voice that comes through in his vocals.
This comes HIGHLY recommended as something for everyone to try on.
"
Track Listings (12) - Disc #1