Remove the chugging rhythm of the blues and you are left with the wail; that slow motion ghostly gasp of sorrow and bad omen. The high and lonesome sound of something wicked on the horizon is ingrained in this trio's shadowy and disembodied take on the blues. New York experimental music veteran Alan Licht, who has explored similar territory in his beautiful duo with Loren Connors, is joined by Australian sound artist Oren Ambarchi and Japanese improviser Tetuzi Akiyama at the 2004 Bomb the Space festival in Wellington, New Zealand. Using guitars the trio create an alien and minimal free-blues drone. Akiyama and Licht both revel in the spirit of blues guitar, intertwining high melodic lead lines and creating clusters of tense tone. Ambarchi is a master at low end drift, and here the repeating low tones serve almost as a mutant version of a 12 bar anchor. All three players are deft at combining emotion with abstract playing (Licht's Rabbi Sky, Ambarchi's Suspension, and Akiyama's pieces for the Wooden Guitar series just to cite a few), and this set is an exemplary instance of engagingly emotive yet free playing.

"There are plenty of albums which would greatly benefit from being edited to fit on a 3" CD, but not many 3" CDs which would improve for being expanded to album length. A happy exception to the rule is this intercontinental guitar trio's teasingly short debut, a 19 minute improvisation recorded live in (of all places) Wellington, New Zealand in 2004. A strikingly simpatico grouping, they patiently weave melodic twangs, wavering drones and looming hums into a reverb haze, offering a tantalisingly brief glimpse of an enticing modern post-Mazzacane free blues demotic. Surely an album is not too much to hope for?"
- Nick Cain, The Wire No. 272

"... a great, majestic piece."
- Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly No. 541

"... droning and eerie and abstract and evocative."
- Aquarius Records