Hugo Race And Michelangelo Russo - John Lee Hooker's World Today (2017)

Hugo Race and Michelangelo Russo are no strangers to either Hooker or the blues. Hailed as a supreme influence on the music of their band Hugo Race & The True Spirit, here the duo create a full sensory immersion in John Lee Hooker's World Today with devastating singularity of purpose.

Recorded in a single, continuous day and night session at the Berlin studio of Boris Wilsdorf (Einsturzende Neubauten), this is an epic album of sonic sorcery suspended in time and place, looking back through twenty-first century eyes at John Lee Hooker's delta blues legacy in a swirling mix of analogue grit and deep trance pulses.

The selection of tracks tells a story in itself; from the runaway twelve-year old boy of the desolate classics 'Hobo Blues' and 'Country Boy' to the worldly-wise elder Hooker of 'The World Today' (originally from Hooker 'n Heat) and The Motor City's Burning (a cover of Hooker's cover of the MC5 classic), the album traces the arc of a life from pre-modernity to the Now on the 100th anniversary of Hooker's birth.

Race and Russo's reimagining of Hooker is simultaneously blues, electronica, avant-garde and ambient, a homage to one of the greats of rock and roll prehistory, delivered with a sting and a twist more relevant than ever to The World Today.