HUGO RACE: SIDEWINDER

Travelling in straight lines through an urban environment while moving laterally at night across cool desert sands is characteristic of a journey to the Northcote social club to experience Fatalists, the latest release by musician Hugo Race. The drive along Punt Rd. and up High St. complete, Race, Michelangelo Russo and Hellhound 'Patch' Brown greet their audience on-stage. This permutation is guitar driven. But Russo's distorted harmonica and subsequent sampled reverberation of the band and its sound transpositions genre. The contagious Slow Fry surreptitiously lurches between Race's corrugated vocals, his funereal Gibson and an apparently innocuous tube amp loitering against a rear wall. As close to traditional blues as Race is prepared to get, he nevertheless elicits from this specific form a contemporary elaboration that revels in its homelessness. Situated somewhere on a cusp between the amorphous desert and the blue neon of a bad city, Slow Fry sails in on an evening wind only to leave lyrical grit in the eye of the punter. It is a dirty, deceptively simple song that demands mainstream attention but, of course, will never receive it. 

The Fatalists album was recorded in Italy where Race spends much time touring. Unsurprising then that the melodic structure of songs such as In the Pines and Still Running imply the sound of Angelo Badalamenti and his collaborations with film director David Lynch. These integrated excursions into musical influences not normally associated with the three minute rock song add a textural layer to Race's balladry. While he is careful not to tamper with the overall convention, the pathos of his lyrics reverberates with similar cinematic reference. Consequently, Morricone, Leone and the film Once Upon a Time in the West become subtle references to the spectre of death that permeates Fatalists. Hearing the concisely positioned musical reference prompts a momentary recall of the chosen film and its thematic concerns. The result is that what initially resemble ballads of cross-border desolation become pithy if not personal reflections upon the tomb. Sometimes humorous and ironic, such as the misinterpretation by an Italian audience of the song title Dopefiends as 'Dolphins'. At others, explicitly fabulist during the infected pummel of Serpent Egg. Meanwhile, Russo's aching harmonica, circulating as a raucous lick in the humid air, threatens to disassemble this contrivance. His overblow is sampled and regurgitated in a superfluous effort to accentuate the climax of a song. But this appears to be more the result of an excess of enthusiasm. Otherwise, his musical presence provides the perfect contrast to Race's desire for economy and control. Race's lyricism and inventive melody allude to the presence of death while Russo's harp hurtles toward its inevitable conclusion. Alongside, Hellhound Brown is careful not to be distracted by either. His disciplined strumming calms the beast in his two compatriots while simultaneously making it appear as if he is just along for the ride.

Race is a defiant and deferential figure on-stage. His lithe form inhabits the area surrounding the microphone in a manner simultaneously pragmatic and proto-cool. At times, (and if he were no longer restrained by the horizontal presence of his sombre Gibson), he appears to osmose with the microphone stand. The effect of this perpendicular stage presence is in contrast to the textural sweep that characterises the band and its music. Race’s desire for cinematic allusion is exemplified by Russo’s regurgitation of specific musical quotations. Reconfigured by reverb or distorted and fed back into the the subsequent progression, the resulting desolate atmospherics are captured and propelled forward by the economy of Race’s lyrics. The tension between these two opposing elements is particularly noticeable on the crisp Nightvision. Race malingers above his mic like the reluctant recipient of a power to see in the dark. As the vocal conduit for the maelstrom of musical notation that swirls around him he snaps at each element and channels the resulting composition directly into the audience. Nightvision is the musical equivalent of a circular saw. Those patrons imbibing or playing pool in the bar would have heard it splintering plaster before it cut directly through the wall. 

There are eight tracks on the Fatalists album and for this live set Race includes five tunes from his encyclopaedic discography. I believe one was written by his daughter; while others such as Sun City Casino and 53rd State are incantations advanced from previous albums. Never one for giving too much away, Race is, however, a fan of the brief anecdote when introducing songs. This tendency toward publicly reflecting upon the origins of his music not only tempers his reputation for rattlesnake rock. It quietly undermines the popular myth so often attached to rock journeymen. It is common knowledge that Fatalists was in part prompted by a debilitating bout of pneumonia. Consequently, this show at the Northcote Social Club is often accentuated by moments of ironic jocularity, pathos, and a diversified awareness of the disagreeable predicament many Australian musicians find themselves immersed within. Above all, Fatalists is an album laced with vulnerability. When travelling in straight lines through an urban environment while moving laterally at night across cool, desert sands, death is the inevitable destination of the Sidewinder. 


Hugo Race: Fatalists album launch 
Northcote Social Club, March 9, Melb.