Here is another great record from Danny Barnes, this time with Max Brody, the drummer from Ministry. I am a huge fan, and this is making my day, to be sure. Even more, I feel like the last three records were kind of setting up for this one, stretching out the sonic limits of my expectations. I now have four new recordings from Danny Barnes and they just keep getting better and cooler. Ok, and weirder; but this is the reason I keep listening to this stuff. A lot of people talk about art, but when you look at what they're doing, all you see is technique. Not that it is a bad thing to be, a technician. But what art is supposed to do, the art that I like anyway, is to challenge and broaden the mind of the audience; to create something new. So where I might have been comfortable just hearing more of any of the things he does so well (ambiant, folktronics, acoustic banjo etc) Danny Barnes just keeps mixing it up and tying it back together with what Zappa used to call "conceptual continuity". These are more than just banjo records: they are re-framing the question of what can be done with music itself.
