Blues Control Valley Tangents

Now located in the Woodstock of east PA, Lehigh Valley, Blues Control conceived Valley Tangents, their first album for Drag City, far from the madding crowds that they’d previous swarmed with and composed among. Could this be the reason for the homegrown, natural feel of the music, with the metronomical hissing of summer mosquito-bots behind their signature Debussy via Guaraldi qua Bley qua Hornsby pianisms, and the playful juxtapositions of a full spectrum of rock colors: stadium, industrial, psych and prog (to name just a few)?

And yet, Blues Control’s shape-shifting qualities could lead us to type them as a mystic lounge act, with spacey guitar leads, a clarion synth and the punch of real drums. Only to suddenly discover they were instead playing inside a world music bag, wrapping their mellow drug-mospheres around a crisp keyboard center, evoking heat and nature with waves radiating from seemingly formal western scales! The exotic and the classical, wedded together with a freedom the old masters couldn’t imagine. Upon hearing Valley Tangents, long-time listeners will surely attest that the band are increasingly capable of anything in the spectrum that they feel should be integrated.

Valley Tangents was recorded in Russ and Lea’s home in Coopersburg, PA, where the two moved from Queens (their launch pad of many years), and Black Dirt (a nexus for many Blues Control recordings to date). As with each of their earlier efforts, Valley Tangents is a full (r)evolution ahead of what came before, at times an unrecognizable new blend of sounds to call Blues Control.

Blues Control’s Valley Tangents is out June 19th on Drag City. The band will tour the Northeast and Midwest this summer, and other destinations in the U.S. and abroad in the months beyond.

1. Love's A Rondo 5:08
2. Iron Pigs 4:44
3. Opium Den/Fade to Blue 6:16
4. Walking Robin 3:48
5. Open Air 6:19
6. Gypsum 8:09