Carla Diratz - voice, keyboard

Martin Archer - saxophones, clarinets, keyboards, electronics

Nick Robinson - guitars

Adam Fairhall - organ, electric piano

Dave Sturt - bass guitar

Adam Fairclough - drums

Charlotte Keeffe – trumpet

When Carla, Nick and I has completed our previous work “The Scale” in 2021, I felt this was such a unique work in its scope and feel – prog, pop, abstraction and chanson – that it would be very difficult to follow up such a definitive statement.

Then in 2022 Carla commented that if she made another album, the state of the world dictated that it would have to be a blues album. Immediately we had our brief for a new record. Each of us had out own take on this idea.  Carla sent in four jazz infected / inflected pieces for voice and keys which were recorded on her phone.  Nick came up with a sequence of progressive blues rock pieces for the band.  And I came up with a few little odds and ends with my own leftfield take on the format.

All of these were realised magnificently in the studio by our wonderful band, this time round bringing in the great improvising musician Adam Fairhall on organ.

We hope you will enjoy our modern contribution to the progressive blues rock tradition. – Martin Archer

On first hearing this album our friend the poet Carl Sonnenfeld wrote:

"Carla and her heavy voice crushed rock a whisper that blows the hot the cold a whisper that sinks snake engulfs with the alligator in a swamp of New Orleans Carla and her voice flows this Mississippi river that we go up against current back to reblues as an initiative quest towards Chicago Carla and her river voice that carries all the pain and grace Carla and her voice dries like sand that hangs on to the erratic harmonica of a mad angel Carla and her old dodge vehicle voice that tracks its way on the desert red dirt From Mojave to see Captain Beefheart and Neil Young. Carla and her voodoo voice to conjure fate and communicate with old bluesmen prayers to severe echoes of bass sax in osmosis with ambient chaos Carla gives her voice to the Blues a revisited and destroyed blues a Blues that resembles Carla"

For further information and links: Martin Archer - Discus Music