Ed Schraders Music Beat

The small space wherein Ed Schrader's Jazz Mind thinks its fevered thoughts is a trashily compacted one. The compactor has swallowed scraps from the songbooks of '70s punk, Teardrop Explodes, Tones on Tail, Swans and even stray glitter from Bryan Ferry's forgotten closet and spit it back all cubic and oddly modern-looking. In its 20 minutes of contemporary terrestrial existence it snarls, croons, pummels with minimalist ferocity and confuses like a half-decent absinthe binge. Schrader's drum and vocal combo strips music back to its primal muck with sincere verve, while Devlin Rice adds a rubbery bass that keeps it from getting too purely caveman. Guest shredding from No Age's Randy Randall provides a little extra dimensional frequency to the duo's low end. What Jazz Mind lacks in complexity it makes up for in chutzpah, answering the unasked question "What would a rock 'em sock 'em battle between Julian Cope and Iggy Pop sound like?"