I have the impression that American duo 75 Dollar Bill (based in NYC) have been creating a stir among audiences and critics for many years now, but for me (always late to the festivities) this is the first time I heard Rick Brown and Che Chen with their unique homebrew of electric guitar with rudimentary percussion, and sometimes DIY horns too.
One breakthrough moment for them may have been their Thin Wrist Recordings LP in 2016 (quickly picked up by a German label the next year), but they’ve been putting out their own cassettes and LPs with hand-stamped covers since 2013. Another moment was 2019, when I Was Real appeared on an albums-of-the-year list chez The Wire. Even today’s record Power Failures (KR108) is a reissue, kind of, since it was one of many projects to which they turned their talented paws during the lockdown years, first emerging on Bandcamp in 2020. Today’s manifestation on good-old Karl Records is a double LP and sees our chums occasionally joined by guest musicians Sue Garner, Steve Maing, Yasi Perera, Barry Weisblat, and Ira Kaplan, guitarist from Yo La Tengo, who ya gotta figure is a loyal fan.
Before actually playing the record, for about two seconds I formed the wholly mistaken impression that we’d be getting Sunburned Hand of the Man mark II, or possibly something in mode of Mouthus, another NYC combo beloved of Thurston. Instead, 75 Dollar Bill turn out to be very far from excessive or noisy or trying to outdo a million Cecil Taylor imitators with a mistaken attempt at “energy” music, and have a strong “ethnic” vibe with their hand-knitted ragas, non-Western rhythms, and distinctly African flavour on certain cuts – ‘Another Jumper’s Harp’ could probably pass the Ali Farka Toure blindfold test at fifty paces. Although some listeners evidently perceive lysergic swirls and psychedelic patterns in what, inevitably, gets tagged as “mantric” or “trance-inducing” music, I’m more impressed by the unfussy and unpretentious playing of this duo, who work through each long-form groove with patience and insistence, and don’t feel compelled to hide their skills behind loud volume, effects, or other gimmicks. I’d like to think their stage show has the same “what you see is what you get” vibe. (July 2023)