Hugo Race Fatalists - the collaboration between Hugo Race and Italian instrumental band Sacri Cuori. “No one holds Hugo Race back, many are his projects and precious collaborations, like the partnership of Fatalists that links him to Sacri Cuori and their exceptional folk tradition. Race puts into play his deep timbre, the Italian band throws down their sure card of desert folk from another era and from the sowing of these arid lands are born ballads suspended in time.”

 -       Luca Minutolo, Rumore, Italy

"You can rely on Hugo Race, no matter in which incarnation and constellation he appears. The HUGO RACE FATALISTS once again embark on a fascinating journey towards the end of the night with "Taken by the Dream". Folk, blues, rock, country, psychedelics in slow motion, recorded with great intelligence and skill. An album for the annual bestseller." Jochen König

24 HOURS TO NOWHERE, released by Glitterhouse Records, June 2016.

“At times dreamlike, there’s an indie cinematic vibe throughout: Johnny Cash on the Lost Highway (Lynch’s that is, not Bon Jovi’s). Elegant lyricism and wistful insight adds weight to some finely crafted songwriting and if Australiana is a genre, this is it.” - Tim Batcup, Classic Rock UK

“Hugo Race is one of our most prolific composers and musicians… (his) ability to extract a level of textural, tonal and evocative detail from such a skeletal assemblage of instruments and turns of phrase is remarkable. Striking in its austerity, and shattering in its impact, Race’s smoke-scarred baritone has never sounded so convincing.”     MAG    |   Australia   |   February 2011

“Acoustic guitar, ethereal production and that voice from beyond the grave, cavernous but of extreme sweetness. These are elements of the new production of Hugo Race, this time under the aegis of Fatalists. Once these foundations are laid, our man then shows a more eclectic approach. In fact, between the unpretentious folk ballad, No God In The Sky, and the sensual blues of The Power Of You And I, the crooner spectrum remains very wide. Extremely thoughtful production without being at any moment too heavy, quite the contrary… (Race’s) unstoppable class emerges without any false note.’            -            Wilou, www.indiepoprock.fr, France

The True Spirit was launched in Berlin in 1989 with the album “Rue Morgue Blues”, a sonic fusion of acoustic blues and industrial sampling. Following the live album “Live in Wolow Jail” recorded in a maximum security prison in Poland in 2009, the Spirit took a 5 year sabbatical before releasing their jaw-dropping masterpiece THE SPIRIT on Glitterhouse Records in 2015, followed swiftly by the FALSE IDOLS EP. In 2020, the Spirit released their ultimate statement, Star Birth / Star Death.

The True Spirit: Bryan Colechin, Michelangelo Russo, Chris Hughes, Nico Mansy, Brett Poliness

Rue Morgue Blues (1989) / Earls World (1991) / Second Revelator (1992) / Spiritual Thirst (1993) / Stations Of The Cross (solo, 1994) (Normal Records, Germany) / Valley of Light (1996) / Wet Dream (1996) / Chemical Wedding (1997) / Last Frontier (1999) / Long Time Ago (2CD Retrospective) (2002) / Live in Monaco (2003) / Goldstreet Sessions (2004) / Ambuscado (2005) / Taoist Priests (2006) / 53rd State (2008) / Live in Wolow Jail (2009) / The Spirit (2015) / False Idols EP (2015) (Glitterhouse Records, Germany) / DStar Birth / Star Death (Gusstaff Records, 2020)

Hugo Race and True Spirit juxtapose electronics and roots music to create futurist blues – dark, space-age psychedelia described by London Sounds in 1990 as "night music of the soul", and by Melody Maker as "industrial-trance-blues".

“That in this period albums characterized by words of comfort in the chaos of the moment come out is completely normal. That they are so well characterized, as if they made us all become protagonists in a dystopian film in which, well yes, the protagonist finds a better way to get out of it, is rare. And Hugo Race manages to tell all this, his are ballads for the end of the world, against the end of the world.” - Claudia Losini, Off Topic

“Fifteenth album with True Spirit by the fascinating experimenter of musical nonconformity Hugo Race;  and yet another proof of author and innovator, this time with a double album that unhinges every convention, ending up by emphasizing the power of music - a power that goes from knowing how to denounce to knowing how to excite, from destroying drifts to opening horizons  two ways that are both contrasting and complementary.” - Andrea Pedrinelli

“in this new, very fascinating and jagged work by Race: a music faced between the ancient songwriting and the future of electronics updated to 2020;  a music declined starting from the blues, passing from rock, arriving at a sort of futuristic experimentalism between disco-trance and classical-contemporary;  a music conjugated in two equal and opposite ways, one that focuses strongly on the meaning of the texts and the intensity of dressing them and the other that deepens emotional states, compositional paths and ideas of sound novelty, but both always designed aiming to communicate.” - Luca Andrioni

The fatalism, the acceptance of the dark side, the curiosity, the restlessness that run throughout the work of Hugo Race (often remembered as a former member of the Bad Seeds, when his story should be more than enough to represent itself) are a journey of psychedelic exploration between electronics, blues, ambient and drone music. - Nitestylz, Germany

“Imagine a love child of Babylon Zoo, Beck, the deepest, trippiest outings of the Stereo MC's in their 'Connected'-era mixed in with the haunted souls of early The Crystal Method and the spirit of Tricky in his absolute heydays as well as good portion of dusty, classic and down-to-earth (Desert)Rock to get an idea what this all about. Essential goodness.”

The Spirit – the new album by Hugo Race & The True Spirit

Press quotes July 2015

Q, London:

'A darkly singular experience then, and one of the best records he's ever made...'

 Vive Le Rock, UK:

'Deep bass grooves, pivotal New Orleans-style drumming, hot post-punk soul, a hoodoo voodoo gumbo like prime Dr John...' – 8/10

 Louder Than War, UK:

‘Race has a captivating low growl of a voice, instantly bringing to mind Leonard Cohen, but ‘The Spirit’ also glows with the noir atmospherics of Rowland S Howard and the coiled funk of Issac Hayes. The seductive mood suffuses the entire, thoroughly enjoyable album.’

 Kulturbloggen.com, Denmark

‘Hugo Race's new album sounds like the soundtrack to a movie I would really like to see. I imagine a mixture of Twin Peaks and True Blood... dramatic, intense, cinematic.'

Rolling Stone Germany: 'Dark Eros and transcendental blues…'

Novosti, Croatia: ‘A perfect soundtrack for True Detective, the sound passing through the neural pathways of Hugo Race & The True Spirit can be heard in the last song on the album, the mighty 'Higher Power', where you can feel how it is not about cowboys from Zane Grey novel or Hank Williams, but an armor-plated, vicious variant that has not yet been written by Cormac McCarthy…’

Cdstarts.de, Germany: 'Hugo Race and The True Spirit live in their own world of sound - blues, voodoo, dub, trip hop, Morricone soundscapes, psychedelia, industrial mysticism.....'

Rock and Folk, Paris: 'This voyager without frontiers advances through a menacing atmosphere of no-wave electroacoustics. There is the spirit here, and it doesn't forget the body and the soul...'

 The Music, Australia: "A bluesy, brooding collection of songs by a talented singer-songwriter with three decades of musical prowess behind him." - Dylan Stewart

 i94bar, Australia: - ‘Hugo looks deep into the heart and soul of his lyrics and music and encourages the musicians around him to dominate. His voice and lyrics are, after all, paramount but it’s the emotional world Michelangelo, Brett, Bryan and Nico Mansy create which give Hugo space - and the delight in seducing us. This is a defining LP for The True Spirit, there’s no way they can go backward. This is benchmark stuff.’

Distorsioni, Italy - ‘Warm and evocative, a voice that speaks of real life, passions, solitude, voyage, and the spirit of revolt.’

 Libero, Italia: ‘Hugo Race is a great institution in the field of independent rock music, and every new album is always well received. The destabilizing rock of HR&TS is never banal. In fact, it's this album's total absence of banality that renders it unique, and the clear simplicity of the songs even more disturbing...'

 Buscadero, Italia - ‘The Spirit is not only a confirmation of originality and high artistic value, but also one of the most fascinating chapters in what is already a long story.’

Rockerilla, Italy: ‘The Spirit is firstly a statement of intention, the shared image of a vision, the precise testimony of a state of the soul... Once you're immersed in the sound amidst the background of constant cicadas, there unfolds a slow, dense groove of subtle sensuality... A work of real substance, indifferent to fashion, intense like few others...'

Eclipsed, Germany - 'Stomping grooves and eerie guitars, this album tingles under your skin...'

Blow Up, Italy: 'Hugo Race returns after his ongoing journey through the rediscovery of pure folk with Fatalists and his African travels with BKO (Dirtmusic). This record (The Spirit), however, seems the natural guise for his big voice, and the encounter between moody roots inspirations and wild electronic flashes renders the musical backgrounds unique...'

Cantamara.pl, Poland

'Race does not forget about the delicious melodies. Even a recording as non-commercial as "The Spirit" proves that Race can create great songs. Noncommercial and great songs? A paradox? Only apparently. Listen to "The Spirit," and you will not want to get out of the swamp vapors...'

Damusic,be, Belgium: 'Race allows the most diverse, musical influences (psychedelics, raw blues, gentle soul and electronics) in his own work, making for a private, definite, specific sound that emerges strongly, determined by energetic rhythms, sonic sound structures, and seasoned with Race's deep dark lyricism.'

Focus Kultur, Germany: 'No one else makes music quite like this, and that in itself is an achievement...

Hugo Race & the True Spirit - The Spirit – Classic Rock Magazine - Germany: ‘The mood of the 10 dark songs is reminiscent of the last part of the classic film"Apocalypse Now", when the patrol boat reached the abandoned temple complex, where dwells the crazy Colonel Kurtz. He would certainly have liked this music. - 08/10

 E-Splot, Poland: ‘'The clash of rough and raw emotional sound is a highlight - nothing is fake or false here .... You can hear the sincerity and artistic maturity, which does not look at the trends and fashion, but consistently goes its own way.' - E-Splot, Poland

Fileunder.NL: 'In 2006 I described the album Taoist Priest of Hugo Race + True Spirit as "a combination of melancholic male Leonard Cohen, the big city blues of Nick Cave and the hypnotic keyboards Barry Adamson. Nine years later, my definition is still absolutely true. Beautifully constructed songs with dark and at the same time intriguing atmospheres...'

 “With a sound undoubtedly rooted in the afro-American blues, critics and fans of Hugo and his True Spirit have always been forced to go beyond this limited definition to describe the nature of his music: rock, psychedelia, industrial, experimental or simply eclectic - the result being that Hugo is perceived as a cult figure, unpredictable, brilliant and inspired, with a music that is real, honest and perfectly realised.” (- Ludger Kordt, KGB, Germany) 

This most uncompromising experimental rock band has been very quiet over recent years as key members relocated to farflung cities from L.A. to Melbourne. In 2013, the band reconvened in Melbourne to record a new album, their first since 2008’s “53rd State”, and plan to release it in 2014 on Rough Velvet Records.

AMBUSCADO - THE WIRE, London, UK, September 2005

BY KEITH MOLINé

Of all the musicians to have emerged from Nick Cave’s orbit in the mid-1980s, Hugo Race is perhaps the most overlooked. While his former boss has steadily retreated from the experimental manoeuvres that made his first few albums so arresting, Race has developed a highly original hybrid of raw blues and improvised electronica far removed from the Triffids/Moodists-style Australian Gothic that might be expected. Race’s haunted arrangements make him sound as if he’s literally looking lost in the song, stumbling around blindly looking for a way out, or at least safe passage through. Elsewhere it’s adventurously loose and full of rich, slow-burning incident.

HIGH BIAS – AUSTIN, TEXAS 2005
Hugo Race is a major figure in the Australian music scene, but known in the States for his frequent guest appearances on Nick Cave records. A shame, that, since The Goldstreet Sessions shows an artist with a distinct vision worthy of more attention. Sedate full band arrangements and a languid pace frame Race's atmospheric guitar swells and startlingly Leonard Cohenesque vocals. The songs dig deep into the subconscious musings of a wide variety of folks, both misfits and everyday people. Haunted, gorgeous tunes like "Hush Money," "LSD is Dead" and the towering epic "Is Your Love Strong" exude not so much doomed romanticism as a sort of sublime stoicism, letting emotions wash over the protagonists but not through them. That's not to say this music is cold—far from it, in fact—but Race's characters roll with the punches and keep on keeping on, rather than succumb to fatalism or despair. A unique, challenging and stimulating record. 

- Michael Toland

Frankfurter Rundschau, Germany 

"Goldstreet Sessions" is Race's latest blues-mutation, defining a sound between triphop, ambient and rock - the toughest and most intense record of his career. These trips are difficult - listen to the opener "LSD is Dead" or "Makes Me Mean". Race and his colleagues are way badder than Calexico, much more distorted and twisted than today's Bad Seeds, and bluesier than any electronica/triphop project you care to mention. We take this ambient-electro-blues-trip rolling a cigarette with our eyes closed and shaking up the next gin-tonic…"

Goldstreet Sessions Rockarilla (Rome) March 04

"The double retrospective "Long Time Ago" saw Race transformed into a high-profile cult artist "The Goldstreet Sessions", then, is the first chapter in a new cycle. Leaving aside the ecstatic "Premonition" and the desert feel of "A.M.Radio", the atmosphere that surrounds "Goldstreet" is claustrophic and pressurised. A dreamlike blues laced with industrial experimentation, glacial digital beats, distant trombones and a voice cavernous as the recent Leonard Cohen. Music for besieged cities, beaten by incessant rain and populated by souls lost in the dark…."

HUGO RACE & TRUE SPIRIT – The Goldstreet Sessions

While long-time followers of Race’s work won’t be surprised that the music on this new album inhabits a typically grimy netherworld of dark shadows and sickly foreboding, what may come as a surprise is the seamless way he’s added electronic and sampled textures to the mix. It’s all about subtlety, as the track Makes Me Mean showsA.M. Radio, meanwhile, marries echoedntwangs to a blackly funny Race monologue: My life flashed before my eyes/I blew the film up to American size. The album’s centrepiece though is undoubtedly the sprawling nine minutes of Is Your Love Strong, which reeks of humid jungle heat amid disorienting samples, sick, slow-building horn lines and Race’s carnal nastiness. Scary. But very cool. 

RAVEWEB, AUSTRALIA 2004

HUGO RACE & TRUE SPIRIT - AMBUSCADO

“It’s more than twenty years that Hugo Race has been adventuring through the shadowy territory of an infected blues streaked with a poisoned restlessness, through desolate, dimly lit scenarios and melodies gone bad. Experimentation, obscurity and minimalist atmospheres have characterised all or nearly all of the works signed by the True Spirit, a changing ensemble that has accompanied the artist since 1988, the year of Rue Morgue Blues, but maybe never like this time has the journey been so lunatic and visionary. Even if Hugo Race has never shyed away from making difficult records – it’s enough to remember Wet Dream from 1997 and Chemical Weddingfrom 1998.

To think that the Ambuscado project was conceived as an attempt to get closer to the gospel and spiritual tradition can only make you smile given that the final result is totally detached from any kind of Christian aesthetic. In fact, Glitterhouse Recorcds present Ambuscado as “a trip into the viscera of a psychedelic sixth dimension”.

The rest is splinters of far away worlds, skeletal visions, petrified deconstructions… songs full of yearning if they weren’t cut off before their time, their nakedness swallowed up in a desert landscape. In this fury of decomposition fragments of melody like Ducados and Surfing the Alpha can only be considered songs of the siren, particularly Surfing, constructed like a portal to the infinite, liberating and interstellar….

-Pierluigi Lucadei, Liverock, Italy 2005

“Hugo Race is a psychedelic prophet, a 360 degree artist who makes compromises with nobody.” 

(Debaser, Italy, 2005)

“Both alone with a guitar or with his True Spirit, Hugo has toured Europe repeatedly, performing on a vast trajectory from the UK to Greece and was literally one of the first western “underground” acts performing inside the ex- eastern bloc European territories after the fall of the Wall. He has followed a personal musical vision in a series of mutating line-ups that have fused the boundaries between the "primal" (roots) blues and raw electronica - described by London Sounds as "night music of the soul", and by Melody Maker as "industrial-trance-blues". “    (Ludger Kordt, KGB, Germany)

“The stripped to the bone sound of the True Spirit exercises a fascination not exactly reassuring, yet magnetic in its evocation of obscure dangers. Music from the wild side of the street – or better, like walking blind in a war-zone…”      (- Gianluca Testani, Mucchio Selvaggio)

Review in Pennyblack, UK, March 2006

Hugo Race And The True Spirit : Taoist Priests

There have been a good number of releases by Melbourne raised Hugo Race over the last three or so years. They have covered a diverse range of sounds and it’s often been hard to try to pin down the work of Race, which at various times has been described as garage rock, pop and cosmic blues. But for most people the name of Hugo Race is known mainly for his work on five Bad Seeds albums although he has also worked with Mick Harvey, Robert Forster and Nikki Sudden to name but a few. 

Race never makes it easy when it comes to describing the music he makes. It many ways it’s not music in the traditional sense. A Race album is more a collage of soundscapes; portraits in sound where his dark baritone inhibits places we don’t want to visit too often. Where Race excels is that although this album is best taken in one listen the twelve tracks are separate songs. They don’t all mesh into one giant indestructible wall of sound as many more experimental albums do. 

Obviously given the Bad Seeds connection there are traces of Nick Cave’s darker moments scattered throughout these songs and the sounds of Ry Cooder and Tom Waits can be heard through the album. Looking further back the work of Captain Beefheart is obviously also an influence here. But regardless of these influences Race does have a sound which is all his own and this could just be his most accessible and best selling album to date. 

This is not an album for playing in the background. It’s an album which, as all experimental music does,must be listened to. It requires the listener's attention for it to be appreciated and the best way to listen to this music is on headphones; shut the rest of the world out and let Race and the True Spirit take you on an eerie and unsettling journey. It’s also the best way to appreciate the strange sounds weaving in and out of these songs. 

With this album Race has produced an album which will appeal to more than his usual fan base. Race has said that on this album he is dealing with his own demons and that he wanted to write music that not only entertains but challenges and disturbs, and he has certainly accomplished that. 

Followers of Race will welcome this latest collection with open arms. For those yet to take the step into the darkened corridors of Race’s mind they would do well to start here and make the final song on the album ‘Pray On’ your first introduction to this mysterious music. It’s all that is good about these modern-day blues. It’s the most accessible song on the album and the eeriness is replaced with a tenderness which is breath-taking. Stay with the album ! There is then an un-credited song which, although reverting back to electro-blues is simply stunning, with the ghostly vocals leaving you wanting more of the same. 

Malcolm Carter

Frankfurter Rundschau, Germany 

"Goldstreet Sessions" is Race's latest blues-mutation, defining a sound between triphop, ambient and rock - the toughest and most intense record of his career. These trips are difficult - listen to the opener "LSD is Dead" or "Makes Me Mean". Race and his colleagues are way badder than Calexico, much more distorted and twisted than today's Bad Seeds, and bluesier than any electronica/triphop project you care to mention. We take this ambient-electro-blues-trip rolling a cigarette with our eyes closed and shaking up the next gin-tonic…"

Goldstreet Sessions Rockarilla (Rome) March 04

"The double retrospective "Long Time Ago" saw Race transformed into a high-profile cult artist "The Goldstreet Sessions", then, is the first chapter in a new cycle. Leaving aside the ecstatic "Premonition" and the desert feel of "A.M.Radio", the atmosphere that surrounds "Goldstreet" is claustrophic and pressurised. A dreamlike blues laced with industrial experimentation, glacial digital beats, distant trombones and a voice cavernous as the recent Leonard Cohen. Music for besieged cities, beaten by incessant rain and populated by souls lost in the dark…."

HUGO RACE & TRUE SPIRIT – The Goldstreet Sessions

Former Wreckery frontman and one-time Bad Seed gets mean and moody.

While long-time followers of Race’s work won’t be surprised that the music on this new album inhabits a typically grimy netherworld of dark shadows and sickly foreboding, what may come as a surprise is the seamless way he’s added electronic and sampled textures to the mix. It’s all about subtlety, as the track Makes Me Mean shows. A.M. Radio, meanwhile, marries echoed guitar twangs to a blackly funny Race monologue: My life flashed before my eyes/I blew the film up to American size. The album’s centrepiece though is undoubtedly the sprawling nine minutes of Is Your Love Strong, which reeks of humid jungle heat amid disorienting samples, sick, slow-building horn lines and Race’s carnal nastiness. Scary. But very cool. 

RAVEWEB, AUSTRALIA 2004

“Hugo Race remains one of the great unsung talents of Australian music, and with ‘The Gold Street Sessions’, the leathery old wolf of the nightmare psycho blues returns…”

(- Jonathon Alley, MAG Australia)

In 2004 the Italian cult magazine Mucchio Selvaggio released Hugo Race + True Spirit Live in Monaco, an electric and adrenalised live session from the Goldstreet tour, (recently reissued by Glitterhouse). Meanwhile, Spanish label Bang! Records released the 7” vinyl of “Ready to Go”, while Glitterhouse reprinted the Spirit’s classic experimental album “Wet Dream” (1996).

“Race is an authentic Australian legend…”  -   InPress, Melbourne, 2005

In June 2005, the experimental electronic blues “Ambuscado” album hit the streets, featuring the Spirit’s most uncompromising and hallucinogenic work to date:

Ambuscado is a beautiful and courageous record, a slap in the face of musical conformism, with tracks always at the limit between mystic evocation and psychedelia…. 

 (- Momi, Speak my Language) 

“For their fifth album under the Dirtmusic moniker, Slovenia-based American Chris Eckman and his Australian partner-in-rhyme, Nick Cave alumnus Hugo Race, have drilled into the stratum of a turbulent modern world, where refugees’ hopes of finding sanctuary from discrimination and death-threatening scenarios are rapidly eroding and conflicts in the Middle East conflate and combust. Accentuating their discourse on global discord, these strident sound sculptors from rock’s left flank tap a rich vein for their edgy cinematic epic. Here, Eckman and Race have shifted from acclaimed collaborations with desert blues musicians in Mali to a partnership with a visionary purveyor of psychedelic dub in Istanbul. Recording in Murat Ertel’s studio in a city seething with disaffection prompted the brooding sociopolitical narrative that drives Bu Bir Ruya (This is a Dream), in tandem with Dirtmusic’s multi-layered electric guitar grooves and loops, and the hypnotic pulse of Umit Adakale’s belly dance-informed percussion. 
In a spellbinding opening statement, saz fuzz and desert blues guitar riffs combine with goblet and frame drums and ululations from Brenna MacCrimmon to set up an unrelenting rhythm for Race’s sonorous, Cohen-like delivery of lines such as: “So many others just like me / Did I lose my identity?” The refugee dialogue continues in The Border Crossing, as Race intones with reverb-saturated bottom end, “People are cruel, and their minds are closed to reason”, over a slab of post-punk guitar funk. Go the Distance opens to the thud of alternating doof and davul beats and into an increasingly agitated saz/guitar vibe, with Eckman imploring, “When I go the distance, do not follow me”. The soaring, Bjork-like singing of Gaye Su Akyol, allied with slower tempo, imbues Love is a Foreign Country with a different, though no less intense, feel. While Akyol’s falsetto adorns Safety in Numbers, along with a recitation from MacCrimmon, it’s Race’s mesmerising vocals that take centre stage. The distinctive sound of Gorkem Sen’s yaybahar provides an appropriate backing wash. Sen’s self-invented plucked, strummed and mallet-hit acoustic-stringed instrument also accompanies Outrage. Wisely, Dirtmusic leaves its inscrutable title track — a piece in Turkish suffused with electronic distortion — until last.”

Tony Hillier

Dirtmusic - Chris Eckman and Hugo Race - have released three albums of collaborations with Malian musicians. In 2010 Dirtmusic toured Europe with the Tuareg band Tamikrest promoting the album BKO. The album Troubles was released in June 2013, and Lion City in March 2014. Originally a trio with Chris Brokaw, Dirtmusic is an explorative musical project with a global reach.

LION CITY PRESS:

UNCUT (UK):
"Global fusion at its most democratic and exhilarating"

MUSIC OMH (UK): ****
"Lion City is a strong, viscerally stirring album and a true highlight of intercultural awareness in the contemporary music climate."

WONDERING SOUND (UK):
"Like Troubles, Lion City does attempt a new, thrilling kind of fusion, gathering everything from blues to dub, rock to electronica together, and confidently pulling it all forward. It’s an album of real vision. Step by step, Dirtmusic are building a new world sound."

AUDIO (DE): ****

"A psychedelic trip of hand-played strings, ambient electronical sounds, uninterrupted dark rhythms and whispering echoes." 

MUSIC NEWS (UK):
 "Dirtmusic just keep getting better. With every release they seem to delve deeper into the heart and soul of their music and keep developing new ways to hypnotize and entrance the listener. This is music that has gone beyond and takes the listener with it."

DISTORSIONI (UK): 8/10
"This extraordinary album ends with September 12, a song of love to the grandmother of a young senegalese singer Ibrahima Douf who reveals a rare sensitivity as an interpreter ...the echo of his singing seems to propagate a fascinating and mysterious African night."

MONDOMIX (FR):
"dark and sensual, Lion City indulges in the eddies of the night. Built on electronic strata, Malian acoustic instruments and vintage guitars, Lion City confirms the validity of their approach: by dipping into the dust, their hands come back with traces of gold nuggets."

LOUDER THAN WAR (UK): 10/10
"The brilliance of Troubles clearly wasn’t a one-off, and I thought long and hard about what score to give this album. In the end, it was easy, Lion City is another classic."

“An almost unexpected comeback, and therefore very appreciated. Eight years after “Dark Summer” the Sepiatone of Marta Collica and Hugo Race return with “Echoes On”, between pop and cinematic soundscapes.”

Sepiatone “Echoes On”  is now available on digital:

https://ffm.to/echoeson

Release date: 10th September 2023

After abandoning the recording sessions for their third album in 2007, Marta Collica and Hugo Race aka Sepiatone reconciled their creative differences and picked up where they left off after a three year hiatus.
Recorded in northern Italy, Echoes On is undoubtedly the deepest and most beautiful of the Sepiatone releases; these edgy, melodic pop songs depict matters of the heart with subtle poignancy and affection. The soundscapes of vintage vinyl samples and retro electronics are supported by the sophisticated musicianship of Giovanni Ferrario (Micevice, PJ Harvey), Giorgia Poli (Scisma, Songs with other Strangers, John Parish) and Davide Mahony (Pitch, Paviglianiti).

Inspired by the mystique of old European films (Godard, Betrolucci, Anotonini) Sepiatone use found materials such as retro samples and major sevenths to create cinematic atmospheres, vintage pop and electronic exotica.

Echoes On fuses musical genres and global timezones, bittersweet emotions, and hallucinatory moodwswings. Four years in the making, the album was made with in close collaboration with musicians from both Italy and Austrailia.

Echoes On is the last album of the Sepiatone trilogy, and the mark of a collaboration finally coming into its own. Like a beguiling encounter between Mazzy Star and Portishead, Echoes on takes the listener into a world where nostalgia is juxtaposed with modernity. Classic songwriting meets inventive production and the end result is something that resonates deep within the listener. 

Cover painting by the great italian artist Giuliano Sale.

Between Hemispheres - raw acoustic instruments are pitted against sculpted analogue sounds in a vast organic space both dramatic and meditative, brutal yet beautiful.  Here the delta blues remains – but distantly,  like background radiation.

Recorded in Africa, Europe and Australia, Between Hemispheres carries references to Hugo’s work with Transfargo (the instrumental ‘Mil Transit’ album from 2004), and the experimentalism  of the True Spirit’s ‘Wet Dream’ and ‘Ambuscado’. Using the African string instruments ngone and kora against a stark background of analogue synth, digital pulses, deep space radio signals and widescreen guitar, Race composes a dreamlike experience that  echoes his own songwriting.

A trip into the glacial interstice between  quantum and digital, these interdimensional  meditations  traverse the synapse between  the left and right sides of the brain, between  thought and expression, between two oscillating magnetic poles  - between hemispheres.

International Press

UNCUT (UK) January 2010

4 stars

Remarkable ambient excursion from ex-Bad Seed.

This is the culmination of a long and strange journey for Race, who started musical life in the Melbourne post-punk scene. This entirely instrumental album is at once pan-global in its influence, using African instruments like the ngoni, while also reflecting the duality of both sides of the brain – hence the punning title. What’s so arresting about Between Hemispheres  is its physicality. The ambience reminds of Eno and Harold Budd but elements of distortion suggest a man not afraid to get his shoes dirty. There’s a soiled intensity about this album – both sweeping beauty and true grit.  - David Stubbs

http://www.boomkat.com (UK)

HUGO RACE - Between Hemispheres, GUSSTAFF

Probably best known for his stint in The Bad Seeds (as in Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds), Melbourne post-punk veteran Hugo Race arrives at Polish label Gustaff with a brand new album that draws on experimental electronics, African string instruments and even radio signals from deep space. One of the first things to strike you about the record is the power of deep, swollen bass textures dominating the soundscape, and during the metallic  twangs of 'Antegone' and 'On Heat's droning depth charges the low end gets a thorough workout. Usage of ngone and kora dissolves into the filtered soundmass rather beautifully, never seeming at odds with the glitch-laden drone tones and flickering dub tweaks of 'Dry Fuses'. Similarly, these rusty sunding string plucks immerse into the deep-set moroseness of 'White Spheres' without upsetting the hazy, abstract gauziness of the overall vision. Good stuff

www.subjectivisten.nl/caleidoscoop         (Netherlands)

Hugo Race - Between Hemispheres

[cd, Gusstaff /Baked Goods] 

Hugo Race, reknowned as a member of Nick Cave's Bad Seeds and as founder of the Australian band The Wreckery, has mainly been heard as Hugo Race & The True Spirit, which makes dark rock ballads. 

Now the veteran is back with Between Hemispheres, this time without the True Spirit, although it seems he still finds himself in real spiritual spheres. 

No singing this time, but raw acoustic instruments, African stringed instruments (ngöne, kora) and an electric guitar that are stacked in a pile of dominant electronics - Race has here indeed a largely electronic album. 

It starts with dark soundscapes full of drones, glitch and heavy bass. 

Because of these instruments and in particular the African beats, this is not as close to many colleagues droners as might be the case, ensuing that this is also a meditative and mysterious character, also quite cinematic and entirely to the imagination. 

As the album progresses Hugo Race shifts the emphasis to more spatial synth sounds and classic elements, making the music too slow to be lighter in character, as if you're on Earth and begin to slowly transcend... 

He is now somewhere between Jacaszek, Roy Montgomery, Emiter, David Lynch and tribal music, imploring beauty that you often do happen to breath.

It is really unbelievable that this is the same Hugo Race…

door Jan Willem Broek  /  by Jan Willem Broek

DE:BUG ELEKTRONISCHE LEBENSASPEKTE    (Germany)

http://de-bug.de/reviews/38882.html

Hugo Race - Between Hemispheres (Gusstaff / GRAM0905)

The Australian Hugo Race, with Berlin, Prague and Italy in his history, is ultimately a Blues Man. But – and this makes it relevant for this review – he has always experimented with electronics, ambient sound, psychedelics and the oblique. So, whereas morbid bohemians like Cave, Howard, Johnson and Harvey at the end of the day remain underground with their swamp blues guitars, Race – and his main project the True Spirit – is always one step further ahead. Acid sounds and above all loops and samples have always made the True Spirit albums exciting listening. And now comes this third instrumental album (Between Hemispheres), following “Wet Dream” and “Ambuscado” (mailorder releases only on Glitterhouse Records). Here, the guitar and the blues are barely heard, Race’s dark voice is also removed, and surprisingly African instruments resound (kora, ngone). What’s left behind is Ry Cooder, Giant Sand and Calexico in a very dark space.

- cj

SUB ROSA new release info

stock date FEBRUARY 7th 2017

Long Distance Operators

CATHERINE GRAINDORGE / HUGO RACE

 CD DIGIPACK + 8 PAGE BOOKLET

SR442 / barcode 5411867114420

Long Distance Operators (LDO) is a collaboration between the Australian musician Hugo Race and the Belgian violinist Catherine Graindorge.

Hugo Race, singer, songwriter, producer and author, has a long and wide-ranging history, from the trans-global Dirtmusic and his groups True Spirit and Fatalists to his origins in the 80's Melbourne post-punk scene with Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds and The Wreckery.

Catherine Graindorge, violinist and actress, is known for her work with the Belgian groups Monsoon and Nox, and more recently with Détroit (Bertrand Cantat- Pascal Humbert), John Parish or the German singer Andrea Schroeder. She also plays and composes for theater and cinema.

The music of LDO is an intensely atmospheric dreamweave of violins, electronics and Hugo's darkly evocative voice.

The duo explores metaphysical lyrics, experimental sounds and retro-baroque orchestrations in a romantic, song-based context.

Tracklisting CD

01Forever Lost

02Brother Sister

03Immortality

04On Ice

05I Call On You

06Night Unreal

07By Stealth

08As it seems

09Blind Faith

10Stones from Heaven

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