Be Slighty Afraid, Because You're Going To Have To Listen To This Soon

I have been doing something constructive today. In between garlic trances and writing bollocks on this blog I've been recording a selection of blues with a side order of deep wrong on my recently accquired Cenobitic Banjo. As yet it hasn't shot hooks into my hands as I play. Maybe I just haven't played the right combination of notes....

It's a fucking strange instrument. (I'd post a picture but that would involve moving and that's out of the question at the moment) Teardrop shaped chrome body, National Steel single cone resonator that's had astonundingly detailed semi-abstract plant designs carved on it front and back by someone either possessed of infinite patience or a meth habit. It's got a very long thin neck, eight strings and sounds about a thousand years old, the clanking, barking result of some half blind half mad alchemists investigations into metallurgy and the transformative powers of resonance.

Played with a bottleneck it whines and rattles like wind thru a gibbet. This is a seriously necro instrument. I also find myself wanting to sing when I play this fucker. And that is surprising given that in all the years I've been making music my voice has been captured on tape (discounting death metal grunting and arseing around) once and once only, and there's about thirty other people singing on that track. Damn, I'm not mad keen on even hearing my speaking voice on tape, but fuck it, if this instrument makes me want to sing then sing I fucking will.

So I have been. Playing the fuck out of this thing, ripping my fingers to shit, rasping out the words to Death Letter by Son House and the like in my syndol-slurred coldcroak. And you know what? I think it sounds alright.