Raw Mojo
Brickbat Theory
rawmojo.bandcamp.com
Raw Mojo is a rock band, full stop. Not to be reductive about what Raw Mojo does, but there’s something really basic and elemental about what they do. Hard hitting drums, loud fuzz guitars fused tightly to a deep bass into 10 strings of fury. Lyrics that don’t try very hard for profundity. To go looking for precursors try the 1970s; there’s a Grand Funk, Joan Jett, Spirit, Jo Jo Gunne and an insouciant soupçon of Black Sabbath.
This record isn’t very experimental musically, but the recording process was—they recorded it in Old Brick Church in Iowa City, which was a real gamble. My experience has mostly been that Old Brick is a terrible place to hear music, particularly amplified, because of the pronounced echo and reverberation. Raw Mojo heard something different there, apparently, and the results are nearly perfect. The sound of the hall is there, but it’s subtle. A truism of recording is that the more you record the sound of moving air, the better it sounds, and a lot of air got moved during these sessions.
Kent Williams never met a deadline he couldn’t miss.
