Wise Blood—AKA, Pittsburgh’s Chris Laufman—plays what can easily be described as very hard to describe music. Call it lo-fi bedroom pop; call it glitched-out hip hop; call it fighting your way through a tar pit of electronic sounds + creeped out lyrics—we call it really, really good.
Laufman hit the scene out of nowhere back in 2010, when he quietly posted a superbly gritty EP to bandcamp (you can still download it over there for $5). He followed it up well with a slightly more polished release, These Wings, and then, after some very well-recieved supporting live shows, seemed to drop off the face of the earth.
This past March, it was announced via a very bizarre video (below) that Wise Blood would be resurfacing with his highly-anticipated debut full-length, id, out on Dovecote Records June 25.
Download “Universe is Blessed” to listen to Laufman detailing his recipe for this year’s must-have summer cocktail—”double martini with two olives on the side / a little rat poison and a shot of turpentine”. Just wait, you’re totally going to start seeing that on the old-school artisanal speakeasy menus of Brooklyn. Note that the MP3 for this one’s pretty large, so you may or may not be able to play it on-screen. If it gives you trouble, just go ahead and right-click to download. It’s a good one.
You can stream another track from id below—the equally trippily awesome “Rat”—and watch the very strange video announcing Wise Blood’s new album, during which Dog the Bounty Hunter slo-mo chases down…Dog the Bounty Hunter as Laufman looks on eerily, inapplicable child in-hand. Which oddly seems like a kind of fitting analogy to Wise Blood’s music….
Laufman + company will be playing a sure-to-sell-out record release show right here in Brooklyn Tuesday, June 25 at the Glasslands in Williamsburg. Maybe Dog will be there.
