The fact that Hugo Race continues to divide his time between Europe and Australia slightly diminishes his claim to be a prophet in his own land.
The fact that Hugo Race continues to divide his time between Europe and Australia slightly diminishes his claim to be a prophet in his own land. In any event, Race is arguably far too enigmatic to seek such quasi-religious status; his prolific and ubiquitously solid output does suggest, however, that he’s deserving of far more public attention than his current cult reputation.
With The True Spirit in a period of recording hibernation, and his Dirtmusic project still awaiting their first live appearance in Australia, Race has released his first ‘solo’ record, Fatalists. It’s arguably an appropriate description for Race’s music in its various forms and guises; frequently dark, often confronting and always with a grain or three of raw credibility, Race sits on the window-sill outside the dominant culture, offering regularly astute, and occasionally bleak, assessments of matters emotional and cultural.
In contrast to much of the rest of his rich canon, Fatalists has a distinctly acoustic foundation: on the comforting Call Her Name, Race’s soft vocals and deft acoustic chords play out against a backdrop of climatic sonic effects; on Too Many Zeroes, Race turns down the path of romance, offering up the closest thing to pop he’d be prepared to sign his name to. From there Slow Fly directs traffic back down to the arid blues territory Race is so familiar with; the David Creese (Lizard Train, Dumb Earth) penned Will You Wake Up takes a close and intense lens to matters of the heart.
Race’s ability to match music with mood is forever present: the sparseness of the sonic landscape in Coming Over mirrors the desolation in the narrator’s psychological constitution, The Serpent Egg broods like a lover lost in a sea of lost possibilities, In the Pines takes Leadbelly’s classic blues track and imbues it with a threatening, melancholic edge and Nightvision shines a soft light through the darkness of emotional turmoil.
Like the name suggests, Fatalists has its fair share of confronting moments; but in Hugo Race’s deft hands, the journey is as invigorating as it is intense.
If you like these, you’ll like this: Anything by Hugo Race, including The Wreckery, Hugo Race And The True Spirit and Dirtmusic.
ROD McCURDY
