Big Blood

Big Blood

First Aid Kit

Feeding Tube / Ba Da Bing!

“She can be a real pain in the ass,” is how Big Blood’s Caleb Mulkerin and Colleen Kinsella describe having their daughter as a member of the band they formed in the wake of Cerberus Shoal’s dissolution. A band made up of family seems like an ideal situation. You get to play with those you love, and practicing/recording is always just a matter of going into the next room. “If you don’t have kids, I can imagine that is an obvious assumption,” Caleb says. “However, if you do have children, I don’t need to explain how much of an emotional mess this can be.” Parents don’t stop being parents, nor do kids stop being kids for band practice. “There are endless amounts of broader ‘life’ examples brought up at any given time while playing with Quinnisa, and I can’t help stopping to discuss them as they come up,” he says. He understands Quinnisa’s position. “She’s rightly annoyed at being parented in a ‘judgment free’ zone. Lots of practices end with her being tossed from the band.” His issues are nothing, however, to what she brings to the band. Quinnissa, who was 13 when First Aid Kit was recorded has skills. “She’s a total ringer and a complete pro in a live setting,” Mulkerin acknowldges. “She’s a lot more reliable than her grumpy parents.” Indeed, Quinnisa’s voice has developed into an astonishing powerhouse of force. While she has been contributing to Big Blood records almost since birth, First Aid Kit solidifies...

Big Blood

Electric Voyeur / Moonlight, Again

Psychic Sounds

***Big Blood, the intrepid voyagers into the outer reaches of hallucinatory noise-rock and eclectic freakadelia opt for a new path along the circuit board of creativity. Electric Voyeur was made by applying strict limitations using home-made electronic instruments and voice alone. The result is an album that is as trippy as it is devotional in its exquisite craftsmanship.The glorious scent of solder and silicon wafts all over this music. Crafted over the course of ten years at the workbench and in the studio by Caleb Mulkerin and Colleen Kinsella, they were guided along the way by a slew of books on how to make homemade instruments. Key among those was Nicolas Collins Handmade Electronic Music: The Art of Hardware Hacking. Lucky for us listeners, all of that effort is here condensed into four-sides of exquisite vinyl.Kinsella’s mesmeric voice is showcased in all its crystalline beauty over beds of lo-fi reverb laden electro gurgles and percolating rhythms as she chases shooting stars across glittering percussive patterns. The lyrics are as poetic and mysterious as the efforts they put into creating these machines of ring modulation, rhythm and distortion. Beats made of crushed bits and the swirl of sweeping oscillators all make for a momentous and lyrical slapdown.This work appeared first in two digital versions. For the vinyl release on Psychic Sounds an EP of additional unreleased material titled Moonlight Again, has been added. It is exciting to hear these extra songs, now brought out under the night sky and exposed to...