No more 16 Horsepower.

There is a band that reminds me of two good friends, Shyam Yadav and Danny Dimian. It is called 16 Horsepower. Isn't it great how a band can remind you of a time and a place so exactly?

In case you don't know who they are, 16 horsepower is a band from Denver that is a strangely dark version of country wierdness that reminded me that music could be creative and genreless. They described themselves as a type of "brimstone rock", mixing religous imagery, early americana and rock into some strange soup that for me made my imagination just stir.

In 2000 I went to a club in Los Angeles to see them play with Danny and Shyam and Becky... I could not believe how amazing they were live. It was my first experience of a "non rock crunching guitar" show and the complexity of sounds that these guys could pull live was astonishing. It sounded better by orders of magnitude than their mastered stuff. Not to mention the Lead had a freaking skull and crossbones on his "squeezebox".

They recently released a 2 DVD box. On one disc was all of their videos. Ironically, most of their strange americana was more popular in Europe, which is where they aired. While their videos don't have the amazing craftsmanship of their music, on stands out - clogger - that was directed by the Quay Brothers. If you can imagine the look of the quay brothers set to a type of rock music from denver, that would be what 16 horsepower sounds like.

If you haven't heard of them before, go over to itunes and check em out... I have been waiting eagerly for them to stop touring europe and come back to the states, but it looks like that isn't going to happen. Here are some particularly good songs:

From "Sackcloth n' Ashes"
American Wheeze
Black Soul Choir
I Seen What I Saw

From "Hoarse - live"
Bad Moon Risin

From "Secret South"
Clogger

Go check out some clips on itunes.