MAKES:
Richly layered shoegaze rock, hiphop, and electronic/orchestral film music that’s infused with an air of profound sensuality and mystery.
HAS:
Helped to elevate Shabazz Palaces to the summit of the experimental-hiphop world with innovative production techniques.
WANTS:
To score more films and produce more artists whose music he loves.
Erik Blood and his guitar-playing/singing partner Irene Barber recently cast a deep spell on the Bumbershoot crowd at KEXP’s gathering space with a set of beautiful, angelic rock, drawing heavily from 2016’s excellent Lost in Slow Motion LP. It was a dreamy deviation from the madness and blandness that afflicted some of Bumbershoot’s other stages. After the last song, Blood removed his costume, which made him look like Alejandro Jodorowsky’s alchemist character in The Holy Mountain, to reveal a T-shirt with slogans advocating to Block the Bunker (the proposed expensive police compound in North Seattle) and to assert that Black Lives Matter. Blood’s music may be soothing, but he also displays an understated militancy for righteous causes.
A week before the versatile multi-instrumentalist’s moving Bumbershoot performance, he welcomed me to Black Space Studio at the Old Rainier Brewery building, which he rents with Shabazz Palaces’ Ishmael Butler and Tendai Maraire. In the studio, Blood uses both analog and digital recording methods, but when it comes to drums, he insists on going with tape. That preference pays off when you hear the vividly punchy beats on his solo releases and those of Shabazz Palaces, with whom he’s a key auxiliary member.
