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review Rivherside from the UK

Rivherside – Instrumental Cheap Fuzz Blues (EP)

French singer/ guitarist Renaud Villet last worked on his Rivherside Project in 2016, eventually blending blues with electronics and whatever took his fancy. He hadn’t intended to return to it, but never say never… Not long ago, he came up with a riff on acoustic guitar which he wanted to record – he added various other instruments and a drum sample and put a huge fuzz tone on the guitar, eventually giving it a dirty roots feel akin to his former work with Rivherside. Dutch label Black & Tan resurrected the name, and here we are – instrumental cheap fuzz blues is both the title and the description.

There are four tracks: ‘Toad’s Fuzz’ is a riff that starts off big and builds from there, whilst ‘Fuzz Blowin’’ is Bo Diddley flavoured with a pronounced slide guitar lead, and ‘The Jab’ has a sixties feel with a touch of Essex Delta R’n’B roughness and a punky attitude, before the 70s take over with a fine guitar break. The EP finishes with a slower, cleaner-sounding ‘Last Thrill’ with echoes of BB King in the guitar work (though a little rawer than BB himself would have played it) The whole thing runs to around eleven minutes in total, and that’s just how it should be – really rather fine all round, this one.

Norman Darwen