From the bowels of Portland, Oregon emerges the dark lords of Tecumseh hell-bent on rattling the rafters of your home and, hopefully, bringing the whole damn thing to its knees. On "Crossing Divides," Tecumseh is a trio of two basses and electronics. John Krausbauer, Ian Hawk, and Jeremy Long have crafted one of my favorite records recently with this blackened offering.
The thing that instantly gets you about "Crossing Divides" is how fucking slow it moves. It's frozen molasses. Okay, maybe it's not the first thing... maybe that's the brooding duel between both basses. Krausbauer and Hawk get totally subeterranean. "Ten Thousand Leagues Down Under," both parts 1 and 2, plod along like a sordid plague reaching out its tendrils into every corner of the globe. This is the black death, folks, creeping up your sidewalk and blowing down the doors. Tecumseh churns out the best kind of mud. This has serious flavor.
These bass lines... they just sink in further and further until you're skull is completely submerged. Rolling along, twisting and turning and ever so gently applying pressure to your forehead with the heel of a steel-toed boot... so thick and heavy... sinking... you don't even realize you're drowning until your lungs are full of divine sludge. 9/10 --
Brad Rose (22 January, 2008)
