After the foray into arcane Spanish folk music represented by her last album, the prolific Josephine Foster is on another musical trek involving a slightly more rustic grip and a flowing cantina. This time, the liquid is blood – per Foster’s representative, Blood Rushing is “a story within a story; a glimpse into the world of Blushing, a heteronym of the artist Josephine Foster. (It’s) a rock-ballet chanté – the music… set to a Pueblo drum’s meta-pulsing, Pan-American heartbeat.”
Victor Herrero is back on guitar. Paz Lenchantin provides Indian flute, bass, and violin. Heather Trost contributes violin and Jew harp. Ben Trimble handles New Mexican skin drums. From the instrumentation, one might expect a sound somewhere between Yma Sumac’s and the Boswell Sisters’. If you’re that one, you’d be pretty on–target. Foster’s soprano vocals tremble through a variety of instrumentation with a more or less “indigenous” or “exotic” folk influence. At best, the effect is that of an otherworldly folk music that might provide new inspiration for Werner Herzog.
Bizarro takes on more traditionally styled folk, such as “Child of God,” are also here. But Foster seems at the apex of this journey with the title track, an inspired, partly instrumental submerging in feeling that, to some degree, recalls work by Fraser & Debolt as well as that of Kate Bush.
