Written and produced by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, his wife and long-time collaborator, Real Gone features 15 tracks of funk, Jamaican rock-steady, blues both urban and rural, rhythms and melodies both Latin and African and, for the first time, no piano. The crash and collide of rhythms and genres within a song creates a hybrid unlike any music he has and the sonic mayhem and nonsense rhyme ride to “Top of the Hill” are both punctuated by a live band and turntable playing along to Waits’ home recorded voice percussion.
Real Gone is the unpredictable follow-up to the atmospheric and conceptual Alice and Blood Money, two albums that TOM WAITS released simultaneously in the spring of 2002. In an exciting departure from the critically acclaimed Alice and Blood Money, Waits’ fevered imagination has spawned a new musical hybrid, grafting together worlds both sonic and ethnic from musical traditions both old and new. The 15 track CD features: primal blues, Jamaican rock-steady grooves, rhythms and melodies both African and Latin, what Waits calls “cubist funk.” In that sonic cubism, Waits ingeniously finds common ground with hip hop’s cut and paste aesthetic and incorporates some of its elements into his approach. Many of the tracks on Real Gone were built on Waits’ “human beatboxing” on a cassette recorder in his bathroom and bringing those tapes into the studio to have the band play over them. As a result, there are no drums on many of the most driving tracks as his voice provides all of the necessary propulsions. And for the first time, there is no piano.
“Real Gone is an electric pill box, a homogeneous concoction of mood elevators, mind liberators and downers, an alchemical universe of rattling chains, oscillating rhythms and nine-pound hammers,” says Waits.
Real Gone (Anti Records)—written and produced by Waits with his wife and long time marital musical collaborator, Kathleen Brennan—is released October 5th 2004.
