Staggering document of the entire Suub Duub tour that took place in Summer 2011 that focussed on extended duo settings of the core Matthew Valentine/Erika Elder axis but with appearances from Rongoose, Rafi Bookstaber (Aswara/Death Chants et al), Herbcraft, Doc Dunn and Muskox.  Anyone who has encountered the un-augmented duo flying high in situ will have no doubts about the kind of extended visionary take on stripped down acoustic/electric blues that they can generate from nothing but 10 vibrating strings and a suitcase of F/X but their form here is really beyond anything that has come before, mainlining the kind of avant/rural vibe that’s somewhere ‘beyond’ Sandy Bull while indulging in the kind of protean re-thinks of folk form that will have you reaching for Masayuki Takayanagi’s repressed recordings of work songs and field hollers. The set comes with 8 separate CD-Rs, all with their own Heroine style sleeve/title, housed in a tall oversize handmade art book with beautifully printed artwork and a thick booklet with colour covers that features a complete rundown of the shows, snaps and liners from Coot Moon and MV himself. Alongside last year’s massive April Flower set, Sub Duub might just be the most gloriously crafted artefact to come out of the Child Of Microtones stable, a label that has long set the standard for tactile home-burned presentation. The shows come from the People’s Pint in Greenfield, MA 7/27/11 (a trio show with Rongoose), Tumulty’s Pub, New Brunswick, NJ 7/28/11 (a duo set), Highwire Gallery, Philadelphia, PA 7/29/11 (quartet show with Rafi and Paulie G), Easthampton Outdoor Ampitheatre, Easthampton, MA 7/30/11 (quintet show with Rafi, Paulie G and Herbcraft), Shea Stadium, Brooklyn, NY 8/11/11(duo set), The Church, Washington D.C. 8/12/11 (duo set), La Brique, Montreal, QC Canada 8/20/11 (duo set) and Placebo Space, Toronto, ON Canada 8/21/11 (quartet date with Doc Dunn and Muskox). The whole set is massively varied, with odd acoustic re-thinks of primo meat up against endlessly extended soft-as-snow renderings of haunted blues and full-blown free improvised navigations of the furthest environments. A necessary purchase, edition of only 99 copies, so make your move. Can’t recommend this enough! To further prime you for the jams, our resident COMmentator, Blues Scholar Andrew Ross, gives us a close-up on one of the set’s particular highlights:

Arbitrary Street Team – MV & EE
“Picking one of the highlight shows from the box set I opted for the final duo performance from the Montreal show.  There are a few great Golden Road augmented shows on the box set including the fantastic final night from Toronto with the Canada Goose but what comes across most in the set is that these are some of finest duo performances with the wildest variations on the sonic dimensions yet, particularly on MV’s guitar playing.  This is no more evident than on the Montreal set which transcends the sonic trajectory from fragile beauty to aural destruction.
The set opener is a radically re-worked version of “Environments” labelled as “Yay Environs!” which is much more of an oriental psychedelic drone in the style of Takehisa Kosugi as opposed to some of the more recent heavily banjo led versions.  This one merges raga vibes and space environs with a pulsating looped guitar drone overladen with only minimal plucked banjo notes.  This is a real complex layered nomadic drone with the sort of multi-dimensional sound that would not have been out of place on Tetragrammaton’s Point of Convergence CD on Utech.  Towards the end this descends into a single feedbacking note which segues into some delightful strummed wah-wah infused chords marking the start of “Flow My Ray”.  Erika’s slide playing is sublime like weeping arcs of seamless notes merged with some sweet harmonica from MV.  Whispered phased vocals laden in FX and echo add to the spiritual quality of the sound.  In fact this and the following track, “Crash Palace of Records”, both have that same transcendental quality that marked those recent versions of “Drone Trailer” from the April Flower Box.  However, both also typify the sonic imbalance of the set with the inclusion of some destructive layered soloing with arcs of blues-wailing high-end bends.
Next up is a newly-worked version of “Anyway” which has not properly made an appearance, with the odd exception, since the Drone Trails tour back at the start of 2009.  Appearing on every show of the tour this is one of the best versions of “Anyway” yet with some great expanded guitar jams. After a short intro of the familiar chopped guitar chords in the style of Cinnamon Girl this breaks into a single repeating groove with some fantastic exploratory guitar playing.  The vocal parts are then mixed intermittently with a real Fillmore style psychedelic guitar jam evoking the spirit of Jerry Garcia and Jorma Kaukonen.
Next is the set’s undoubted highlight – a 14 minute version of “Crow Jane” which closes with an environs guitar jam of destructive beauty evoking the same kind of emotion and spirit as some of Heather-Leigh Murray’s recent live work.  The song starts with those intricate finger-picked inverted chords overladen with slide playing from Erika like the summoning of the shaman.  A twisted take on traditional folk but sounding more Avalon than Appalachian.  Around 3m30s this breaks into some of the most fluid emotive electric playing I have heard from MV.  The song moves into a sparse chord section before erupting into the track loosely credited “Jam”.  This is probably some of the most ‘out-there’ possessed playing from MV to date mixing psychedelic blues, space FX and destructive feedback into some other-worldly creation like the resurrection of “Wobbly Hall”.  Prepare to peel yourself off the wall - you have to hear this!  Recently, MV seems to have taken to including a cover version within his set, recent sets have included VU’s “Lonesome Cowboy Bill” and Dylan’s “Simple Twist of Fate”.  This tour is no exception with most of the sets closing with an inspired version of the Grateful Dead’s “Fire on the Mountain”.  A fitting close to a fantastic set with the combination of Erika’s really sweet vocal with more jam band style frazzled guitar from MV.
Overall, a totally mind-blowing duo set that is fairly typical of the tour with some of MV’s wildest playing yet but my personal highlight is that extended version of “Crow Jane Environs”.  If that wasn’t enough there are another seven complete shows in the box set.  Alongside some other fantastic duo sets, this includes other personal favourites such as the quartet show in Toronto (featuring Muscox and Doc Dunn) and the quintet festival set with the Wolfpack and Herbcraft.” – Andrew Ross.