TAURUS TRAKKER is a punk blues duo (Martin Muscatt – vocals/guitar and Allison Phillips – drums/backing vocals) from London. However, they have several guests appearing on their album including The CLASH’s Mick Jones on “Building Ten” and X-RAY SPEX’s Dave Wright on two songs.
The first song “Lucky” and its last part reminding of The BELLRAYS is good and intriguing enough to make you want to listen to the rest of this surprisingly colourful album, from mambo blues song “21 Miles To a Water Pump” that sounds a bit as if The CLASH were jamming with MORPHINE to “Bag For Life” and its 70s heavy rock meets garage feel or groovy blues songs like “Young Man’s Trouble”…
You’ll also hear many great slide guitars a la BLACK CROWES on this album (“Rock Some Kind Of Zen”, “Gamblin Blues”…) and songs like “West London Rock’n’Roll” or “Building Ten” remind me a bit of Matt Cameron’s psychedelic garage rock band HATER. Too crazy for you? Well, TAURUS TRAKKER are also good at playing more classic punk rock songs such as “Push and Pull” or “Temporary”, the two last songs of the album.
In this day and age, TAURUS TRAKKER might remain a cult band forever or could just become huge in a couple of months, and this is also why “Building Ten” is quite fascinating./Laurent C.http://www.taurustrakker.co.uk