Voodoo Rhythm Rec. 
Posessed By Paul James : Cold And Blind (US,2008)****'
Once in a decade or even longer a new artist appears within a dust folded style with an inevitable need to express himself here, finding no place else, doomed to freedom (after his community related choice ; with the Amish you either go for personal freedom or confirm until death their conservative society, I am not sure which sort of choices exist within the Mennonite family, in which singer/instrumentalist Konrad Wert was raised-).
-I met a black guy on the streets just yesterday who missed his stop on the last bus back, because he was too drunk to notice and now he asked me the way home. He said he liked drinking because it is his freedom because his grandfather still was a slave. I wanted to say to him that there also exist a freedom of choice to stop soon enough or at least not to drink the heaviest Belgian beers because they’re dangerous, but what could I say more, because he hardly could find the middle of the road, or the right direction home. Freedom if fact you also need to be able to handle, or it possesses you. Perhaps some communities would see you in freedom as a sinner any how. But at least the choice of which form it gets and which results and procreations it makes, is entirely a personal decision, possibly not judged differently when afterwards when within tougher religious and community’s restrictions.-
But Konrad Wert’s choice was inevitable. He’s the blues voice of destiny as much as the first slaves would express this so, pure and inevitable. Performed with banjo, violin or guitar with tambourine, this is a raw and vivid live recording, a cry of confession of this life, which is pure and damned at the same time. Played with banjo (1), soft and sad with guitar (2) and also tambourine (6), electric guitar and tambourine (3) fingerpicking guitar and violin (4), amplified guitar (5), violin and tambourine (7), blues guitar and handpercussion (8), bluegrass violin and hand percussion (9), the songs themselves can be sad and quiet, confessing or more possessed by reality. Yes, this is the real thing, making me finally love blues and bluegrass again. For me, this is giving new life to a burned out genre, as powerfully working like a new messiah for the blues, like a true and fresh be-real voice for it. I also understand how well this fits with the music of Reverend’s Beat Man. It is remarkable that people who grew up with preaching ideas and expectations often are destined to become a voice with a real spirit of their own, even when the form is completely different or even the opposite form as the parents or family might have expected. In fact just the true form of the gospel was found.
