Mud

Eszter Balint | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 9, 2004)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Bar/None Records
• ASIN: B0001BFDIC
• Also Available in: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #314,081 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

About the Artist

Born in Hungary, Eszter grew up in a Manhattan household immersed in the arts. She studied violin from a young age and as a member of her father's groundbreaking Squat Theater performed in plays and mingled with the elite of New York's downtown arts community. As a young girl, Eszter made her recording debut playing violin on an early rap track produced by artist Jean Michel Basquiat thar featured rapper Rammellzee. She also appeared in the film Downtown ’81, a chronicle of New York’s downtown music scene. Throughout her teens, the Squat theater space where Eszter lived would be transformed into a night club and she would DJ, spinning an eclectic mix of No Wave, funk and blues for the musicians, actors and artists who frequented the venue. At age 15, Eszter was spotted there by director Jim Jarmusch who asked her to star in his film Stranger Than Paradise. The film garnered her international acclaim and led to subsequent starring and featured roles alongside the likes of David Bowie (The Linguini Incident), Woody Allen (Shadows and Fog) and Steve Buscemi [Trees Lounge]. For Trees Lounge, Buscemi’s directorial debut, Eszter co-wrote and performed "Color Of Your Eyes’ with guitarist Smokey Hormel (Tom Waits/Johnny Cash/Beck). Eszter also contributed "Almost Gone" to the soundtrack of the 2002 indie hit Lovely And Amazing.

Aside from Flicker, Eszter's recorded history to date includes performing vocals on Marc Ribot e los Cubanos Postizos’ Muy Divertido!, Marvin Pontiac’s Greatest Hits by John Lurie and Michael DuClos' Lustro, which also featured Kristin Hersh, Deborah Harry, David Lowery and Robert Quine. She recorded duets with Ribot for Great Jewish Music: A Tribute To Serge Gainsbourg and Great Jewish Music: Tribute to Marc Bolan, both on John Zorn’s Tzadik label. She’s also played violin on Dayna Kurtz’s Postcards From Downtown and Michael Gira/Angels Of Light’s Everything Is Good Here, Please Come Home.

Product Description

On Mud, Eszter Balint displays a singular vision that filters elements of country and blues through a jagged-edge urban sensibility. If you had turned a corner in Lower Manhattan and discovered the flickering lights of a wood-frame juke joint shimmering from the far end of some shadowy alley, the sound floating towards you in the darkness might be something like this. From the first snarl of the slide guitar in opening track "Pebbles & Stones," you’ll hear the mystery and menace that distinguish most of these starkly arranged tunes. But once Eszter starts to sing in her hypnotic, unsentimental voice, you’ll discover there’s a lot more to Mud than atmosphere. Eszter is a terrific storyteller, terse but evocative. "You’ll come out of this alive," she assures someone – maybe the listener? -- over the stripped-down blues-funk of "Good Luck." "You’re just stuck in a bad dream tonight."

On Mud, bad dreams have never sounded so good. An accomplished musician who has contributed both violin and vocals to recordings by cutting-edge talents like Marc Ribot and Michael Gira, Eszter has long been a notable figure on the downtown Manhattan music and movie scene. The players she’s assembled here – Michael DuClos, Chris Cochrane, and Nic Brown – have backgrounds in rock-jazz-noise combos like Curlew and Skeleton Key. Co-producer and guitarist J.D. Foster has worked with artists ranging from Dwight Yoakam to Ribot. With Eszter, he manages to keep these songs musically and emotionally direct, while allowing enough unpredictable touches to give each one of them a unique, not-quite linear shape. The arrangements may generate a lot of tension, but, in the end, Eszter and Foster let the listener off sweetly, with a piano-and-voice balled called "Who Are You Now" that serves as a gentle denouement to these backwoods urban dramas.

Who are you now? You might just be asking yourself that after you experience the persepective-altering sound of Mud.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Requires repeated listens, June 16, 2004

By 

Arch Stanton (Bondurant, WY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mud (Audio CD)

This is a quiet and well-made little record. Nothing revelatory and somewhat more conventional and less atmospheric than I expected. There isn't much gaslight old country and Appalachia to be found here - it's somewhat reminiscent of Joe Henry's "Scar." The first track is the least of the songs on the record but it builds from there. Balint at times sounds like Exene, but this works to her advantage, particularly on the songs that sound more like sketches. It will probably take 10 listens before anything on this records starts to repeat itself in your mind. Stick with it and you'll be rewarded.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Art damage, April 23, 2004

By 

alexander laurence (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mud (Audio CD)

For people in their late 30s or early 40s, Stranger Than Paradise was a great film that started the whole independent film movement. It was the reason why any of us wanted to do films or go to film school. Jim Jarmusch used to hit on Ezster Balint back when she was underage. Later he was still impressed enough to have her star in the film. It's much like sitting in your cold room in Williamsburg and smoking some dirt weed and watching Polish women walk by and admire them for their exotic otherness and cold distance. Balint is Hungarian (Remember that crazy dude in The Usual Suspects?) and a violinist. But in this second record she embraces Americana, much in the same vein as The Handsome Family and her buddy, Smokey Hormel. I guess that when you hit middle age you get out those bossanova records and old Nick Cave records and find your own voice. Balint is a great singer. Nothing on this record is remarkable. It's like in one of those creative writing classes where you are just trying to be competent. There are no faults, but nothing really shines either. Maybe in her live show Balint is able to convey more meaning and emotion. The song "Your God" oddly reminds me of the far better "My God" by Irish singer Gemma Hayes. Balint can bring out her cool friends on record, but maybe she would do better doing everything herself.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jon Pareles of the New York Times says:, May 7, 2004

By 

M. DuClos "noalbany" (NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mud (Audio CD)

The answer is obviously yes when Eszter Balint asks, ''Do you like looking for trouble?'' at the beginning of her new album, ''Mud'' (Bar/None). Her songs are full of characters on the run: at least one murderer and a half-dozen others seeking escape, sanctuary, oblivion or ''the end of the trail.'' Ms. Balint, who was the star of Jim Jarmusch's film ''Stranger Than Paradise,'' has her own film-noir sensibility as a songwriter. Her voice is knowing and almost nonchalant as she drops hints and casts sidelong glances: ''Searching for a smoke and for your eyes/Where are they?''

Backed by a handful of musicians including her producer, J. D. Foster, Ms. Balint puts arty twists into back-alley Americana. A modal Appalachian banjo is interrupted by clanky guitar distortion; funky wah-wah guitar supports sleek vibraphone and shards of dissonance; folky fingerpicking adds shadowy echoes or slips into a bossa nova; a blues vamp skips a beat.

But the cleverness is not the point. Ms. Balint slips inside her characters to project their restlessness and longing, their disorientation and cunning. Just because she's gotten them into their predicaments doesn't mean she's not fascinated by what might happen.