Album Notes

Corner Loading (Volume 1) is a solo vocal/guitar recording that attempts to blend Rouse’s polymetric style of writing with country blues techniques. The title comes from an early method of recording a singer/guitarist facing a corner to naturally “roll off” the high and low end of the recording. Taking up where the blues left off after the so called British Invasion, Rouse imagines what might have happened if the blues hadn’t become absorbed in a traditional 12 bar band constraint. Many artists in the 1930’s were dealing intuitively with micro-tonality and shifting rhythmic motifs. Rouse uses modern tempo canons and cross rhythms between the voice and guitar to create a recording that is both old and new at the same time. Similarly, he takes a subtle humanist approach to the lyrics to contrast and highlight the uneasy relationship between faith and belief and the often contradictory messages in early blues (commonly referred to as “the Devil’s Music”).