Call him a cult hero and you’re not off by much. He’s Australian, he’s a rock and blues musician with a mean guitar and his singing explores the lower depths of where a human voice could have the courage to descend to. He’s a songwriter and he’s a producer and author as well. And perhaps most flashy and reaching back to the was from the is, as a teenager he was an original member in the early  80’s of Nick Cave’s back-up band , the Bad Seeds. Besides his long-term creative closeness with The True Spirit, he’s also been connected with Hugo Race Fatalists and Dirtmusic. Hugo Race’s discography is full of highlights, milestones, classics and glorious collaborations. With Dirtmusic and Chris Brokaw and Chris Eckman and with Tamikrest on two of their albums. And there was the raw lyrical song focused much celebrated masterpiece «Fatalists» from 2010. «Wonderful! brutal! primitive! Transcendental» – the critics were falling all over each other. Then he moved on with our amicis the soundscape artists Sacri Cuori and their collaborative 2012 «We Never Had Control». And solo work it was with «No But It’s True» (2012). 

Flipping back from the was to what-is-right-now he’s truly lifting us with his latest cd «The Spirit». It’s an album worked out and in collaboration with his mainstay and truly legendary band The True Spirit. It’s their first recording together in seven years. Good things take their own sweet time. It’s the bands 12^th studio album together and it was produced by Hugo in his hometown of Melbourne over the span of three years. The faces of the band are Michelangelo Russo (electronics), Bryan Colechin (bass), Brett Poliness (drums, percussion) and Nico Mansy (keys).

To Hugo Race, the album represents a return to his roots in a psych-rock zone that Melody Maker tagged as «industrial trance blues» in the early days of the band. Nothing’s changed.