Photo by Robert Palumbo

Visit Hazmat Modine's website

HAZMAT MODINE plays the kind of Blues one might have found in a gypsy whorehouse in New Orleans had the city been built on the Black Sea somewhere alongside Macao. The band is driven by a pair harmonicas, backed by tuba, drums, guitars, and trumpet as well as a revolving cast of special guests who play such oddball instruments as the claviola, the cymbalom, the contrabass saxophone (it's really big) and the Sarusaphone.

And yet Hazmat's music is anything but clever. The music is raw, sophisticated, and utterly honest. Their sound isn't indebted to any particular trend but the product of investigative minds bend on sharing their enthusiasm for sounds gathered around the world and re-interpreted from an Americana point of view. Frontman Wade Schuman has the appropriately throaty voice of someone who has both hopped freight trains and collaborated with the Throat Singers of Tuva (really..)

Started about 5 years ago in New York City, Hazmat has garnered high praise and large audiences for its live shows. They were given a heroes' welcome in Russia during their recent tour (watch the video of the russian tv appearance here).

WHAT THE PRESS SAYS:
(click here for more)

The New Yorker
"Hazmat Modine: … the début album by this wild group led by the singer and harmonica player Wade Schuman. They play blues originals, mostly, that are the product of Schuman’s limitless imagination. His voice, for that matter, appears to be bottomless." >

The New York Times
"The singer and harmonica player Wade Schuman's musical vision sounds like something out of Dr. Suess. His group augments Mr. Schumans own avant-blues stylings with a contra-bass, a banjitar, tuba, flugel, trumpet, sheng and, most important, Tuvan throat singing. " Sinagra -

The Village Voice
"Seems like ages since harmonicas have sounded as hep as Wade Schuman’s and Randy Weinstein’s do in this hand-painted confab of rusty blues, piquant rumbas, sawdust-floor reggae, Hawaiian guitar, and—sure, why not?—Tuvan throat singing. Welcome to the old weird globalism." Richard Gehr