75 Dollar Bill

75 Dollar Bill is the guitar/percussion duo Che Chen and Rick Brown, whose music is firmly anchored in the desert blues of the Tuareg people, best known in the West through the work of bands like Tinariwen. The music is instrumental. On the one hand, the duo does a good job capturing the essence of the genre including the circular riffs, rhythmic structures, the basic percussive patterns fairly accurately for two musicians who do not necessarily have a deep connection to the Sahara (though Chen comes geographically close, having spent some time in Mauritania). On the other hand, the band occasionally takes off on a tangent and infuses a scrappy sense of jazz into the proceedings through some saxophone lines that could be a little rough every now and then. Chen is superb on the guitar and can be quite hypnotic at times. Brown keeps the anchor steady with a variety of percussion instruments.