American vocalist-songwriter Eric Mingus (the son of Charles Mingus, who is also a poet and multi-instrumentalist) and polymath Elliott Sharp have been working together for more than twenty-five years, in Sharp’s futurist blues band Terraplane (including on the recent Livin’ Hear, Yellowbird, 2025) and in other formations. Wrench In The Works is, surprisingly, Mingus and Sharp’s first duo album. Mingus recorded his vocal parts at Sharp’s Studio zOaR and at Lost Realm Studio in New Mexico in August 2025, and Sharp added guitars, bass, synth, and drum programming, mixed and mastered the album between August and November 2025.
Wrench In The Works sounds like an offshoot of Terraplane aesthetics, but emerged «from the invisible confines of the rogue state». The fourteen blues-tinged songs and instrumental interludes suggest what Sharp calls a «psychedelic punkfunk No Wave mission with strands of historical DNA from Howlin’ Wolf, Captain Beefheart, Napalm Death, and Jimi Hendrix making themselves heard and felt». Mingus delivers poetic but dark dystopian scenarios in his familiar, commanding voice, while Sharp intensifies his urgent delivery with packed textures of futurist, dense, distorted, and tortured sounds. These blues songs resist today’s oppression, injustice, violation of human rights, and the continuous derangement of the American psyche. Wrench In The Works serves blues as a relevant and useful antidote to the current ills of America.
Sharp and fellow American guitar hero Nels Cline (of Wilco) recorded a set of five free improvised duets playing only acoustic guitars, at Sharp’s Studio zOaR in October 1999, and another piece at The Stone in New York in April 2007. The album Open the Door was Cline and Sharp’s second duo album, following Duo Milano (Long song, 2007, which was recorded in 2006), and it was released by Public Eysore in 2012. Now it is presented in Sharp’s remastered version that reveals more sonic depth and adds a sixth extended improvisation.
Open the Door offers Cline and Sharp’s telepathic communication and visceral approach to free improvisation. Sharp says that he always loved Cline’s jazzier playing, but after seeing him play with bassist Mike Watt, he realized that they «both sacrificed to the same gods». The recording session was conducted with no prior discussion, and Cline and Sharp just sat down and played, relying on their «deep pool of mutual influences and friends, shared approaches and divergent strategies», with little editing afterwards.
You can count on these two idiosyncratic, restless master guitarists to reveal profound, insightful ideas about the possibilities of an acoustic guitar duo beyond the virtuoso technical aspects. This is an inspired demonstration of free improvisation – uncompromising, exploratory, risk-taking, dangerous, and determined to map uncharted territories, with some country blues sparks (especially on «Isotropes»), and enough energy to provide electricity for large parts of New York. The addition of the 17-minute «Room 804» shines with its singing-colliding guitars and beautiful ascent into the sonic flux, as does the extended «Let Her In» with its exotic, psychedelic flights. Cline and Sharp concluded this experience better than anyone: «onward and outward, passing through a portal at the speed of sound».
Eyal Hareuveni
Eric Mingus (voice), Elliott Sharp (electric guitars, baritone guitar, electric bass, analog synthesizers, drum programming, acoustic guitar), Nels Cline (acoustic guitar)
