Guitarist Garry Burnside is the uncle of his sole bandmate, drummer Cedric Burnside, in their duo Burnside Exploration, even though the two are only two years apart in age; Garry Burnside is the youngest son of bluesman R.L. Burnside, while Cedric Burnside is R.L. Burnside’s grandson. Uncle and nephew grew up playing with their mutual progenitor and with his associate, Junior Kimbrough, and they have absorbed that earlier generation’s sense of northern Mississippi blues along with, in Garry Burnside’s case, a taste for Jimi Hendrix-style heavy fuzz guitar riffing. Thus, their debut album, The Record, is a noise-guitar bonanza. Although the Burnsides claim authorship on all but three of the tracks, some of them are quite familiar blues exercises, including “You Don’t Love Me,” which was being credited to Willie Cobbs before they were born. No matter. Burnside Exploration’s explorations may not extend far beyond the confines of their upbringing, but that only means they are faithful and effective carriers of the flame of basic, hardcore electric blues into the 21st century. – William Ruhlmann