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Black Moth Super Rainbow
Black Moth Super Rainbow
I first got on board with Black Moth Super Rainbow with their 2009 release Eating Us. I loved that record so much, fell in love with the band right away. No matter how bong-friendly this band may be, one track off of Eating Us, their track "Twin of Myself" is as poppy as it gets… also it’s a good place to start with this band, that song displays their surprising pop capabilities. Fastening a fuzzy little beatbox to a veritable kaleidoscope of synth twinkles and sci-fi movie whirls, Black Moth Super Rainbow are a trip and a half. Though it might not be fair to grant BMSR the maligned "drug band" stamp, they sure sound under the influence of something [LSD]. It’s hard to be original and unique in the 21st century, in an age where it feels like everything has been done before, but Black Moth Super Rainbow sounded original right away. I started to work my way backwards through their discography. I went and listened to 2007’s Dandelion Gum. That album was just as good as Eating Us: vocals were warped beyond repair by vocoder, even when the tracks occasionally veered towards a mutant electronic version of sun-drenched folk-pop. The band consists of an army of dream-pop warriors. Black Moth Super Rainbow hail from Pennsylvania, a state that can proudly call itself the nation's #1 producer of mushrooms (coincidence? I think not!). Most of the time, you can't understand a thing being said, but that's not a problem: The meaning of the music comes through regardless. Black Moth Super Rainbow consists of a few pals with funny nicknames like Tobacco and Father Hummingbird, who dress strangely, occasionally wear masks, and make music together off in some isolated rural area near Pittsburgh. It all sounds suspiciously engineered to cultivate an image for the band as eccentric pop outsiders. Fortunately, the backstory doesn't matter much. By the time they came on my radar in 2009, as a band, Black Moth Super Rainbow had been toiling away for a few years amassing several full-lengths, CD-Rs, and collaborations, most notably a 2006 split EP with the Octopus Project. Tobacco, the band-leader, first started releasing music under the name Black Moth Super Rainbow in 2003. His approach to building songs out of analog keyboard gear stood out from his contemporaries—including acts with a similar tonal aesthetic, like Boards of Canada or the Flaming Lips. It's pretty clear that, starting with Eating Us, that the band was more accessible, more high-def.hat can indeed be attributed to the use of Flaming Lips' producer Dave Fridmann (and yes, those comparisons are sure to soon follow): It’s hard to think about Black Moth Super Rainbow without thinking about the Flaming Lips (kinda’ like my Black Keys / White Stripes comparison)… Both the Lips and Black Moth are weird as hell, they have both toured together, and Flaming Lips’ main producer Dave Fridmann helped record and produce their first professional recording experience with my favorite record, 2009’s Eating Us. Let’s get back on track… so back to 2003… Tobacco (by the way Tobacco’s real name is Tom Fec) starts releasing music under the band’s name. By 2004, just in time for the second BMSR full-length Starta People (after their debut album Falling Through a Field was released in 2003), he added a vocoder effect to his vocals that remains his signature to this day. Almost 20 years later, the queasy, semi-lo-fi, electro-psychedelic alt-hip hop style Fec invented still sounds completely unique. But BMSR have always had this unique enchantment with allowing a creepy toxicity to bleed in and mix with the sunshine (those melancholic bass throbs, not to mention Tobbacco's foreboding vocals-- think HAL 9000 wielding a vocoder). Sure, this trip could take a turn for the scary any minute, but it doesn't mean that we aren't going to find a nice patch of grass and enjoy it until it does. The keyboards throughout sound vintage, with textures that bring to mind Mellotron and Moog, while the guitars are thin, trebly, and speckled with analog dust. The central pulsating riff of "Sun Lips" sounds an awful lot like the dream-channeled refrain of "Strawberry Fields Forever", even as it's used in service of what is ultimately a tremendously simple little pop tune. "We miss you in summertime," the singer (that would be Tobacco on the mic) intones through his machine, and since it seems kind of like a love song, the presence of "we" is a little odd. The band has an ability to show an eerie, darker side of stargazing psych-pop, their songs seeming to exist in the exact moment when an acid trip starts to go sour. The band’s mix of electronics and more traditional instruments nurtured that atmosphere: analog synths-and-vocoder approach. They are (all at once) lush, shoegaze-y vocals amidst a backdrop of interplaying synths, spare, tape-hiss-heavy. "Changing You All" is the closest this outfit gets to an expressive ballad, and it's a refreshing change of pace.’ Black Moth Super Rainbow are a dream for fans of weird and offbeat music: They've always seemed more a "collective" than proper band, trading on the whims of unknown. Since 2009’s Eating Us they’ve blessed us with 2012’s Cobra Juicy and 2018’s Panic Blooms. This is a merry band of freaks… and I’m right in tow…
It's…
Black Moth Super Rainbow
Black Moth Super Rainbow
Black Moth Super Rainbow
I first got on board with Black Moth Super Rainbow with their 2009 release Eating Us. I loved that record so much, fell in love with the band right away. No matter how bong-friendly this band may be, one track off of Eating Us, their track "Twin of Myself" is as poppy as it gets… also it’s a good place to start with this band, that song displays their surprising pop capabilities. Fastening a fuzzy little beatbox to a veritable kaleidoscope of synth twinkles and sci-fi movie whirls, Black Moth Super Rainbow are a trip and a half. Though it might not be fair to grant BMSR the maligned "drug band" stamp, they sure sound under the influence of something [LSD]. It’s hard to be original and unique in the 21st century, in an age where it feels like everything has been done before, but Black Moth Super Rainbow sounded original right away. I started to work my way backwards through their discography. I went and listened to 2007’s Dandelion Gum. That album was just as good as Eating Us: vocals were warped beyond repair by vocoder, even when the tracks occasionally veered towards a mutant electronic version of sun-drenched folk-pop. The band consists of an army of dream-pop warriors. Black Moth Super Rainbow hail from Pennsylvania, a state that can proudly call itself the nation's #1 producer of mushrooms (coincidence? I think not!). Most of the time, you can't understand a thing being said, but that's not a problem: The meaning of the music comes through regardless. Black Moth Super Rainbow consists of a few pals with funny nicknames like Tobacco and Father Hummingbird, who dress strangely, occasionally wear masks, and make music together off in some isolated rural area near Pittsburgh. It all sounds suspiciously engineered to cultivate an image for the band as eccentric pop outsiders. Fortunately, the backstory doesn't matter much. By the time they came on my radar in 2009, as a band, Black Moth Super Rainbow had been toiling away for a few years amassing several full-lengths, CD-Rs, and collaborations, most notably a 2006 split EP with the Octopus Project. Tobacco, the band-leader, first started releasing music under the name Black Moth Super Rainbow in 2003. His approach to building songs out of analog keyboard gear stood out from his contemporaries—including acts with a similar tonal aesthetic, like Boards of Canada or the Flaming Lips. It's pretty clear that, starting with Eating Us, that the band was more accessible, more high-def.hat can indeed be attributed to the use of Flaming Lips' producer Dave Fridmann (and yes, those comparisons are sure to soon follow): It’s hard to think about Black Moth Super Rainbow without thinking about the Flaming Lips (kinda’ like my Black Keys / White Stripes comparison)… Both the Lips and Black Moth are weird as hell, they have both toured together, and Flaming Lips’ main producer Dave Fridmann helped record and produce their first professional recording experience with my favorite record, 2009’s Eating Us. Let’s get back on track… so back to 2003… Tobacco (by the way Tobacco’s real name is Tom Fec) starts releasing music under the band’s name. By 2004, just in time for the second BMSR full-length Starta People (after their debut album Falling Through a Field was released in 2003), he added a vocoder effect to his vocals that remains his signature to this day. Almost 20 years later, the queasy, semi-lo-fi, electro-psychedelic alt-hip hop style Fec invented still sounds completely unique. But BMSR have always had this unique enchantment with allowing a creepy toxicity to bleed in and mix with the sunshine (those melancholic bass throbs, not to mention Tobbacco's foreboding vocals-- think HAL 9000 wielding a vocoder). Sure, this trip could take a turn for the scary any minute, but it doesn't mean that we aren't going to find a nice patch of grass and enjoy it until it does. The keyboards throughout sound vintage, with textures that bring to mind Mellotron and Moog, while the guitars are thin, trebly, and speckled with analog dust. The central pulsating riff of "Sun Lips" sounds an awful lot like the dream-channeled refrain of "Strawberry Fields Forever", even as it's used in service of what is ultimately a tremendously simple little pop tune. "We miss you in summertime," the singer (that would be Tobacco on the mic) intones through his machine, and since it seems kind of like a love song, the presence of "we" is a little odd. The band has an ability to show an eerie, darker side of stargazing psych-pop, their songs seeming to exist in the exact moment when an acid trip starts to go sour. The band’s mix of electronics and more traditional instruments nurtured that atmosphere: analog synths-and-vocoder approach. They are (all at once) lush, shoegaze-y vocals amidst a backdrop of interplaying synths, spare, tape-hiss-heavy. "Changing You All" is the closest this outfit gets to an expressive ballad, and it's a refreshing change of pace.’ Black Moth Super Rainbow are a dream for fans of weird and offbeat music: They've always seemed more a "collective" than proper band, trading on the whims of unknown. Since 2009’s Eating Us they’ve blessed us with 2012’s Cobra Juicy and 2018’s Panic Blooms. This is a merry band of freaks… and I’m right in tow…
It's…
Black Moth Super Rainbow
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