Tobacco

Add Date: May 11

Artist: Tobacco

Album: Maniac Meat

Label: Anticon

Genre: Electronic

Comments: Tobacco, the mastermind behind techno-pop group Black Moth Super Rainbow, was hard at work composing Maniac Meat, the newest addition to his solo repertoire, while putting the finishing touches on BMSR's newest and more mainstream record Eating Us. While listening to Eating Us, I often wondered how Tobacco managed to suppress his more experimental side. The answer is, he didn't. He funneled it all into Maniac Meat.

This album takes the older, heavier style of BMSR and makes it heavier. It's so thick with guttural fuzz you can taste it. There is not a single pure noise in the whole album. Everything is dirty, affected, distorted, twisted. Although most of the lyrics are, characteristically of Tobacco, transformed into background ambiance, he even whips out some serious freestyle on a few of the tracks, laying down syllable after syllable of calculated nonsense.

The hip-hop/funk drums are simultaneously atmospheric and driving. And well, I would categorize the other "instruments," but really it's all just intense club noise in chords that are borderline twelve-tone. The funk is unstoppable. This stuff will get anyone's head bobbing.

It's all strange, and it all feels so right. Maniac Meat has a life of its own, a solid relentless pulse beating life into the body of a giant mechanized insect. A must-play for any DJ looking to unearth some truly novel sounds.