11th May 2010

Audio with 4 notes

Tobacco featuring Beck - Fresh Hex
Maniac Meat (Anticon)

New Tobacco! Yes! To recap: Tobacco is in a group called Black Moth Super Rainbow that makes awesome pop/rock music with sweet analog synthesizers and vocoders all over the place. His last solo record, Fucked Up Friends, was the coolest hip-hop record of 2008 that featured exactly one song with someone rapping. (That someone, by the way, was Aesop Rock, and that song, Dirt, was excellent).

Now, I was a bit bummed with the latest Black Moth Super Rainbow record. I’d hoped they’d be moving in a dirtier direction, and they pretty much continued doing what they’d been doing for the last few records.  I guess that’s still cool and everything, but after hearing Fucked Up Friends, I think that seems like the way they should be going.  The record is all about groove and grit, and somehow, using all electronic instruments, dude managed to make one of the most raw-sounding records out there.  After that, returning to the crisper sound of Black Moth Super Rainbow felt like Husker Du deciding to go back and do another hardcore-punk record after Everything Falls Apart. They’re both great, but there’s still work to be done in this newly-tapped area.

Alright, now we’re caught up.  The new record, Maniac Meat, continues in the dirtier, crunchier, slightly sleazier path Fucked Up Friends started down.  But where Fucked Up Friends was basically a hip-hop record without the rhymes, Maniac Meat is something else.  The press blurb sent out with the record mentions Daft Punk, and I’m not really in a position to evaluate that, but I will say it sounds more like what I might have thought the music of the future would sound like while I was listening to the soundtrack of Streets of Rage 2. Is that what Daft Punk is going for? I don’t know, but the point is, this record is right-the-fuck-on.

The record drops May 25th on Anticon, and, while there’s no Aesop on this one, I think they broke even by having two songs featuring Beck.

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