There’s a couple things you’d expect from a solo album of a member of the Black Moth Super Rainbow: vocoder, funky drum beats , and woozy analog synths. On BMSR’s The Seven Fields of Aphelion’s new album Periphery, you only get the last one. Closer in sound to Emeralds or Stellar OM Source, Periphery is full of gorgeous ambient synth music that would probably have sounded as natural in 1985 as it does in 2010. On tracks like “Sunburst Chemicals,” “Lake Feet,” and “Mountain Mary,” The Seven Fields of Aphelion plays real live piano, giving an added poignancy and emotional tug to the music.

There has always been a warped new-age bent to BMSR (they did live in a commune together) and The Seven Fields of Aphelion brings that to the forefront, creating music that’s serene and reflective, but with totally new signifiers for what’s “peaceful” and “calming.” While listening to Periphery, you could just as easily contemplate the beauty of a dead shopping mall or an 80s cop show as you could a river stream or sunny meadow.

You can buy Periphery from Graveface Records starting Feb. 16th.

MP3 :::
The Seven Fields of Aphelion – Sunburst Chemicals

The folks at the blog Pretty Creatures have a pretty good audience recording of Black Moth Super Rainbow’s tour kick-off show last week in Lexington. Pretty pumped for their show at the Southgate House in Newport on June 21st. Hope to see you there!  The rest of the tour:

Fri. May 29 Los Angeles, CA @ Troubadour w/ School of Seven Bells
Sat. May 30 Costa Mesa, CA @ Detroit Bar w/ School of Seven Bells
Sun. May 31 Phoenix, AZ @ Rhythm Room w/ School of Seven Bells
Tue. June 2 Austin, TX @ The Mohawk w/ School of Seven Bells
Wed. June 3 Denton, TX @ Hailey’s w/ School of Seven Bells
Thu. June 4 Little Rock, AR @ Sticky Fingerz w/ School of Seven Bells
Fri. June 5 Nashville, TN @ Exit/In w/ School of Seven Bells
Sat. June 6 Columbus, OH @ Skully’s w/ School of Seven Bells
Fri. June 19 Knoxville, TN @ Pilot Light
Sat. June 20 Birmingham, AL @ City Stages Music & Arts
Sun. June 21 Newport, KY @ Southgate House
Sat. June 27 Cleveland, OH @ Grog Shop
Tue. June 30 Detroit, MI @ Magic Stick
Fri. July 24 New York, NY @ South Street Seaport – Seaport Music Festival, Pier 17
Sat. July 25 Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brendas w/ Dan Friel
Sun. July 26 Washington, DC @ Rock and Roll Hotel w/ Dan Friel
Mon. July 27 Baltimore, MD @ Ottobar w/ Dan Friel

MP3 :::
Black Moth Super Rainbow – Full Concert Bootleg, 5.19.09 (via Zshare)

Eating Us is out today. Go grip that shit! I wanted to go on and share my review originally written for LEO Weekly and was recently nixed and reworked for a bigger, more awesome full-page feature we’re doing coming in the next couple of weeks:

Black Moth Super Rainbow performs a difficult feat with Eating Us. The group is able to maintain the distinct, calculated sound that makes them easily recognizable while branching out to create a remarkably different album. The massive arsenal of antique analog equipment that defined BMSR’s first three albums remains in tact – the vocoder-saturated vocals of Tobacco, the thick and swirling novatrons and mellotrons that cultivated a general feeling of sunshine and old 8mm films about nature, etc. However, Eating Us showcases a more organic band, incorporating more acoustic instrumentation and mellow moods without disregarding the group’s traditional glitchy, Technicolor timbre. The syrupy strings that producer Dave Friddman fine-tuned on the Flaming Lips’ latter output makes its way onto beautiful floral pop gems like “Fields are Breathing” and the cinematic “Gold Splatter.” The expansive “Smile the Day After Today” sounds like the music Boards of Canada should’ve followed up Geogaddi with, but failed to. In short, Eating Us is a gorgeous, cohesive, enthralling, brain-melting psychedelic package – a record of remarkable imagination and accessibility that will unequivocally enjoy a very high place on my best of ‘09 list.

Fagen-Becker Quality Rating

Don’t forget to check out our interview with Tobacco here, as well as some concert photos from our friends at Backseat Sandbar who went to their tour kick-off show in Lexington last week. I’ll be heading to the Southgate House in Newport (best venue in the world) to see them rip June 21st? Anyone else going?

MP3 :::
Black Moth Super Rainbow – Iron Lemonade
Black Moth Super Rainbow – Fields are Breathing

Holy shit! This is amazing. My Boston bro Justin at the sexy music blog Anti-Gravity Bunny discovered the Dark Bubbles website this morning. You use your mouse to control the time lapse between day and night for the song “Dark Bubbles.” I am well entertained for the next couple of hours. Love Black Moth. Love getting high.

Eating Us is out May 26 on Graveface and it fuckin’ slams! Also, those in the area, BMSR brings the technicolor slugfest to Lexington on May 19. And lest we forget some words from Tobacco in my interview a couple of weeks ago.

MP3 :::
Black Moth Super Rainbow – Dark Bubbles (this is a lower quality rip as to respect the artist and label, grip the album for full quality)

Black Moth Super Rainbow’s tacit ringleader Tobacco took a few minutes by e-mail to talk about their new album Eating Us and his love for the album Happy in Galoshes. I love to hear imaginative artists like Tobacco discuss enjoying things that make the hipster dorks cringe.

KB: What’s the origin of your name Black Moth Super Rainbow and your moniker Tobacco?

T: It just kind of popped into my head one day, before I had the idea for the band.  Then I wanted a band that would sound like that name.  Tobacco comes from a character that freaked me out as a kid.

KB: Eating Us seems to have a much more mellow and classic pop-focused vibe compared with the earlier full-lengths. Part of that seems to come from the addition of more acoustic instrumentation. Was that change something intentional or something that sorta evolved in the studio?

T: It’s good that a lot of people are noticing that.  I didn’t want to make another synth album because I was getting worn out on the sounds I could make within this kind of music.  There’s always been just as many guitars, and maybe even more acoustic guitars in the past, but the focus in the mixing is less on the synthsizers and more on the other instruments this time around.

KB: How did you hook up with the legendary Dave Fridmann?

T: Our friend Andy knew Dave and his wife from SUNY Fredonia, so we met up once a little over a year before we ended up making the album.

KB: How did you get interested in the old analog equipment that you all employ, like the vocoder and mellotron?

T: I wanted stuff that was more colorful than the regular guitar and attention-seeking-singer kind of bands.  It took a while to figure out what worked best, and now maybe it’s time to move on again.

KB: What can folks who come out to the shows this spring expect at the Black Moth Super Rainbow show if they haven’t experienced you all live yet?

T: Expect a bunch of people who are still uncomfortable on a stage with hopefully some decent visual distractions.

KB: How does the songwriting process defer between your Tobacco solo project and Black Moth Super Rainbow, besides working with the other members?

T: It’s strange, because there isn’t a difference.  The Tobacco stuff came about more from deciding that certain songs didn’t fit with what Black Moth Super Rainbow had become.

KB: Are you considering doing any more collaborations like you all did with the Octopus Project?

T: No, I prefer working alone.  That’ll probably be my first and last, but I guess you never know.

KB: What music, new or discovered, influences or inspires you as of late?

T: I feel like I get inspired by things that aren’t music these days.  But I really love the Scott Weiland double album.  While everyone else i talk to has their Animal Collective now, I’ve got my Weiland, and it feels great.

Black Moth Super Rainbow kicks off their month-long excursion May 19th in Lexington. Eating Us drops on Graveface Records May 26th, and it’s a sick jam (expect a full review soon).

MP3 :::
Black Moth Super Rainbow – Eating Us Medley
Black Moth Super Rainbow – Born On a Day the Sun Didn’t Rise

I’m really excited to see these technicolor conjurers and super positive dudes on tour, since I always seem to miss them. Black Moth Super Rainbow will be super zipping through the lower 48 this spring to promote a new jam hive called Eating Us, out on May 26. And the tour kicks off here in Kentucky on May 19!

The aforementioned Lexington show is sponsored by my college radio alma mater WRFL, who have been booking some real kick-ass shows lately (going to see Ariel Pink tomorrow night, actually). Gotta step up your game, Louisville, unless you’re too depressed about last week’s loss to Michigan State or somethin’.

Tue. May 19 – Lexington, KY @ Red Mile
Wed. May 20 – Chicago, IL @ Bottom Lounge
Thu. May 21 – Madison, WI @ High Noon Saloon
Fri. May 22 – Minneapolis, MN @ Triple Rock Social Club
Mon. May 25 – Quincy, WA @ Sasquatch Festival
Tue. May 26 – Portland, OR @ Holocene
Thu. May 28 – San Francisco, CA @ Bottom of the Hill
Fri. May 29 – Los Angeles, CA @ Troubadour
Sat. May 30 – Costa Mesa, CA @ Detroit Bar
Sun. May 31 – Phoenix, AZ @ Rhythm Room
Tue. Jun. 2 – Austin, TX @ The Mohawk
Wed. Jun. 3 – Denton, TX @ Hailey’s
Thu. Jun. 4 – Little Rock, AR @ Sticky Fingerz
Fri. Jun. 5 – Nashville, TN @ Exit/In
Sat. Jun. 6 – Columbus, OH @ Circus

All the news that’s fit to print.

::: I feel like a citizen dick. I just wrote a column six… nay, five days ago, railing against latter Pink Floyd albums and said that Rick Wright sounds like a Death Eater from Harry Potter. Well, unfortunately, Rick Wright has passed away at 65. Way to be a toolbox, self. A pox on Kenny Bloggins.

::: Brightblack Morning Light’s new album is exactly like their last one, which is to say, Spiritualized on purple drank. Fine with me. I like jams about nature and hanging out and camping and vibin’. Motion to Rejoin comes out next week, and ya know, you don’t see courtroom vernacular make it onto hippie jams too often. “Motion to rejoin, your honor.” I snagged a couple of MP3s below.

::: Black Moth Super Rainbow drops Drippers on November 4th (pick it up after you vote though, Quasibroto), a collection of previously unreleased material, including but not limited to, B-sides, demos, and alternate takes. In the meantime, you can grip a limited edition EP version with a scratch and sniff sticker. Boss. I hope the full length comes with a snap bracelet. Since Boards of Canada fell way the fuck off with The Campfire Buttphase, I’m leaving BMSR in charge of the whole bucolic analog sunshine electro-psych tip.

::: Plop another nickel in the “Odd Couple” jar. As alluded to earlier on this blog, subterranean guitar architects and drone assault vehicle Growing just dropped a sick joint last week. To celebrate, Growing will take delight this fall in completely frightening indie rock nerds and people “who just gotta get their sorta dance on” for roughly 45 minutes in eight major North American markets. Through either friendship, luck, providence, elaborate schemes, or otherwise, Growing will be opening for the subdued and shapeshifting British electropop collective Hot Chip on the last leg of their tour.

Growing is known for rumbling the foundations of whatever room they play in and ripping holes in the sky roughly ten meters above your head that spew torrents of fluorescent-colored doom. Hot Chip is known for being… funky. Totally fucked, right? Well, Growing has taken a more (somewhat) melodic approach on their latest, All the Way, out right now on Social Registry. So, maybe it’s not as strange as it seems. I mean, Deerhunter just finished a Nine Inch Nails tour, right? Odd couples are the new black. Czech the dates.

::: Brian Chippendale from Lightning Bolt and Brian Miller from Foot Village have started Noise for Obama, featuring artist statements from the hottest hearthrobs in noise on why they’re voting for Obama in November. Chppendale and friends realized that there’s a large nihilistic contingency in this scene. Nihilists don’t really believe in democracy, among other things, so it would time to give everyone a little push toward civic responsibility. From Miller’s press release:

“We were both concerned that a lot of people, both audiences and
artists, in the noise/underground music community don’t vote and may
not have considered what an important election year this is. So I
started writing to other noise rockers and found that there are others
that feel as strongly about Obama as we do.”

There’s not much up right now, but look for statements from No Age, Friends Forever, and Deerhoof in the near future. And you can register to vote. Do it soon, if you’ve not done so already.

And that’s how it looks from the cheap seats. As a side note, I plan to keep toying with the design of this page. Expect massive confusion to follow. Have a slice of rave pie while you wait…

MP3 :::
Growing – Rave Pie Only
Black Moth Super Rainbow – Milk Skates
Black Moth Super Rainbow – Happy Melted City
Brightblack Morning Light – Oppressions Each
Lightning Bolt – Birdy

Love Black Moth Super Rainbow. They’ve been super busy as of late, from rereleasing all of their back catalogue (including Start a People, my favorite record of last year that wasn’t realy released last year), to supporting the Flaming Lips, to their Zodiac Girls release. And now they have a new rarities collection due for September called Drippers. Prolific. And you know, I think this Sesame Street image matches the feel of BMSR as well, so we’ll let it hang.

MP3 :::
Black Moth Super Rainbow – Happy Melted City
Dungen – Familj