TOBACCO (OF BLACK MOTH SUPER RAINBOW)Tobacco sometimes runs with a group called Black Moth Super Rainbow. On Fucked Up Friends, his latest mission, he works alone. Tobacco’s tools are analog synths, tape machines, and deformed incantations from throats unknown. His music is a wash of distortion and melody over jagged beats. It amalgamates hypnotic, cosmopolitan pop, gritty, propulsive hip-hop and a night full of fevered dreams. It buoys the spirit, braces the nerves, and smuggles disoriented paranoia deep into the subconscious. These are anxiously driven, effortlessly smooth and unapologetically badass sounds of inner nature. It’s not that Brooklyn’s High Places remind me of a lot of things I like already — minimal, bleary indie pop like Beat Happening or Young Marble Giants; subaqueous psychedelia from Ricardo Villalobos to Martin Denny exotica; girlish nursery-rhyme vocals; New York City; heavy syncopation; pentatonic scales; kissing — it’s that I usually only get to have them all together when I’m dreaming. High Places sing about dreaming. They sing about dreaming and evolution and writing letters — to Mars, I think! — and even though they sing about the haze of falling in love on ‘Head Spins’, the closest they come to sex is watching hermaphroditic banana slugs swap sperm while clouds roll overhead. This all happens in about nine minutes. Sure, they have a handful of other songs that they play live, but High Places are a relatively small, embryonic band, literally and metaphorically. There are only two members, Rob Barber and Mary Pearson. They clink on glasses and hit hand drums and adorn them with spare guitar figures before sending everything through basic effects processors. The Hood Internet is a Chicago-based duo specializing in mashups of hip-hop (from the mainstream to the underground) with indie rock. They also run a blog of the same name through which they release their music, a venture that helped them earn notability as a minor internet phenomenon. The Hood Internet is composed of Aaron Brink (aka ABX) and Steve Reidell (aka STV SLV). [1] $10.00 ADVANCE TICKETS / $12.00 AT THE DOOR Also appearing: THE HOOD INTERNET April 02, 2010 (Fri) |
