Tobacco 'Fucked Up Friends' album

The first solo album from Tobacco of Black Moth Super Rainbow. Here Tobacco explores a darker, starker and altogether more badass dimension of his complex vision. Using analog synths and tape machines, Tobacco defies all expectations, rocks the boombox, a

On Fucked Up Friends, his first solo album, Tobacco explores a darker, starker and altogether more badass dimension of his complex vision. With his group Black Moth Super Rainbow, Tobacco distinguished himself as a master of jagged beats, glowing melodies and pronounced tension. This time, he works alone, in rural Pennsylvania, away from conventions and interference.

As always, Tobacco recorded Fucked Up Friends using analog synths and tape machines, which gives his work a timeless distance from digital pop music at large. His tracks evoke sonar, mellotrons and deteriorating cassette tapes. His windshield-rattling beats thump hard against their technological limitations. His hooks emerge from thick ponds of distortion, which heightens their hypnotic power. His music is equally cosmopolitan and self-contained, the soundtrack for an imaginary underwater cop show, a welcome stranger anywhere in time and space. Much of Fucked Up Friends is instrumental. Sometimes, electronically mutilated vocals do emerge. The lyrics are never “about,” but always “of.” They don’t clarify. They only make the mystery that much more enticing.

Tobacco creates unique, compelling pop from the power and constrictions of his available technology. He makes music that is at once buoyant, danceable and unmistakably eerie. He plays “lo-fi” music for high yields, and he gives his simplest constructions a powerful dramatic sweep. He makes music with suave passion, burning vitality and cinematic depth. And he never stops searching for the perfect beat.

At times, such as on the sunny celebration “Hairy Candy,” Fucked Up Friends recalls BMSR’s woozy daydreams. But, taken as a whole, it’s a much more sinister affair. This album is anxiously driven, effortlessly smooth, and unapologetically uncanny. These tracks will stick in your head like a crooked get-rich-quick scheme. "Hawker Boat" and "Dirt (featuring Aesop Rock)" strain stadium-rock grandeur through a dirty filter and serve it with rocks and salt. "Side 8 (Big Gums Version)," "Backwoods Altar" and "Get My Nails Did" slowly expose a deep menace beneath their enticing rhythms.

Fucked Up Friends defies all expectations, rocks the boombox, and casts a menacing, irresistible spell. It bleeds under a blacklight. It knows where you live.

biography
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.

Fucked Up Friends is a collection of boombox rockers that sidestep lazy nominalizations as they weave their cryptic inferences. "Hairy Candy"echoes the summer-fixated celebrations of BMSR, but with a dark, fevered perimeter. "Hawker Boat" and "Dirt (Instrumental Version)" strain stadium-rock grandeur through a dirty filter and serve it with rocks and salt. "Side 8 (Big Gums Version)," "Backwoods Altar" and "Get My Nails Did" expose a deep menace beneath their enticing rhythms - they get stuck in your head like sinister get-rick-quick schemes.

As a whole, the album establishes a one-man genre. Even with the latest tape-to-tape dubbing technology, Fucked Up Friends can't be duplicated. Tobacco hails from rural Pennsylvania. He does not desire contact with the public at large.

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Tracklisting

Tobacco - Fucked Up Friends