Tampa Calling

Pennsylvania experimental rock ensemble Black Moth Super Rainbow (pictured, photo by Jae Rumberto) hit retro and modern notes all at once with their day-glo vibrant electro-dance melodies, fizzadelic folk shambles and made-for-space jams. It’s some of the headiest music you’ll find out there right now, but songwriter/frontman/creative conscience Tobacco (real name Tom Fec) doesn’t consider his music psychedelic at all.

“I think everything I do is pop,” he told me a few weeks ago during a phone interview before the second leg of the band’s two-part tour. “I don’t like psychedelic music and I never set out to do it. It just sort of comes out that way. I might be the only person who thinks this, but Eating Us … it seems like a pop album to me.”

Eating Us, his band’s fourth and latest full-length, is not the sort of name that makes me think pop. The black-and-white album cover, with its smeary sad face superimposed onto the back of a hand, doesn’t make me think of pop music, either. And the limited edition “hairy” version of Eating Us (with synthetic hair in its inner sleeve) is probably as far from pop packaging as you can feasibly get. (VIDEOS AFTER THE JUMP) Read the rest of this entry »

Was just updating the concert listings when I came upon this listing on the Crowbar website:

Pittsburgh experimental rock ensemble Black Moth Super Rainbow produces some of the headiest psychedelic electro-fizz you’ll hear around right now, day-glow vibrant and spaced-out like an acid trip to the moon.

The band tones down the face-melting mania and turns wistfully surreal for its fourth full-length, Eating Us (Graveface), setting blotter paper lyricism against a rich and dreamy orchestra of synthesized sound — dense, swirling textures of synthi-chord, synth-strings, synth-flute and synth everything else. Read the rest of this entry »

Black Moth Super Rainbow makes some of the most tripped-out experimental music you’ll hear around these days, psychedelic electro-rock that belongs in a sci-fi space odyssey done in the 1970’s. And it’s not like that hard to sit through, hard to appreciate experi stuff — Black Moth’s music is vibrant, a rainbow of flavors that practically jumps out of the speakers to get your notice. I saw them open for Aesop Rock in ‘07 and was impressed at how well their music translated live. (The visuals helped.)

The band has recently announced the May 26 Graveface Records release of their fourth full-length, Eating Us (cover pictured at left). A medly from the album is currently streaming on the band’s MySpace page. It’s pretty good and I’m intrigued.

Here’s the release and track listing: Read the rest of this entry »