DIGGING

Sitting down with the alien known as Tom Fec, or Black Moth DEEPERSuper Rainbow, or … Whatever you call him, on his new album Manic Meat, he’s digging deeper than ever before. || by James H. Ewert Jr.

Just by looking at him, considering the convincingly you probably wouldn’t think Tom human personality encountered Fec is mentally ill, but listen to when Jettison caught up with his music and you become aware Fec, before Tobacco’s sold-out that he’s some kind of deranged, April show at the Empty Bottle in alien, serial-murderer from the Chicago. down again and this new record and delayed effects. His vocoded fifth dimension of an analog Fec said he’s trying to get is the first time I really dug down lyrics narrated the wreckage future. Given the type of soul- back into yoga, digging deeper since. But I had to go deeper and of hip-hop’s decaying musical snatching, bone-crushing music than ever before, and if he there’s only so far down you can architecture, and served as an Fec plays in both Tobacco and had a boat he’d name it Mystic go before the well is dry.” eerie analog hope in the midst of , that Thickness. Since the mid-90s Fec has a digitized urban environment. description isn’t farfetched. “I felt like been specializing in a kind of The band assumed a For the past decade, (his 2007 album under the name music that is at best psychedelic- mysterious public persona and Fec has made a career out of Black Moth Super Rainbow) future-acid-nectar for robots, regularly concealed or masked creating the musical equivalent was the best I could do, it was and at worst experimental-hip- their faces during live shows of a Robo-trip, and has everything I had in me,” Fec hop for the disenfranchised and in photos. They rarely did produced some of independent said staring off at the graffiti- masses. As the front man of interviews and deflected attention music’s most twisted and clad walls of the Empty Bottle’s BMSR, Fec helped orchestrate a away from their personalities, forward-listening sounds. You basement green room. “Then it synth-y dystopian dreamscape, focusing it on things like the would never guess it though, took me a few years to really dig with a smorgasbord of distortion

104 band’s collaged album art and “This new record is what tripped-out music videos. This everything I’ve had for the past enigmatic approach drew a year and a half has been going cultish following to BMSR, but into,” Fec said. “I feel like I put so often elicited articles and reviews much more in this Tobacco stuff with the typical question: “Who than Black Moth. After Dandelion is Black Moth Super Rainbow?” Gum I was so worn out on the Rolling Stone magazine went so idea of Black Moth that I let far as to describe the band as, myself run on auto pilot instead “Air + Grateful Dead + CIA = of not making another album or Black Moth Super Rainbow.” trying to be more into it.” In 2008, after releasing Fec admits the obligations a half dozen albums as BMSR to BMSR ,and the perpetual and various pseudonyms, Fec record-promote-play cycle of dropped Fucked Up Friends the music industry, have taken under the name Tobacco. a toll on the 29-year-old from The record held the same , but he said that undeniably trippy vibe of BMSR, while the process becomes more but Fec took a decidedly hip- challenging, the music that hop turn with Tobacco narrowed results is proportionally better. his sights on accentuating If Tobacco’s first album, snappier rhythms and more Fucked Up Friends, was a veer dissonant beats. As Tobacco, toward hip-hop, Maniac Meat is Fec is again searching through a full yank of the wheel, and it’s hip-hop’s abandoned corridors, sent Tobacco careening toward a but this time finding that music thick and chewy, murky crunch, is merely an approximation of a grotesque and tangential funk maniacal pace to the album, with an appearance on two of the silence, elaborately decorated that electronically sizzles in its a torrential synthesizer beat that 16 unmerciful tracks, Fec has with moments of tone and more own oozing puddle of battery surges through one violent buzz made something so viciously than a hefty spoonful of bass. acid. It sounds like the last dying after another, each revving like mesmerizing it’s almost To some, the differences wheeze of a toy keyboard, with an engine about to seize. obscene. between Tobacco and BMSR the circuits bent in and out. It’s “I was on a fucking mission Yet, despite the heaps are negligible. Others consider just too heady to be called hip to have fun,” Fec said about of adoration Tobacco has Tobacco amere side-project. hop, but the hooks could make Maniac Meat. “It’s kind of funny been attracting, Fec probably That’sa notion Fec hopes to a quadriplegic’s head bob. The because the album I’m having wouldn’t perform live if he dispel with Tobacco’s new album, album’s first song, Constellation the most fun on is my darkest didn’t have to. Luckily for Maniac Meat (Anticon). Dirtbike Head, certainly sets a and scariest.” the hundreds packed into the With artist making Empty Bottle, he still does..

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