Tobacco is the Pennsylvania-based experimental musician behind Black Moth Super Rainbow. Known for being a bit of a rural recluse, Thomas Fec had in recent years all but given up on music–even after numerous LP and EP releases thru the 2000’s with BMSR and related side projects. Upon accepting his retirement, though, the urge to make music returned in full force with only a year’s hiatus.
Unsatisfied with what had become his stable musical means during the development of BMSR, Tobacco found himself returning to one of his earliest modes of creation. Methodically recording every track and effect to tape, Fec then feed the material into his sequencer–being sure to introduce plenty of manipulated degradation along the way!
With this as his raw material, Tobacco’s free-form impulses were free to run amuck in the strangest of ways. The musician concedes: “I do know how to ruin a good song,” but that is only because he seems to have a continual need to push himself beyond what he knows.
The result is an upcoming 12-song LP called Sweatbox Dynasty due out in August via Ghostly International. “Gods in Heat” is our first listen in on the new effort, and it’s definitely full of ear scrambling weirdness. Initially eluding any sense of rhythmic order, Tobacco’s drum and bass lines run off-kilter before gaining momentum into a hard driving funk. Taken apart and put back together such that many of this track’s moving parts are still showing, “Gods in Heat” displays Fec’s facility for making delirious and catchy pop from unlikely and experimental means.
