Before you even
start saying it, yes, I got this album because of the name. Basically from the name only, this record
could be almost anything, as long as it’s weird. As it turns out, it’s a love story between a
man, his 4-track, his 808, and his analog noise generator. I guess there is a keyboard there too, but
not a very recent one. I figure this guy
to be a sort of proto-Boards of Canada. The sound is similar on a superficial level, but really it’s much more
lo-fi and stripped down, and of course there is the guy’s voice, usually
heavily filtered or noisy. There is, in
addition, a fondness for nature – evident from the sort of electro-pastoral
melodies and more readily from the grass-hugging song names like “Dandelion
Graves” and “A Season for Blooming.” It’s kind of like BoC crossed with Jewelled Antler Collective, but
really in every way except abstract reasoning it’s nothing like that.
The album is
certainly not for everybody. If you can’t
deal with the cheesy synths in BoC, you’d better stop reading, cause they are
used almost exclusively here. Some
tracks more than others – “Boatfriend” is all synth, “Boxphones” almost none –
but there is little respite from the beeps. I’m not sure if the album is as good as the name of the artist, but then
again that may be an unfair comparison, or simply too high a bar – I don’t know
if Abbey Road is a better album than Black Moth Super Rainbow is a
bandname. In any case, it’s got a nice
sound and is a good break from your other music when you need something strange
and consistent in your ears.
Here's "Boxphones" from Black Moth Super Rainbow.
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