Tobacco - Manic Meat
Black Moth Super Rainbow's frontman, Tom Fec's (aka Tobacco) second solo album 'Maniac Meat' is an industrial, gritty, aggressive behemoth, laden with vocoders and synths. This is dance music to mosh (or fight) to – with looped, heavy bass riffs that wouldn't be out of place on a Part Chimp album or similar. Maybe this is stoner hip hop? Sludge dance?
Whatever it is, it's a little bit different and a little bit exciting. The sound is almost deliberately wonky and disconcerting – it can best be described as lurching and uneven. But it just…works…. and for the most part, it's great – like being strapped into a rollercoaster when you get the front of what you thought was the queue for the toilets. But I'll be honest, at 16 tracks, for me there are times when it feels like Fec might be trying just that tiny bit too hard to be creative and progressive and it ends up sounding forced and contrived. And there are a couple of tracks that could best be described as "a bit meh". That said, when it's good it's really good and it's small wonder that there are a whole lot of sharp swingin' cats in musictown veritably pissing their skinny-fits in excitement over this album.
This buzz has probably been helped along somewhat by the fact that a couple of tracks feature the vocal talents of a certain Beck Hansen, who seems to have recently acquired a return ticket from musical "Whateverhappenedtoland". 'Fresh Hex', one of the tracks on which he cameos, is a little bit Caribou, and features a fat, loping bass and syncopated rhythm on the backing that I couldn't help but love.
Mr Hansen hasn't elbowed his way onto all the best tracks, though. There's 'Motorlicker' – crunchy, hooky and thick as molasses, with the kind of bass that you know if you were hearing it live would be turning your internal organs into liquid. And there's 'Constellation Dirtbike Head', the first track on the album – a swirling vortex of "DANCE TO ME!", accompanied by drums that wouldn't be out of place on a riot grrrl track.
All in all, I'm hoping that with enough listens and enough motion sickness tablets, this may become one of the best albums I've heard this year. Until then, it's got some killer tracks and, if nothing else, listening to it will give you some common ground for conversation next time you're out in Shoreditch. What have you got to lose?
Top tracks: 'Constellation Dirtbike Head', 'Motorlicker', 'Fresh Hex'.
Released July 12 on Anticon